Sunrise: It’s b-a-a-a-ck
Staff editorial

A few naive or overly optimistic residents have been saying Sunrise Assisted Living abandoned its plan to build housing on the Casta del Sol Golf Course.

If Sunrise walked away, it was merely to reload. Last week, at least two homeowner associations got word of the developer’s revised plan to build an assisted-living project on the Casta course. Brad Morton broke the news on his blog, stating Finnestera on the Green and Casta del Sol HOAs received information about the new plan. The revision relocates proposed housing from the south end to the west side of the golf course.

The city has received no formal proposal from Sunrise, but all five council members have privately talked with the developer. All council members except John Paul Ledesma have accepted campaign donations from the developer’s PR agent, Roger Faubel.

Sunrise first revealed its housing plans to the public in an “open house” meeting held Oct. 2, 2007. The drawings showed a multistory project on the south end of the course where the clubhouse now stands. Initially, Sunrise talked about rebuilding the clubhouse on the west side of the course along Marguerite Parkway. Skeptics doubted that the assisted-living developer, which clearly lacks an interest in golf, would spend any money to build a new clubhouse. Many people believe the real plan entails carving up the golf course for housing, regardless of what Sunrise and Faubel say about preserving the course.

Will Sunrise continue redrawing its plans, just as Steadfast did with its proposed housing at Jeronimo and Los Alisos? Sunrise and Steadfast seem to be using the same playbook. Steadfast also had an elaborate PR scheme to trick gullible residents into supporting more high-density housing in a built-out city. Council members, especially Trish Kelley, claimed Steadfast would pay developer fees for “other projects” around town. Steadfast paid nothing.

In February 2008, the council put a sham moratorium on rezoning, pretending to protect the golf course. The moratorium stops nothing, as the council could vote to end it at any time. Furthermore, it contains a loophole that wouldn’t stop a developer from proceeding. The moratorium, however, gives council incumbents cover from a political firestorm over the golf course issue in the Nov. 4 city election. Councilman Frank Ury is up for reelection, and he has spoken in favor of Sunrise. Gail Reavis is also up for reelection, and her position on Sunrise isn’t clear.

Most opponents of the Sunrise project herald the Mission Viejo Right To Vote Initiative as the best way to stop Sunrise from rezoning the golf course. Community activist Dale Tyler delivered the revised initiative to city hall on Thurs., July 17. He inadvertently omitted a paragraph when he first delivered the initiative to city hall several weeks ago.

The initiative process is back on track, and signature gathering will begin following another public announcement in the newspaper, as required by law. Those who have already expressed interest in gathering signatures will be contacted. Anyone else who wants to sign the petition or participate in signature gathering should click here and fill out the form at the bottom of the page.

Easelgate Update
Editorial staff

An activist who is investigating Easelgate encountered delay tactics from the city last week – no surprise there. On the positive side, a resident provided valuable new information to this blog regarding the Easelgate cover-up. One resourceful informant has contributed leads about the cover-up with 100-percent accuracy.

Blog readers have offered helpful suggestions about investigating the city’s easel fiasco, which began April 22 when community activist Lisa De Paul-Snyder saw hundreds of broken easels piled up on city property. The city purchased 500 custom-built easels in an attempt to create a photo display of record-breaking length. City staff member Keith Rattay gave deceptive answers to Saddleback Valley News reporter Lindsey Baguio. Among his comments, he claimed the trashed easels were being “stored” on the ground for lack of space, and he lied by saying each easel cost only $15. Data provided by the city showed easels cost approximately $40 apiece, and activists believe each one cost more than $150 ($75,000 for 500 easels).

Readers have specifically asked for an investigation of Rattay’s claim that 150 volunteers contributed more than 800 hours in assembling the easels. His claim is obviously false; the city paid a contractor $45 an hour to make the easels. Rattay doesn’t get a pass on this one, and its time will come.

Currently, a top priority is to discover evidence of misappropriation of public funds. Leads from readers have directed attention to one city contractor, Jamey Clark. Clark has two contracts with the city, and he operates under at least two separate business names. If any reader has relevant information about Clark, please provide it by emailing this blog. Has anyone ever seen Clark or his employees performing work for the city? Has anyone observed Clark or his employees inspecting parks or working on city property? Does anyone have information about Clark billing the city inappropriately? All communication will remain confidential, and contributors may comment anonymously.

Activists who are reviewing the city’s financial documents regarding Easelgate continue to focus on irregularities and inconsistencies in Clark’s records. They found discrepancies among 59 pages of city documents released to De Paul-Snyder on July 2 after the city stalled for six weeks before releasing the information. The city is into its second week of delaying De Paul-Snyder’s latest request for public records. On July 10, she sent a clearly defined request to the city to get information about Clark. Following is her request for records:

• Any and all complete administrative and financial records, including, but not limited to, memos, e-mails, letters, the city's bid requests, bids received, quotations, work orders, itemized invoices, receipts, and checks issued, including dates, amounts, and applicable descriptions or memos, pertaining to city contractor Jamey Clark, Inc., from July 1, 2007, to July 10, 2008, inclusive."

On July 18, the city emailed De Paul-Snyder that staff members might need an additional 14 days:

• “Pursuant to Government Code Section 6253(c), this email is to inform you that the City will respond to your request within fourteen days from the date of this email. A voluminous amount of separate and distinct records need to be searched and examined and multiple City departments may need to be consulted with in order to comply with the demands of your request.”

De Paul-Snyder reacted to the email, “Apparently, the city accounting department doesn’t keep records of their transactions with Jamey Clark, Inc., organized very well.” Is the city’s award-winning, crack-shot accounting team having difficulty finding its records for ONE city contractor? How long can it take 152.3 city employees to put their hands on one contractor’s file?

Even before evidence of criminal wrongdoing is known, at least two problems have become evident with the revelations of Easelgate: 1) a city staff member is out of control. He spent or approved spending an excessive amount on a taxpayer-funded project that generated almost no public participation or interest. He bypassed the council’s approval process to spend more than the $30,000 limit on any project. 2) The council has failed to supervise the city staff. Month after month, council members have approved the check register without asking any question about numerous big checks (including one for $58,724.07) to a city contractor for unknown activity.

Local Team Excels at Sand Sculpting
News brief

A highly regarded sandcastle-building team, Archisand, has a Mission Viejo connection. Archisand is headed by Greg LeBon of Mission Viejo. He and his wife Kathy are parents of Pamela, 16, and Alex, 14. Greg, who is an architect by profession, founded the team. Kathy serves as marketing director for Archisand.

After winning the U.S. competition for six of the last nine years, Archisand placed second in the 28th U.S. Open Sandcastle Competition, which was held a week ago in Imperial Beach. The contest is one of three national annual events to draw a crowd of more than 350,000 people. The other two are the Indy 500 and Mardi Gras.

Archisand allows anyone who wants to be on its team. It is the only Master’s category team that permits children to carve. Archisand’s work will appear in two movies this year, "He's Just Not That into You" and "My Sister's Keeper."

As a highlight of the recent event in Imperial Beach, the Make-a-Wish Foundation enabled a terminally ill young boy from Philadelphia to see the contest and meet the sand sculptors.

To view photography and learn more about Archisand, visit the Website, http://members.cox.net/archisand

CUSD Update
Editorial staff

Supt. Woodrow Carter returned from vacation after missing the July 1 swearing-in ceremony of two new school board members, Sue Palazzo and Ken Maddox. Perhaps he has taken time to smooth things over with the other reform trustees after accusing them of causing his problems with the D.A. regarding his contract. The board meeting on Mon., July 21, will be the first opportunity for the new board to transact business with a 5-2 reform majority following the June 24 recall of old-guard trustees Marlene Draper and Sheila Benecke.

Reform trustees will present two aggressive reform items on Monday’s agenda. Trustee Ellen Addonizio will propose a forensic audit of construction costs and spending at the $157-million San Juan Hills High School, which opened last September. Trustee Ken Maddox will propose an ad-hoc committee to review district vendor contracts to look at such issues as vendor performance and conflict of interest.

The Fleming regime and the old majority had brushed aside controversies from the 2002 inception of SJHHS to the present. The new board faces how to complete the campus, including classrooms, sports fields and a $3-million stadium. In March, the public learned the district doesn’t own all the land on which sports facilities and fields are either built or planned.

Also on the agenda will be a presentation of a report about safety issues with regard to the high-pressure fuel pipeline running within 1,000 feet of SJJHS. The preliminary pipeline report, presented prior to the recall election, contained errors that minimized dangers. The board will have a choice of asserting that the school site is safe or funding costly remedies. As another difficult matter, CUSD is contractually obligated to bring all the teachers back while lacking revenue sources. The Mission Viejo City Council has discussed suing CUSD over cutting bus services without first preparing an EIR.

A parent posted a remark on the OC Register’s discussion board about CUSD: “I’d like to be a fly on the wall around the Ed Center this week. Unfortunately, since it is the last building in CUSD that is regularly cleaned, flies are noticed!”

Reader Reactions

Do Rules Prevent Wastefulness?

This has to do with global warming and waste of energy (especially at the height of today's gas price). I saw, numerous times, city maintenance trucks on duty, at the street curbside, idling for an hour, maybe even longer. The trucks emit toxic exhaust fumes, polluting the air and wasting gas, which is paid for by the taxpayers. While there may be a reason for this kind of pollution and waste, it is NOT good enough no matter what it is.  I wonder if the city has rules to prevent this kind of behavior or if it is allowed.

Anonymous
Mission Viejo

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Resident Supports the Right To Vote Initiative

We hope this "Right To Vote Initiative" goes through so the citizens of Mission Viejo will have a say in their hometown. Mission Viejo represented to their citizens a family environment.  Now, due to money, they want to make it an “urban” environment. There are already too many people for the roads to handle. The stress level has soared due to this fact alone.

J.C.T.
Mission Viejo

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Timely Call Saves 10 Easels

The day after I saw the "Easelgate" photos on this blog site, I called City Hall. I told the person answering the phone that I had seen a picture of the easels in a heap and wondered if they were up for grabs (La Paz Intermediate was getting ready to put on their first Renaissance Faire, and I knew I could put at least two easels to use). The girl transferred me to someone she thought could help. That person transferred me to someone else. That person transferred me to someone else who said she wasn't sure and would call me back. Four days later, she did and said that half the easels were to be donated to the schools. I made the appointment, and my son picked up 10 easels for La Paz. He picked them up for me because I was out of the country that week. I am soooo glad I didn't wait another week to pick them up, because we had torrential downpours two days after my son got them. If I had waited, they would have been totally warped and unusable. We were able to use all 10 of them for the Faire. Lucky us.

Elizabeth Yaeger
Mission Viejo

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What About City Government’s Character?

The Character Word of the month is “Fairness.” One would be hard-pressed to argue that “fairness” is a bad thing, but as an element of character, what does it mean? Fairness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, in other words, completely subjective. Some say that free-market capitalism is unfair because it allows some people to have more than others. Others see markets as the ultimate democracy in which people utilize their abilities and invest their property according to their own needs and desires. That debate continues, although common sense tells us the latter view is more compatible with a free society.

Why is the city government spending our tax dollars promoting an ambiguous word? Is the role of government to inculcate nebulous concepts in the minds of citizens?

Thomas Jefferson, in his First Inaugural Address, in 1801, stated:
“[A] wise and frugal government...shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

Mission Viejo is long overdue for a lesson in good government.

Anonymous
Mission Viejo

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Wanted: Legal Beagle

I live in Laguna Hills, and we want to do an initiative for Term Limits for the city council here but have been unable to find a Municipal Attorney to advise us about the initiative process so we can be sure we are doing it correctly. If you have one or know of one, would you please let me know? I know it is too late now for the November election, but we will pursue this in a special election or in two years as needed. Thank you.

Jean Bland
Laguna Hills

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Look on the Bright Side

A reader who didn’t give permission to publish her comments says things aren’t perfect, but everyone should remember the positive reasons for living in Mission Viejo.

The Buzz

Why hasn’t any council member commented about the wastefulness of the city staff’s weeklong 20th anniversary spend-a-thon? Are they not troubled about the controversy of Easelgate and its real costs, now estimated at $90,000-plus for the photo gallery alone? After blowing $15 million on the 13,000-square-foot expansion of the community and senior center, perhaps $90,000 is no big deal to them. The Buzz would be interested in learning the total for the 20th anniversary party.

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More information is emerging about Easelgate and reinforcing the allegation that city administrator Keith Rattay hid costs. How many of the city’s 152.3 employees know about this? If any staff member created phony documents about expenses or misrepresented the costs as “maintenance,” it would take more than one person to cover it up. When top administrators in the Capo school district were indicted, the grand jury first interviewed those at the bottom of the hierarchy. Clerks and secretaries told what they knew. By the time the top brass was interviewed, the grand jury already had the answers. The amount of money misappropriated in CUSD wasn’t huge, but lying about what happened has one former employee facing felony charges and a possible prison sentence if she is found guilty of perjury and conspiracy.

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How did the cost of the community center expansion balloon to $15 million (and still climbing)? An electrical contractor who is familiar with the job says that it was largely due to mismanagement, not rising costs as claimed. He said, “The city employees who were dealing with it didn’t know what they were doing, and the city council members weren’t properly overseeing it. No one cared when the cost doubled and then tripled. At least one firm I know of walked off the job after underbidding it, bringing the project to a standstill. It was mismanaged from the beginning.”

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The filing period opened July 14 for those intending to run for city council. Candidates have until Aug. 8 to file nomination papers and statements of qualification for office. As of 5 p.m. on Fri., July 18, three candidates had pulled papers to run: incumbent Gail Reavis and two challengers, Rich Atkinson and Cathy Schlicht. If the other incumbent, Frank Ury, doesn’t file, the deadline will remain open until Aug. 13. Ury is likely to file, but he is reportedly out of town. On July 14, four additional challengers had appointments with the city clerk to pull papers, and all four either canceled or failed to show.

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In addition to council incumbents and challengers developing their campaigns, two other city council members are involved in the city election. Up to their usual dirty tricks are Trish Kelley and Lance MacLean, who are not up for reelection this year. Kelley, MacLean and Ury have apparently formed an alliance to “get rid of Gail Reavis.” This is similar to Kelley’s involvement in 2004 when Reavis was up for reelection. No one campaigned harder than Kelley, who went door-to-door to malign and trash Reavis. Kelley’s nasty anti-campaign may have had the opposite effect, as Reavis won in 2004 and Kelley further sullied her own reputation.

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To fund the anti-Reavis campaign, a Political Action Committee has the support of Kelley, MacLean and Ury, but their names won’t be on it. MacLean and Ury appear to be unemployed and Kelley is a housewife, so it’s not for the purpose of funneling their own cash into the effort. The PAC will allegedly be funded by Ury’s out-of-town lobbyist friends, including John Lewis. The PAC will produce only negative mailers and hit pieces against Reavis. Anyone receiving the nasty mailers should know that the Queen of Character Trish Kelley is behind the campaign. It’s business as usual for the dysfunctional Mission Viejo City Clowncil.