Putting Lipstick on a Pillar

City administrators’ “Parkway Gallery” on Crown Valley has been harshly criticized by the gallery’s financiers – Mission Viejo taxpayers. Sixteen pillars pork up the parkway – crammed together among dozens of palm trees.

A drive through a couple other communities might shed light on the origin of the porkway mess. In Anaheim near Disneyland, similar structures are on the medians. Young children might ask if Anaheim’s mirror-embellished posts were dropped there by Tinker Bell.

On El Toro Road in Laguna Hills, the same oddities (without mirrors) erupted on medians between the freeway and Valencia. Located near the bad-driving capital of the world, the pillars are more like temporary road hazards, which the city will likely remove after being sued by drivers who can’t seem to avoid them.

Did landscape architects from around Orange County go out drinking together? Tinker Bell posts near Disneyland are one thing, but the grotesque pillars on Crown Valley Parkway are quite another. If other cities don’t fall for this hoax, perhaps they have council majorities that are sane.

City administrators would now like to “engage the community” in their fiasco on Crown Valley. On Sept. 1, the city invited residents to submit photos that demonstrate “the spirit of thankfulness and caring” in Mission Viejo. The photos will be placed on the pillars.

If this sounds familiar, remember what city administrator Keith Rattay foisted on taxpayers with his 20th anniversary photo gallery. He ordered 500 custom-built easels and invited residents to use the 500 taxpayer-provided disposable cameras to take pictures “around town.” Although almost no residents returned the cameras, city hall claimed residents provided 500 pictures. Watchdogs discovered that city hall employees took almost all of the pictures. The day after the exhibit ended, city contractors trashed the pricey display by breaking the easels and throwing many of them in a county dump. After the truth came out, Rattay wrote a memo to City Manager Dennis Wilberg with yet another whopper, “the project really engaged the community.”

If photos by residents are placed on the pillars, will Rattay consider himself galvanized against criticism? That’s what he’s done with the resident-decorated travesties along Oso Trail. Whether or not any residents accept Rattay’s invitation to put lipstick on a pillar, everyone should have seen it coming.