City Hall – Who’s To Stop Them?

One of many publications resulting from an overstaffed city hall is “Mission Viejo Leisure Time.” Formerly printed on newsprint as a recreation timetable, it used to be inserted quarterly in another publication. Now, “Leisure Time” has a life of its own, growing to 28 pages as a pricey, full-color booklet. Will City Manager Dennis Wilberg need a new department head, Director of Public Words, to keep up the pace?

The winter edition of “Leisure Time” has a garish front cover that looks like an explosion in a paint factory. Its upper left is branded with the city staff’s dead tree symbol, ever-growing like the plant in “Little Shop of Horrors.”

What would possess a city manager (who is supposed to oversee essential city services) to venture into the publishing industry with more and bigger city productions? City hall has one of the fastest-growing staffs in town when the number of employees should have declined as the city was built out. Instead of scaling back, Wilberg is building an empire by turning city hall into a pseudo-hub of entertainment with programs too numerous to name and participants too few to count in an honest fashion.

Below are examples from city hall’s Bureau of Everything – babysitting, sightseeing and, incredibly, a new city-funded program to combat the “epidemic” of fatness. Some of the activities have nothing to do with the city, but how could a Director of Public Words otherwise produce 28 pages without a lot of empty space or borrowing from here and there?

Dec. 8 – 11: Children can get a “special call” from Santa. This is not a city program; it’s perpetrated by the Saddleback school district, and it’s “FREE.” Parents who wonder why schools are closing might ask why their cash-deficient district is playing Santa Claus.

Jan. 27: Get on a bus and go to the San Manuel Casino for $8. Make losing your mission.

Ongoing computer classes: with two school districts, outreach programs, a community college and private enterprise offering every computer class imaginable, the Mission Viejo library is piling on at taxpayers’ expense. Also “FREE” to residents and nonresidents alike, students can get the help of a tutor at the library. Wilberg has apparently become the Minister of Education as well as overseer of nonessential public services and Director of Everything.

On Jan. 2, go on a walking tour of Rose Parade floats for only $68. It’s called “Viewing the Day After.” (Wasn’t “The Day After” a disaster movie that was viewed in the ‘80s?)

For “in-home support,” the city is offering a Handyman Project Consultant. “Licensed contractors and handymen will evaluate home repair/maintenance needs and provide a written estimate for materials and labor.” A city that can’t widen a road in three years or keep a project within budget now wants to fix your house.

If anyone is still wondering how the Mission Viejo city staff has grown to 152.3 employees and still can’t do the job, the city is increasingly competing with the private sector and meddling in other areas where it doesn’t belong.