Easelgate Update – Truth Slips Out Again
Editorial staff

Memos from city hall emerged last week, revealing an ongoing attempt to minimize Easelgate. As reported a week ago, an activist requested all records from the city relating to costs of the city’s 20th anniversary photo display. The city responded with a letter indicating more time was needed to provide information. Additionally, a city administrator (Assistant mis-Manager Keith Rattay) circulated an inner-office memo instructing employees to let their supervisors know immediately of any conversations with council members. Despite his efforts to contain it, the truth would slip out again.

City Manager Dennis Wilberg wrote an email to Lindsey Baguio, the reporter for Saddleback Valley News. Wilberg’s email found its way into the hands of a Mission Viejo resident, who published it June 12 on a county blog. It appears that Baguio may have asked Wilberg about the large pile of broken easels being moved from the city yard to a county dump. Wilberg emailed Baguio, suggesting she include in her stories the opinions of his 30 hand-picked residents, implying they would provide a more “broad-based representation” of community views.

Wilberg asks Baguio to give “a fair and accurate representation of both sides of an issue.” Isn’t that exactly what Baguio has tried to do? The city has had more than a month to answer questions. Instead of providing the “fair and accurate representation” of what the city did, Rattay appears to have lied twice in response to direct questions: how did broken easels end up on a hillside and how much did they cost?

Letters to the editor – likely from Wilberg’s list of 30 shills – were published in SVN on May 30 (Evelyn Olson) and June 6 (Margo Kutner). Both letters praised the city staff. Olson made a strange claim that vandals broke the easels, and Kutner thanked Keith Rattay for the “wonderful” city anniversary event. Does anyone have any question about the origin of the letters? As a hint of authorship, Olson’s letter sounds similar to a June 12 county blog post appearing to come from a city employee. What’s “fair and accurate” about a city administrator instigating letters to compliment himself and passing them off as a “broad-based community view”? In addition to planting letters in SVN, consider the fortune the city has spent on large-scale propaganda, including contracts with P.R. agencies and the one-sided fluff in the City Outlook magazine.

But that’s not all. On June 12, the county blog also revealed Mission Viejo’s city staff spent $34,348.99 to improve property the city doesn’t own. As most residents know, Mission Viejo contracts with the Orange County Fire Authority, and its fire stations belong to the county. According to a June 9 city memo, Rattay indicated the city was “helping” OCFA by improving the appearance of Fire Station #24, located on Marguerite Parkway near Oso. It’s not up to Rattay to improve non-city properties with a gift of Mission Viejo tax dollars. Dubbed “Firegate” by the blogger, it’s another example of a stealth project wrongfully billed to Mission Viejo residents, and the council was excluded in the decision. The memo revealed city taxpayers would pay for ongoing maintenance of a landscaped area on county property at a cost of $8,000 annually.

The blogger’s post about Firegate also aired a citizen’s claim that the city has been conducting its “aesthetics” work on other non-city property, including maintenance of private-sector slopes.

Since Mission Viejo residents are paying for the City Outlook magazine, isn’t it about time activists got a few pages in each edition to give “a fair and accurate representation of both sides” of the city? A cartoon or two would also be a nice addition.