City Officials Miss the Problem
Letter to the Editor

I am writing with regard to the business license idea [business registration proposed by Councilman Lance MacLean during the Nov. 16 council meeting]. You would think that city officials would be more interested in involving themselves in stopping illegal businesses in Mission Viejo. My complaint is the so-called Boot Camps that set up in parks. This was especially apparent in Flo Jo Park all summer. In particular, it occurred from approximately 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. The hours may have changed with the end of Daylight Saving Time. I can’t remember if it was Redondo Beach or Hermosa Beach, but one of the beach cities had news coverage regarding these illegal business activities.

The good citizens of MV set up their business, file any licenses for their facilities that the state requires, pay for business insurance, pay our state sales taxes to the franchise tax board, etc. These Boot Camps, as far as I can see, set up in the park without paying for a permit, have no business insurance, leave the city at liability for anything that may happen and most likely do not have reseller permits through the state to collect and pay on sales tax. Don’t pick on the people who are hard-working and set up their businesses correctly.

Every time I would see these camps on my daily walk, I would just calmly steam from the inside out. I can say the same for the ice cream trucks. The first and only time I was ever propositioned for drug (it was pot) sales was when I was 12 years old and riding my bike. This occurred in a suburb outside Chicago, no different than the city of MV. The ice cream man asked if I was a hippie chick or a straight chick. I told him I didn’t understand. He said if I was a hippie chick he would sell me some pot. I was too young to know what was occurring. The ice cream man was the drug dealer in the neighborhood. I never told my parents or an adult.

I never, never, allowed my kids to approach an ice cream truck without parental supervision when they were young. My kids knew how insistent I was about this. No kidding, I was just intolerant of the kids going up to the ice cream truck alone. How ‘bout those ice cream trucks and their lack of insurance, reseller’s tax permits, other illegal sales (drugs), etc.? The ice cream truck just parks in Flo Jo and peruses the neighborhood streets.

Concerned Mom
(Name withheld by request)
Mission Viejo

Oso Reservoir Stench Subsides

By the time board members of the Santa Margarita Water District met last week, the rotten-egg smell in north Mission Viejo was tapering off. Officials explained that the three-week-long “odor event” had been caused by an algae bloom in Upper Oso Reservoir. Although residents near the reservoir complained that the smell made them sick, board members indicated they avoided calling a special meeting to save money.

On Nov. 11, the Air Quality Management District said SMWD had caused a public nuisance. Residents living near the reservoir complained of nausea, coughing and other ailments stemming from the foul-smelling air.

SMWD officials said the algae bloom was set off by a change in weather. According to their report, the weather turned cold in October, chilling the top level of water. As the cooled water sank to the bottom, the odor was caused by oxygen-depleted air rising to the top. Winds stirred and dispersed the air, and the foul smell spread well beyond the lake.

A Mission Viejo resident who lives near the reservoir said, “The water district’s explanation might sound good until you look at how many times we’ve experienced cold snaps, and the reservoir never had this problem before. I’ve heard about a couple other factors that haven’t been discussed by SMWD. One is that pumps in the reservoir were either turned off or they were the wrong kind of pumps, so the water wasn’t being aerated at all or the pumps were inadequate. Upper Oso is a deep-water reservoir, and the pumps they were using are intended for smaller, shallow-water ponds. It could be that an employee was supposed to monitor water quality and didn’t. The reservoir is filled with treated wastewater, and SMWD stopped adding fresh water in 2008.”

According to information published in the Nov. 21 OC Register, the water district spent $148,142.27 to address the problem with chemicals, renting ozone-pumping equipment, purchasing equipment and paying for tests and consultants.

The greatest cost to SMWD officials could be the loss of confidence in the board of directors for not calling a special meeting to face the public or resolve the problem quickly.

Recall Update

It’s official: Dale Tyler and Dave Leckness are the only candidates running in the Feb. 2 recall election to replace Councilman Lance MacLean. When Leckness pulled papers on Nov. 5, longtime city watchdogs immediately knew someone put him up to it.

To end all doubt, an interview on a county blog spells out that Leckness doesn’t know why he’s running in the recall election. When OrangeJuiceBlog.com reporter Larry Gilbert asked him for an interview on Nov. 9, Leckness made a political mistake by saying yes. Read the interview, along with 38 comments from readers, at http://orangejuiceblog.com/2009/11/interview-of-dave-leckness-mission-viejo-recall-election-candidate/

In summary, Leckness revealed he doesn’t pay attention to city issues, and he’s in the dark about the recall. He admitted he didn’t sign the recall petition. When asked why he’s running, he stated it’s time for a change. After demonstrating he has no grasp of current events, how would he know what to change?

As one of Leckness’ big ideas in the interview, he said he would initiate a program, “Wave at a Cop,” as an appreciation for law enforcement. He also said he wanted to help small-business owners because the Chamber of Commerce is ineffective.

Leckness may have believed he had to pay $1,600 for a ballot statement to become a candidate (in fact, the ballot statement is optional). He thought he might put up some yard signs. That’s all the information he had about his own campaign after he began the process of filing. Instead of a campaign Website, he gave the Website of his printing business.

Jump to Nov. 19: Leckness turned in a ballot statement he obviously didn’t write. Instead of reflecting the content of his Nov. 9 interview, the ballot statement reflected the speech Sharon Cody read from the public microphone at the Nov. 2 council meeting.

On Nov. 20, the city posted candidates’ ballot statements on its Web site, just when a number of residents were simultaneously receiving an anonymous email hit piece against council candidate Dale Tyler and Councilwoman Cathy Schlicht. Placed side by side, Dave Leckness’ ballot statement and the hit piece appear to have the same author. One of the city watchdogs remarked that the style and syntax are virtually the same, and some of the points are identical.

A community watchdog forwarded the hit piece to other residents, telling them to look at the email file information on the hit piece. The laughter hasn’t stopped. Incredibly, the author’s name is on it: “Marion.” Either Marion wrote it or someone else was using his computer. The writer either became careless or doesn’t have enough technical knowledge to hide the name.

A quick check of voter data in Mission Viejo shows that 40 or so residents are named Marion. However, only one of them has significance in Mission Viejo’s political arena. Only one person named Marion is connected to a former city councilwoman who was trounced in 2002 when she ran for reelection. Only one person named Marion is married to Sherri Butterfield.

Frivolous Ventures Take Precedence
Letter to the Editor

While Dennis Wilberg; Mission Viejo’s city manager, dodges the issues on infrastructure maintenance, his administration has frittered away monies. Examples are a nonsensical Rose Parade float, useless easels that were quickly trashed because they were an ill-conceived project, useless kiosks in our medians, moving rocks in Lower Curtis Park and installing garish obelisks on a nature trail. Mr Wilberg's latest venture is a dog park the neighbors do not want in their back yards.

In addition, the city reworked Crown Valley Parkway, putting in an irrigation system and plantings that defy our needs for water conservation/reduction. All this took place while the slopes on Alicia, Jeronimo, Marguerite Parkway, Trabuco and Mustang Run continue to deteriorate. It would appear to the average citizen that glitzy and, in some cases, useless projects take precedence over maintaining what is important to our home values: the approaches to our homes.

Mr. Wilberg and his administration have effectively abandoned some citizens in our community who have been subjected to an ongoing violation of building codes for more than nine years. While these citizens have pleaded before the city council (some having emotional meltdowns), the city attorney has pontificated and rationalized the city’s indifference to the situation. Add all of this together, including the non-rebidding of key city contracts, and you have to wonder just who Mr. Wilberg is working for – the special interests or the citizens who pay his $200,000-plus annual salary.

Joe Holtzman
Mission Viejo

The Buzz

The city staff has a new theme in its Crown Valley Display of Government Waste. After months of requesting photos from residents to put on pillars in the medians, city employees recently took down the grotesque graphics that were relevant on only one day of the year – Halloween.

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A blog reader emailed a comment after seeing the city staff’s new display: “Since I was driving and watching the road, I got only a glimpse of the photographs on the Crown Valley Parkway medians, and they were enlarged pictures of children. It looked as if the city may have had only a few photographs of groups, so they sliced up the photos to fill their gallery, one or two children per pilaster. If this isn’t an example of exploiting children, I don’t know what is. It reminds me of sinister warfare where children are placed on the front lines so the opposition will be reluctant to shoot. That’s what City Hall has done – put children on the front lines for political purposes. I next expect the city staff to recruit village idiots to praise the ‘wonderfulness’ of the photos, promoting a false sense of community acceptance of this travesty.”

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Homeowners who live near Oso Viejo Park are to be congratulated on their Nov. 16 victory against City Hall. After the three MUK majority council members (MacLean, Ury, Kelley) voted on Oct. 5 to put a dog park in their neighborhood, Kelley brought the item back to reverse the council majority’s decision. From the dais, she proclaimed it was because she heard the voice of the people. Brad Morton exposed her motives on his blog, http://missionviejodispatch.com/?p=12556 by revealing a lawsuit motivated the action.

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A Mission Viejo resident who watched the Nov. 16 council meeting said, “I was in disbelief that homeowners applauded Trish Kelley at the Nov. 16 council meeting after she spit in their face. She ignored their pleas on Oct. 5 in order to prop up Lance MacLean’s attempt to buy votes from a group of dog park supporters. After she disrespected homeowners on Oct. 5 and continued her stance until the outcry became overwhelming, some of the homeowners referred to her as a leader in their public comments. That explains why the city is abusive toward citizen after citizen and neighborhood after neighborhood. There are rarely repercussions when the city is dead wrong. Homeowners had to fight off this attack of their neighborhood for six weeks, and then they applauded one of the three council culprits who did it to them.”

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Another confused group is the dog park advocates, who have aligned with former councilwoman Sharon Cody. Kudos to the MissionViejoDispatch.com for pointing out that Mission Viejo’s dog park enthusiasts would have gotten their dog park by now if it weren’t for Cody’s stance against it. Groups and individuals have said for years that the logical place for a dog park is next to the animal shelter. Cody has used one excuse or another, including the idea that noisy dogs outside would disturb noisy dogs inside the facility. Anyone who has seen the dog park on Ridge Route in Laguna Hills can attest a dog park can be built without ado on imperfect plots if the city actually wants a dog park.

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Four red-faced MacLean supporters sat together throughout the Nov. 16 council meeting and endured yet another night of self-imposed embarrassment. A MacLean supporter made comments at the public microphone, saying all sorts of bad things would befall the city if voters remove MacLean in the Feb. 2 recall election. The MacLean hysteria includes the mantra of a “wasteful” $275,000 election. To the contrary, removing MacLean from the council would immediately stop the threat he could collect lifetime healthcare benefits. The council majority of MacLean, Ury and Kelley bestowed the benefits (costing $270,000 per council member) on themselves if they can survive three terms. The benefits can be rescinded immediately after the Feb. 2 recall election if MacLean is removed from office.