Pay Attention or Pay the Price
Staff editorial

The city council election on Tuesday will be a turning point for Mission Viejo as well as Councilman Frank Ury. Voters are choosing between the direction of the current council majority (Lance MacLean, Ury and Trish Kelley) or the reform agenda of two challengers (Cathy Schlicht and Neil Lonsinger). Ury as a politician will either get a second lease on Nov. 4 or he’ll be through.

Except for sending voters a score of developer-funded mailers, Ury’s campaign has been low key. Perhaps he expected to win without a fight. While Ury and his running mate Richard Atkinson are backed by special interest and the Orange County political machine, all other candidates are running primarily on grassroots support.

Ury began his public (dis)service in 1990 when he won a seat on the Saddleback Valley USD board of trustees. After four years, voters threw him out, describing his arrogance and bad attitude toward teachers, administrators and public schools in general. Ury ran again for the SVUSD board in 1996, losing by an even greater margin than in 1994. He blamed the teachers union for his defeat, but parents who initially supported him said he not only disappointed them, he lied to them. SVUSD constituents who opposed Ury from the beginning said his agenda was anti-public education.

Will Ury’s council career end in the same way as his one-term school board tenure? His council campaign in 2004 centered on jumping in front of a group of north Mission Viejo homeowners concerned about overhead power lines. After the group (“No Overhead Powerlines by Edison”) carried him into office, he abandoned them. While new powerlines went up, Ury’s attention turned to housing developers and enriching such political friends as Curt Pringle, the lobbyist for the UDR/Pacific affordable housing project on east Los Alisos. Ury further distanced himself from the N.O.P.E. activists by ridiculing them behind their backs.

Despite four years of compelling evidence that voters should now remove Ury from office, a few residents have Ury’s signs in their yards. His false claim of “finishing the Crown Valley Parkway project” should anger everyone who lives south of Oso. His lies about the powerlines should anger everyone who lives anywhere near them. His giving himself a raise last month should outrage everyone who pays taxes, and his relentless push for more housing, traffic and overcrowding should put all voters on high alert.

Activists have worked hard to enlighten voters about Ury’s sacking of Mission Viejo. If Ury retains his council seat, residents who live near the Casta golf course, Unisys (Jeronimo/Los Alisios) or the retail center at La Paz and Marguerite will next feel the pain of his relentless push to add high-density housing and destroy the Master Plan. Residents should hope Ury’s political career comes to a screeching halt on Election Day.