The Buzz

On the council’s Oct. 5 agenda, the check register was approved, dated Sept. 25, for $1,970,062. What recession?

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Where in the check register is payment for grading at Lower Curtis Park? During the past two months, residents emailed this blog about increased activity – more dumping and grading of soil. Oh, never mind. Some benevolent contractor is doing the work for free. That’s what City Manager Dennis Wilberg proclaimed approximately a year ago. Wilberg also said truckloads of dirt were coming from the Crown Valley project – a claim swiftly challenged by city watchdogs. Wilberg said the soil is clean dirt that will be used elsewhere as needed.

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With the council majority’s vote on Oct. 5 to proceed with a tennis center redo, the plan involves filling in the ravine south of Casta Drive with 3,000 truckloads of dirt. If the soil dumped in lower Curtis was for future use elsewhere, why was it spread out and leveled? If the soil won’t be scraped back up into a pile and transported to the tennis center, then the explanation doesn’t make any more sense now than it did a year ago.

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Discussion of the city’s poll of 325 Mission Viejo residents about forming one city school district is on the Oct. 19 council agenda. Information about the poll shows that only a third of residents surveyed (32.3 percent) have children in school. Other data, if revealed, should tell how many of the 325 residents who picked up the phone have answering machines. If the city intends to create policy toward two school districts on the basis of residents who seem cut off from the world and/or living in another century, who are they pretending to represent?

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To view another take on the sham survey, read Larry Gilbert’s article on OrangeJuiceblog.com, http://orangejuiceblog.com/2009/10/should-the-city-of-mission-viejo-create-its-own-school-district/#more-30281 It just becomes more entertaining.