Circusgate Continues

While city activists and other residents were engaged in an election, the city staff pushed on with its dog and phony shows.

Decoration of the float, despite its unpopularity, continues at the community center. Those who stopped in reported that “thousands” didn’t show up as the city claimed. Half-empty rooms provided testimony to the community’s negative reaction to the city staff’s float. The rejection of Richard Atkinson as the “city officials’ council candidate” shouldn’t be overlooked as relevant to the community’s reaction toward city hall.

As described elsewhere on this week’s blog, the Or. Co. Register and Saddleback Valley News have partnered with the city staff. For weeks prior to the election, SVN censored letters to the editor: no critical comments from residents were published. City administrators Dennis Wilberg and Keith Rattay met months ago with the SVN reporter, ending articles and letters about Easelgate, Dumpgate and Firegate as examples of corruption.

SVN’s coverage of the election indicated confusion among those interviewed. The reporter found voters who chose Ury and Schlicht or Schlicht and Atkinson – ideologically incompatible combos. In past years, residents have been able to get a grasp of who’s who through letters if not objective news coverage – both of which are missing.

How did city staffers leverage a blackout of Mission Viejo news? With OCR’s obvious decline, Mission Viejo’s city government applied pressure with its advertising dollars, having taxpayers fund a substantial portion of SVN’s ads.

Full page city ads are surrounded by puff-piece, city-invented “news” stories, and on Nov. 8, OCR ran yet another picture of the float with oversize headlines. The drawing of names for “float riders” substituted for city news. Those who watched the drawing at the Nov. 3 council meeting said the names were picked from handheld boxes, indicating a poor response from the community. By contrast, the OCR headlines billed the drawing as “Picked for the ride of their lives.” Readers should run for their lives from OCR.

As reported last week on this blog, activists photographed the remaining easels stacked on the ground for months since the April eruption of the Easelgate story. Despite the city’s claim that easels “would be used for years,” only a small number remain. Photos reveal the remaining easels are warped, unsightly and useless after months of weathering through careless storage on the ground.

As a brief update on Dumpgate, the city has evidently authorized contractors to use Lower Curtis Park as a dumpsite. Mounds are again increasing, adding to the evidence of another stealth project at the direction of City Manager Dennis Wilberg.