2008 Predictions
Staff editorial

The blog is proud to announce its 2008 predictions for Mission Viejo:

With no end in sight for the road widening project, the Ranch will buy Crown Valley Parkway. The Ranch will realize it can build 14,000 homes faster than the city can widen the road.

The business savvy Mission Viejo City Council will sell Crown Valley Parkway (construction cost incurred by the city: $70 million) to the Ranch for $1.50.

After the Ranch buys Crown Valley Parkway, it will change the name of the road to Roger Faubel Parking Lot for his impressive job of educating the public with signs, “Information coming soon,” to explain why traffic is stopped.

City Council incumbents will run on a platform of extending term limits because they’ve done such a bang-up job of keeping their campaign promises.

The city staff will discover two new potential sites for a dog park (inside the Canyon Crest clubhouse and on the blacktop at Newhart school). Although more popular than some of the other sites, both will be rejected.

Frank Ury, after promising to bury the power lines in 2004, will run in 2008 on a promise to move the Los Angeles Angels to Mission Viejo. Angels Stadium will allegedly be at Gilleran Park, to be renamed Ury Regional Park (U.R.P.).

The city’s economic development contractor (hired in June 2007) will have a hard time bringing new businesses to Mission Viejo. The contractor will respond to the city staff’s new city slogan (“Making living your mission”) by saying, “You call this living? You can’t make a living here. The council rezoned all the commercial property to residential.”

The city staff will alter its slogan to “Making sitting in traffic your mission.”

Junior high kids will hack into the city’s electronic sign at La Paz and Marguerite, which will alternately flash “Loosest slots in town” and “Shrimp cocktail 99 cents.” High numbers of Garden Grove residents will move to Mission Viejo.

New Year is an Opportunity
Letter to the editor

The New Year offers opportunity and hope for improvement, with many people making New Year’s resolutions. I hope our government officials, including those at the local level, will join the rest of us by trying harder in 2008.

City council members recently implied they have the authority to change our city slogan. I disagree. Mission Viejo’s slogan is The California Promise, and that’s the only one I will acknowledge. I would suggest the council adopt The Broken Promise for their personal use if they can’t honor the official one. Council members don’t seem to remember the campaign promises they made when running for election.

I hope 2008 is a good year for everyone. Happy New Year.

Milt Jacobson
Mission Viejo

Reader Comments: Q and A

“Where was Mission Viejo’s float in the Rose Parade? How much money did the city pay for a float that wasn’t even on TV?”

Residents who remember the council discussion are correct: on June 16, 2007, the council voted 4-1 (Reavis dissenting) to “set aside” $300,000 in the city budget for a float in the Rose Parade. The parade date discussed was January 1, 2009, not 2008. Mission Viejo’s city manager has a history of personal involvement in the Tournament of Roses Association, in case anyone is wondering why a built-out, bedroom community with no tourist attractions would have any reason whatsoever for participating in a parade in Pasadena.

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“The blog has published remarks indicating Councilwoman Trish Kelley is a dim bulb. I have observed she is adept at getting her way on the council. Is she really so dumb?”

Kelley has frequently been on the winning side because no one on the council can lead. Immediately following her 2002 election, Kelley positioned herself as the swing vote, where she was courted by both sides: big spenders (Lance MacLean and Bill Craycraft) and the more conservative council members (John Paul Ledesma and Gail Reavis). Kelley’s most recent success of elbowing her way into the mayor’s seat was an example of being manipulative. She refused to vote for anyone else as mayor, and when Reavis nominated her for mayor, she prevailed 3-2 by voting for herself.

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“What’s the stir about a secret city report concerning the power lines?”

Brad Morton uncovered a study conducted by Sage and Associates, and he reported the matter in his blog, www.missionviejodispatch.com. This issue goes back to the summer of 2006 when a resident stood under the power lines in north Mission Viejo to measure EMF and compared the readings with those from the previous summer. The new lines were supposed to reduce EMF at ground level because the lines are on taller poles. The resident claimed EMF readings from the new lines are higher, not lower. Whether or not residents are concerned about EMF, they should be concerned about secret studies, secret results and refusal by the city to disclose information upon request by a resident. Beyond the Dispatch article by Morton, residents might remember a flap during the 2006 city campaign. Council candidate Justin “Justintime” McCusker announced his knowledge of a closed-session discussion, claiming he had information what would “force Edison to bury its lines.” How did a candidate acquire closed-session information that no other resident could get (and is still unavailable to this day)? Keep in mind that McCusker as a candidate was foisted upon Mission Viejo voters by his mentor, Orange County GOP Chairman Scott Baugh, and promoted by Councilman Frank Ury. Contradicting McCusker’s campaign remarks, Councilman MacLean said from the dais, “Anyone who claims the lines are going to be buried is lying.” Mission Viejo taxpayers paid for the study, and the results should be public information. The report should shed light on who is lying.

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“If you’re going to gather signatures for a city initiative [Dale Tyler’s Right To Vote regarding rezoning], why don’t you recall Councilman Lance MacLean while you’re at it?”

While MacLean well deserves to be recalled, backers of Tyler’s initiative believe the best way to deal with an untrustworthy council is to reduce the power of all five simultaneously.

Kids Excel in Self-Esteem
Patriot Post Brief

A blog reader forwarded the following article, adding a comment: “The item I’m sending struck me as applicable to certain dysfunctional elected officials as well as students. Nobody beats them on self-esteem.”

From the Patriot Post, Dec. 17, 2007, printed in the L.A. Times:

We could focus on the latest worrisome news in education: the results of an international test released last week indicating 15-year-old Americans don’t know much about science, and they’re falling behind their peers in other industrialized nations.

But why get depressed? There’s an aluminum-foil lining. The test also found that our teens don’t let their ignorance bother them. They may not know as much as students in Finland, Canada or New Zealand, but they think they do. When asked to rate their own scientific abilities, they put themselves at the top of the list.

This is the real trend in American education. No one can match us when it comes to self-esteem.

CUSD Update, Jan. 5
Editorial staff

The effort to recall two Capo holdover trustees (Marlene Draper and Sheila Benecke) is nearing the Jan. 29 deadline to get signatures. Residents have reported seeing professional signature gatherers working at storefronts. Hiring professionals isn’t a sign of weakness, as nearly all successful efforts requiring a high number of signatures end up in the hands of professionals.

Recall supporters got a boost on Dec. 27 with an article in OC Weekly, “The Real Portables of South County.” http://www.ocweekly.com/features/features/the-real-portables-of-south-county/28259/

Writer Daffodil J. Altan described the rundown condition of some portables, which has been a talking point of recall supporters. A paragraph of her observations closely aligns with parent complaints:

On my first day of exploration, in a mere five hours, I traveled throughout the district and visited about a dozen of the district's 56 schools. Here, in the middle of pristine South County, I saw valleys of concrete lined with dozens of rickety, sometimes windowless classroom portables, nestled among hills of new homes. I saw rotting wood. I saw wide-open circuit boxes with wires hanging out of them like vines. I smelled mildew in classrooms. I saw small holes in the bottoms of some portables that hinted at animal gnawings (although I couldn't prove this for a fact).

District officials proceeded with a $53 million Taj Mahal administration center (completed in 2006) while many classrooms were deteriorating. The contrast between the administration center and the portables became one of the reasons parents began the first effort to recall trustees in 2005.

As a huge underlining problem, the wasteful spending in CUSD has not changed – despite two trustees being dumped in the 2006 election and a series of new superintendents and interim superintendents. Even with a half-billion-dollar annual budget, CUSD can’t make ends meet. A parent commented on a discussion board, quoting Arnold Schwarzenegger, “We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.” (That apparently was Arnold talking before he became part of the spending problem.)

The parent went on to explain how CUSD got into such deep trouble: unqualified administrators making poor facilities-planning decisions, such large-scale wasteful spending as the administration center, construction contracts that resulted in rampant waste and attorneys who gave bad advice and took cases without merit to court. And that’s just the beginning.

As another controversial matter, the boundary discussions are not going particularly well, and perhaps no one expected they would. Boundaries have become flashpoints, particularly when some of them were drawn for political reasons or by using faulty data. Some parents reviewing the data said school district officials overseeing the process were incompetent.

Judging by the November 2006 election when holdover trustees were swept out of office, constituents want change. Holdover Trustee Duane Stiff has shown promise on a couple votes, but he’s also shown a lack of resolve to change the majority by voting consistently with the three reform-minded trustees who were elected in 2006.

Large numbers of parents and other constituents don’t trust the old trustees, the hand-picked administrators from the old regime or the process by which decisions are still being made.

The Buzz column, Jan. 5

More than two months ago, Mission Viejo residents began noticing increased noise levels from airplanes, particularly over the north part of the city. County and agency officials claim there are no changes in flight patterns, but residents say planes are flying at lower altitudes. Air traffic increased directly over the city during the October fires, but that should have diminished when the smoke cleared. A resident of north Mission Viejo said, “The noise increase is obvious, and it’s day and night, including after the curfew at John Wayne Airport.”

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To 2008 predictions for Mission Viejo, blog staffers should have added council meetings of record-breaking length with Trish Kelley as mayor. When she last served as mayor, some meetings ran beyond 2:00 a.m. Kelley can’t seem to remember what the city staff told her to say. She constantly stops proceedings to ask a city staffer or the city attorney what to do. It would take less time if the staff took over the meetings, and the outcome would be the same.

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If residents living near the Casta del Sol golf course aren’t already on high alert, they should be. The developer (Sunrise) wanting the golf course rezoned for housing is proceeding with plans to buy the property. Residents should not be assuaged with false rumors that the developer became discouraged or walked away.

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In addition to Sunrise’s threat of development on the north side of Casta del Sol Drive, two potential threats remain on the south side, adjacent to the Marguerite rec center and Nadadores facility. One threat is from the city itself, with talk of extending walking trails through the undeveloped parcel. Casta residents have already protested trails because of security issues. Several years ago, at least one developer targeted the parcel for housing, causing a strong negative reaction from Casta del Sol homeowners.

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Mission Viejo city staff members claim that the City Outlook newsletter is the primary means of informing residents about the city’s emergency preparedness. The information in the newsletter contains laundry lists from various government agencies but nothing specific about Mission Viejo’s (nonexistent) plan. The city pays one of its high-level employees more than $100,000 annually for emergency preparedness, and the city has no plan except to rely on county agencies.

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The city staff’s new logo – a tree – took the blog’s artist about 15 minutes to replicate, combining two clip-art pieces. Blog staffers gave the artist only a description – no visual references – to see how much effort went into the graphic design of the city’s $52,000 “image” contract. Residents continue to laugh at the slogan, “Making living your mission.” A Buzz reader emailed, “In addition to the lame idea, the wording is the type of English I hear when talking with a computer tech from Bangladesh.”