They’re Still Counting
Staff editorial

Numbers continue to inch up, but the order isn’t changing in Mission Viejo’s city council race. With two open council seats, incumbent Frank Ury and challenger Cathy Schlicht became the unofficial winners on Nov. 4. The Registrar of Voters still has a hefty portion of paper ballots to count. Current standings as of this writing are:

FRANK URY     14,640 24.8%
CATHY SCHLICHT  11,893 20.1%
NEIL LONSINGER  11,288 19.1%
RICH ATKINSON   8,505 14.4%
JUDY RACKAUCKAS  6,424 10.9%
MICHAEL WILLIAMSON 6,273 10.6%

Schlicht and Lonsinger campaigned together on a reform platform. They said the council wasted money, shut out the public and failed to manage essential work efficiently. A crowning example of waste and mismanagement is the community center expansion, which ran $10 million over budget. Both Schlicht and Lonsinger promised, if elected, they’d rescind the salary increase the council gave itself last month.

Ury and Atkinson, who campaigned together, said residents are happy about everything, including Ury’s false claim the Crown Valley Parkway widening project is finished. Their campaign finance reports revealed funding by developers, vendors and special interest. Ury and Atkinson together raised $66,452 (including personal loans totaling $16,500), while Schlicht and Lonsinger’s combined total was $27,658 (total personal loans of $19,953). Despite lean finances, Schlicht and Lonsinger together matched Ury and Atkinson’s combined vote totals.

In a newspaper interview after the election, Schlicht said it was a bittersweet victory for her, following weeks of campaigning alongside Lonsinger. The two had hoped to unseat Ury and block Richard Atkinson, who had the backing of Ury, Trish Kelley and Lance MacLean.

City activists found encouragement in Schlicht and Lonsinger’s respective totals. They mentioned Atkinson’s defeat as a message to city officials who were promoting him. Despite Atkinson’s individual campaign treasury of $36,149, the highest among all candidates, he trailed in fourth place.

Voters countywide cast 900,000 ballots, including more than 400,000 paper ballots. The Registrar of Voters could complete the task of counting all ballots by Nov. 14.

School Update

Numbers below represent the latest updates from the Registrar of Voters.

CUSD

Reform candidates won in all four Trustee Areas. The only incumbent in the race from the Fleming regime, Duane Stiff, was defeated by the greatest margin. Celebrations of victory will be short, as new trustees will immediately face the district’s financial woes. Supt. Woodrow Carter should have cleaned out his desk on the day after the election.

Trustee Area 1
JACK BRICK  53,677 51.5%
ERIN KUTNICK 50,469 48.5%

Trustee Area 2
SUE PALAZZO  60,902 59.0%
ANDREA KOOIMAN 42,271 41.0%

Trustee Area 3
MIKE WINSTEN 67,256 65.8%
DUANE STIFF  34,881 34.2%

Trustee Area 5
KEN MADDOX   55,884 55.9%
GARY V MILLER 44,108 44.1%

SVUSD

With three open seats and only one challenger without much of a campaign, all three incumbents easily won.

SUZIE R. SWARTZ  45,505 31.2%
DON SEDGWICK   43,973 30.2%
GINNY FAY AITKENS 38,902 26.7%
JOEL QUISENBERRY 17,387 11.9%

In a low-budget contest, each incumbent spent less than $4,000 to campaign. Quisenberry spent nothing. Because of the state’s financial crisis, SVUSD faces similar budget issues as CUSD, which was already operating in the red.nd)
 

Making (up) News
Editorial staff

What’s a newspaper’s function, to report news or create it? The OC Register did it again, creating news on Nov. 5 about a council member, Lance MacLean. The same reporter on Sept. 28 wrote a “news” story that Councilwoman Trish Kelley had endorsed Frank Ury and Richard Atkinson in the council race. The September article was instead a publicity stunt to promote Kelley’s Oct. 16 party for Atkinson, which few residents attended.

Anyone who didn’t see the Nov. 5 article on MacLean can find it at:

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/maclean-says-city-2218480-assault-reavis?orderby=TimeStampDescending&showRecommendedOnly=0&oncomments Page=1#slComments

The link includes reader comments – one suggesting MacLean is daft for agreeing to be featured as “Orange County’s only unemployed council member.”

Readers of this blog questioned the paper’s intent. One emailed, “Is the Register now trying to find MacLean a job?” Another commented, “It didn’t work as a positive piece, and any employer who goes online has a new reference to MacLean’s police record.” As another revelation about the Register, it took several months before the incident was in the paper. Why is it news today except to assist MacLean’s job search?

In October 2007, MacLean was at an Oktoberfest concert at UCI, where he worked. A restroom was locked, and students were urinating outdoors. When MacLean told a co-worker to unlock the door, he didn’t respond. According to the police report, MacLean picked him up by the neck and pinned him against a wall. The news story in UCI’s campus paper said it took four policemen to take MacLean down.

From the text of the Nov. 5 OCR story: “Though MacLean describes the incident as a minor skirmish, and says he was motivated by what he perceived to be a threat to student safety at a concert attended by hundreds of people … .”

As it turned out, the university was concerned about the safety of MacLean’s co-workers, and he lost his job. If MacLean’s explanation above doesn’t raise eyebrows, he later claims in the story that he wasn’t angry at the time he picked the guy up by the neck.

Just in case the folks at city hall are still congratulating themselves on pressuring OCR into publishing the story, they should notice MacLean’s picture. The shadows from the staircase make MacLean look as if he’s behind bars. Perhaps the reporter wasn’t so pleased after all to get roped into MacLean’s job search.

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.

The Buzz

The Orange County Registrar of Voters reported 932,032 votes were cast countywide in the election. The number represents a 58 percent turnout of the 1,607,989 registered voters in Orange County. Voters cast 503,533 polling place ballots and 406,371 absentee ballots. Early ballots, 22,128, comprised 1.4 percent.

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The Registrar of Voters has 28 days to finish counting ballots following an election. If it seems like a long time, consider that 224,658 paper ballots were still uncounted as of Sat., Nov. 8.

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Which HOA had the most informed voters in city council race? It was Casta del Sol without a doubt. Vote totals in Casta del Sol: Schlicht 924, Lonsinger 870, Ury 729, Atkinson 458. Ury took first place in both Palmia and Canyon Crest, with Schlicht, Lonsinger and Atkinson following. The real leaders in Casta del Sol got the word out.

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With Ury’s reelection, at least three neighborhoods should stay on high alert. Casta del Sol, Finisterra on the Green and Cypress Point need to keep close watch on the Casta golf course. Those living near La Paz and Marguerite are facing the threat of apartments on top of stores from Big Lots to Trader Joe’s. The Unisys property owner wants his parcel rezoned to high-density residential, and he’s graciously offered to turn it all into affordable apartments.

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A Mission Viejo resident mused about its impact of the national election on the toll road extension. What if the current administration overturns the Coastal Commission’s decision to reject the completion of the road? How long would it take the new administration to overturn that decision? If the good ol’ boys of Orange County saw that one coming, maybe they would have gotten involved in the national election instead of meddling in city council races.

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In the newspaper article about Lance MacLean’s unemployment, his mention of relocating got the most replay among activists. Did he mean he’s ready to move to a different city? Maybe not – relocating might mean downsizing to an apartment. The main problem with getting the story directly from MacLean is that no one wants to talk to him.

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During the Nov. 3 Capo school board meeting, trustees voted 4-3 to reject a tentative agreement between the teacher's union and CUSD. Voting in the minority to approve the contract were Anna Bryson, Duane Stiff and Mike Darnold. Stiff and Darnold’s tenure came to an end with the Nov. 4 election. Stiff was defeated by Mike Winsten and Darnold didn’t run for reelection. On Nov. 5, CUSD learned it will have to cut between $17 million and $34 million from the current year's budget.