City of Mission Viejo Dog Park
by Frank Fossati

In today's tight economy, with City revenues down, and with the State of California giving $5 million in paper IOUs to the City of Mission Viejo (MV) instead of CASH, this is not the time to be wasting approximately $1 million on a dog park. The current proposed action by Councilman Lance MacLean is to approve an initial design cost contract for approximately $300,000. Construction costs will follow, bringing this project's total to about $1 million. This proposed dog park capital outlay by Councilman MacLean is yet another example of why Mr. MacLean is up for a recall election by the registered voters who live in MV. (Don't forget to cast your recall vote in the MV Special Election to be scheduled for Jan 2010.)

Even if times were not this difficult, I do not think the dog park expenditure benefits a majority of MV residents. Only a small fraction of the MV dog owners (and possibly some dog owners from neighboring cities) will utilize this feature. This is almost as bad as the City Council voting to waste about $4 million for upgrade / expansion of a City Tennis Center that serves only about 400 members. The tennis center project is even more wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars and should be curtailed. The MV Council needs to focus on projects that serve the majority of its residents, and curtail the extravagant unneeded costly fluff, such as is on display (the artwork) in the pilasters in the area of the Crown Valley & Marguerite street widening project. (Yet another mismanaged project that went way over budget and has taken way too long to complete.)

Maybe it is time for not just Councilman Lance MacLean to go, but how about
replacing City Manager Dennis Wilberg and Director of Public Services Keith Rattay?  Maybe someday in the future MV can be returned to a responsibly run city government.  Let's hope, anyway.