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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.
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City Election Update
Editorial staff
Activists are continuing their storefront poll regarding the city council race. With two seats at stake, Frank Ury should be a shoo-in as the only incumbent. Instead, he appears to be in trouble. For the past three weeks of storefront polling, Cathy Schlicht has been in first place, followed by Neil Lonsinger, Ury and Richard Atkinson. The activists found some support for Judy Rackauckas among female voters, and Michael Williamson has consistently received no mention.
Brad Morton’s city news blog released polling results that show approximately the same order with Atkinson and Ury tied for third place. Check out Morton’s poll and article at MissionViejoDispatch.com.
- Cathy Schlicht - 40%
- Neil Lonsinger - 37%
- Rich Atkinson - 8%
- Frank Ury - 8%
- Judy Rackaukus - 4%
- Michael Williamson - 3%
Readers of Morton’s blog tend to follow city politics. The nature of Morton’s readers can also be found in those participating in storefront polls. Voters strongly supporting Schlicht and Lonsinger were mailing in their absentee ballots shortly after receiving them, and they tended to be informed about city issues.
One of the activists commented, “If informed residents were the only ones voting, it would be a landslide for Schlicht and Lonsinger. The two are running as reform candidates while Ury is running on the status quo, and Atkinson says whatever Ury says. We’ll know on Nov. 4 if the early absentee voters were representative of all voters. Supporters of Cathy and Neil are concerned about uninformed voters because they often vote for the incumbent and rely more on a candidate’s mailers to decide.”
Schlicht has frequently criticized the council, and her supporters wondered if she’d be viewed as too negative. To the contrary, residents are saying her tenacity and standing up against a wayward council are the reasons they’re voting for her.
Storefront polling conducted during the past week didn’t indicate a change in positions from prior weeks. However, the race may have tightened up with Ury and Atkinson continuing to stuff mailboxes with their slate mailers. Most voters are sophisticated enough to ignore slates, but repeated hammering has an effect.
Ury and Atkinson monopolized the slates as a key element of their campaigns, and no other council candidates bought space on the slate mailers. With Atkinson having little else going in the way of presence in the community, his percentage on Nov. 4 will fairly well define the effectiveness of slate mailers.
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Campaign Finance Facts
by Joe Holtzman
For a revealing look at campaign finance facts involving the Mission Viejo council race, check out the Mission Viejo Dispatch http://missionviejodispatch.com/2008/10/24/council-candidates-file-contributions-expenditures . Brad Morton has done a great job with it.
While Councilman Frank Ury has broken many promises to the average citizen, the reason is obvious: Ury is in the pocket of the special interests. The Dispatch has listed them in detail. Take another look, folks. Ury’s financiers are not your friends.
Council challenger Richard Atkinson is a newcomer to politics in Mission Viejo. He has Mayor Trish Kelley shaking down the city suppliers and vendors for contributions to fund his campaign. Atkinson, when questioned on many topics about the city, reads the prepared material/answers given to him by Mayor Trish Kelley. When questioned on a one-on-one basis, he has no idea of what has/is taking place in Mission Viejo. His total ignorance on modern roundabouts is alarming! He was against the Rose Parade float –before he was (by Kelley’s direction) for the Rose Parade float.
Both Ury and Atkinson will NOT be citizen-friendly. They are obligated to the special interests who are not the citizens’ friends. You can count on Ury leading the charge to DEVELOP housing on the Casta golf course. Ury is forgetting the folks who are being radiated with EMF from the Edison lines, and Ury’s WI-FI initiative will be pushed at the citizens’ expense if he is elected.
The time is now to JUST SAY NO to Ury and Atkinson.
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CUSD – Election Battlefield
P.A.L.s update
The lack of transparency with which Capistrano Unified School District has operated is legendary. Ask anyone who tried to get a simple question answered during the last several years. CUSD would bury you in documents, delay your answers, add your name to a list indicating that your questions were expensive, investigate your background and respond that you were the problem instead of providing an answer! Those who dared to speak at Board meetings found themselves attacked rather than being provided with a response. A cultural change is required in CUSD to restore the public’s confidence, and this change will only occur because of a new focus on transparency.
CUSD did not truthfully answer questions about costs of the San Juan Hills High School project and the District office. These projects were primarily approved on the consent calendar without public discussion. The public was not aware that there was an alternate school site available in Ladera Ranch for SJHHS.
Parents Advocacy League (PAL) asked all of the CUSD Board candidates about transparency. Transparency is about open government, ethics, and the sunshine laws. Transparency is a means of holding public officials accountable and fighting corruption. When government meetings are open to the press and the public, when budgets and financial statements may be reviewed by anyone, when laws, rules and decisions are open to discussion, the agency is seen as transparent, and there is less opportunity for the authorities to abuse the system in their own interest.
Open government is the political doctrine that advocates the business of government should be open at all levels for effective public scrutiny and oversight. The Union-backed candidates’ responses were about themselves. Transparency is about the organization’s willingness to be responsive, not Trustee accessibility. Transparency is about citizen accessibility to information from CUSD, a public education agency. Over the years, all of the old-guard Trustees were available to the public: answers to questions were not available. Transparency is not a subcommittee meeting; it is a way of conducting business. In fact, the subcommittees referred to by the Union-backed candidates (see below) actually made the district less transparent because information was spread out over five or six meetings, making it difficult for the board and public to understand what had been presented.
The Reform Candidates, Brick, Maddox, Palazzo and Winsten, all have great suggestions for making CUSD a transparent agency. The Union-backed candidates didn’t even understand the question. Please take the time to read the responses to this important question. The answers make it clear that there is a choice, and it is time for CUSD to become transparent.
This election is a turning point in this district – the Union-backed candidates are happy with the way things were, and the Reform candidates are focused on the way things can be.
Follow this link (click here) to read the P.A.L.s question about transparency and answers from candidates.
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The Buzz, Nov. 1
To keep everyone laughing, an email circulated on Wednesday, describing what drivers may have seen that morning en route to the freeway. A Mission Viejo resident reported, "When I was driving to work today [Oct. 28], I saw an obese man holding up a Ury sign at a busy intersection. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and he looked like a homeless person who was being paid to hold Ury’s sign. He was on the wrong corner – faced the wrong way – waving at drivers who don't live here." As it turns out, it wasn’t a homeless man. It was Ury’s running mate, Richard “Wrong Way” Atkinson.
Two challengers in the council race, Cathy Schlicht and Neil Lonsinger, have anticipated for several weeks that Ury would launch a negative campaign against them. Before Councilwoman Gail Reavis announced on Aug. 8 that she wouldn’t seek reelection, Lance MacLean, Frank Ury and Trish Kelley were involved in raising funds to zap Reavis. Either the funds didn’t materialize or the trio dropped plans. No negative mailers were needed against Reavis, and voters have seen no hits against Schlicht and Lonsinger. Either Ury hasn’t polled voters (to find out how unpopular he is) or he doesn’t have funds to thwart the challenge from Schlicht and Lonsinger.
Calling all Mission Viejo residents – anyone who is supporting Schlicht and/or Lonsinger is invited to a rally on Monday. Activists will spend the last day prior to the election raising awareness of Mission Viejo voters. Join the team by rallying for Cathy and Neil at La Paz/Marguerite beginning at 4:30 p.m. on Monday.
Several months ago, this blog received information about the final resting place for the last of the 500-plus custom-made easels. Shortly after Easelgate erupted, city hall was shamed into giving some of the easels away to schools and church groups. Prior to that time, approximately 180 easels were carelessly handled by a city contractor, piled on a hillside and then taken to a county dump. Others vanished during a period of three months. An insider sent a tip, “Some day when no one is watching, the remaining easels will disappear.” As a problem for city hall, activists have never stopped watching. On Sat., Oct. 25, a worker showed up with a truck near the short stack of easels still on the ground near the water treatment facility. The stack is now gone, and activists have pictures that are stunning. Look for a follow-up report next week.
Watch for an update next week about Dumpgate, the piles of dirt and debris in Lower Curtis Park, which continue to accumulate. City Manager Dennis Wilberg claimed in an August SVN interview that piles of soil dumped at Lower Curtis were coming from the Crown Valley Parkway project. Last week, residents followed a fully loaded truck, and it didn’t come from Crown Valley. Insiders say miscellaneous contractors not connected to the road widening project are using city property as a dumpsite.
On Nov. 4, vote for Cathy Schlicht and Neil Lonsinger for Mission Viejo City Council.
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