City Lacks Checks and Balances
Staff editorial

A primary cause of Mission Viejo’s voter revolt six years ago was city hall trampling the rights of residents. Two councilwomen, Sherri Butterfield and Susan Withrow, incurred the wrath of voters, who dumped them in 2002. The old gals’ sidekick, Bill Craycraft, was up for reelection in 2004, but he decided not to run.

Despite a valiant effort by many citizens who wanted better representation, the “new and improved” 2002 council members evolved into the old. Various activists scratched their heads, wondering how Council Members Trish Kelley and Lance MacLean became so much like the old queens. The policies and attitude voters tried to change are still in place.

Days after MacLean was elected in 2002, he indicated he wasn’t serious about all those things he said during his campaign. He quickly fell in with top administrators in city hall who likely had influenced Butterfield and Withrow.

Immediately after the 2002 election, friends of the old queens publicly accused Kelley of being the puppet of an activist group, the Committee for Integrity in Government. Kelley retorted that she wasn’t anyone’s puppet. To the contrary, she became the puppet of city administrators. Her flipping on campaign promises unfolded, revealing her support for redevelopment, growing bureaucracy and fiscal irresponsibility.

Kelley’s giveaway programs center on social engineering rather than basic purposes of government. Her centerpiece is the character program with a word of the month. Instead of putting her own name on buildings in the grand style of the old regime, Kelley has carved her inane ideas in stone. A city staffer complied by having rocks sandblasted with her “character words,” and he memorialized them in a “city rock garden” funded by taxpayers.

Residents get the same result from Kelley as they got from the old queens, but Kelley smiles while ignoring residents’ pleas for representation. A few Kelley fans – largely senior citizens – focus on the frozen smile instead of the message. A recent example of deceit with a smile is the council’s drive toward dismantling the Casta del Sol golf course. How many of Kelley’s followers noticed the sham moratorium she pushed provides a loophole for developers? Three council members – Kelley, MacLean and Frank Ury – are falsely claiming to protect the golf course with the moratorium.

City staffers – not the council – are running the show. Their policies from the days of Butterfield and Withrow are unchanged, and they generally get unanimous council approval. When city employees are making major recommendations and council members are voting 5-0 in favor of the staff’s agenda, the city lacks checks and balances. With major decisions going against the will of voters, residents have no representation.

Various council members enjoy favors in exchange for supporting the staff’s agenda. The staff’s point person, Trish Kelley, gets her face in every city picture, and they try to make her sound intelligent. They write words for her, and she stumbles through them. Residents questioned if Frank Ury benefited from the city’s Wi-Fi contract with ATS. He has avoided public release of employment information following his dismissal from Intel, raising questions of other conflicts of interest. MacLean seems ebullient despite his career ending at UCI after he was charged with assault and battery at a concert on campus. Perhaps his joy stems from a developer’s promise to build his long-awaited city basketball gymnasium in exchange for his vote to carve up the Casta del Sol golf course.

Council Members Ury and Gail Reavis are up for reelection in November, and several challengers are posturing to run against them. Unlike the 2002 landslide rejection of Butterfield and Withrow, voters should look carefully at who they’re throwing in as they rush to throw the incumbents out.