Oh-so Regional Trail

According to city administrators, Mission Viejo residents should foot the bill for serving outsiders. Director of Public Services Keith Rattay was quoted last month in the Register regarding Crown Valley Parkway when he talked about it being a “regional road.” In the Register’s April 7 article, Rattay says Oso Trail is in need of $324,000 for directional signs (and other strange additions) because “There are a lot of people who don’t live in Mission Viejo and use the trail.” According to police records during the past 20 years, how many people have been lost on Oso Trail?

Register readers responded online, saying trail-users – adults and kids alike – not only walk on the trail, they walk to the trail from their homes. The notion of hordes of non-residents using the trail is unsupported.

The following excerpt is from a Register reader’s post, emailed to this blog as well:

“Mission Viejo has way too many signs now! I used to walk this trail before it became a ‘road,’ and it was a very nice dirt path full of nature with very little evidence of human modifications. Then some city hall dope discovered the peaceful trail and has since continually added human elements like an asphalt road, fences, a metal bridge, plants not indigenous to the area, and now more signs. The ‘road’ is so short only an idiot would need a map or a guide. The city puts signs on everything. Next Ratty idea will be signs on every tree and plant, the birds will have to wear signs, the animals will have to wear signs and like the song says, ‘sign sign everywhere a sign.’”

Read the entire Register article and reader feedback at http://www.ocregister.com/articles/trail-city-center-2356973-council-mission

Oso Trail is among examples in which city hall administrators (none of whom live in Mission Viejo) are diverting city taxes for “regional” purposes. After Mission Viejo left the county library system, funding has largely come from city coffers, but more than half of the city library’s cardholders live elsewhere. Residents should conclude that more than half the cars clogging the parking lot belong to non-residents and more than half the computers, meeting rooms and other “free” provisions are used by non-residents.

Crown Valley, Oso and Alicia – three of Mission Viejo’s arterials – are no longer thoroughfares for residents but slow-moving freeways for cut-through traffic. Council members in other cities, e.g., San Juan Capistrano, make their own cities a priority and protect their residents from regional encroachment. Councilman Lance MacLean (currently a recall target) frequently speaks from the dais during council meetings about Mission Viejo’s wide range of “obligations” to the region, especially housing that adds more overcrowding and traffic congestion. Evidence has accumulated for six years that MacLean doesn’t understand who he’s supposed to represent as a city councilman.

The expenditure of $324,000 for Oso Trail elicited humorous comments to this blog, including the following:

From L.C.: “Maybe the signs can be placed so as to warn people to hold their breath when they approach the sewage-belching manholes scattered along the asphalt- paved Oh-So Stinky Trail.”

From J. J.: ‘Now that I am sort of retired, I should offer to walk the trail daily to give directions.”