City Hall Flaunts Buffoonery

City council majority members Trish Kelley, Frank Ury and Dave Leckness aren’t satisfied with being center-stage on the dais. Since the public lacks interest in going to the circus-like meetings at City Hall, the circus is coming to them.

In January, Mayor Hee-Haw Leckness invited residents to “Meet the Mayor” at a coffee shop on a Saturday morning. His publicity stunt bombed. If city staffers hadn’t summoned their shills, Mayor Hee-Haw would have had no one to talk to.
 

As his next grab for attention, the Hee-Haw mayor will chat with residents while he walks around Lake Mission Viejo. A pundit from another city said, “Leckness probably misunderstood when someone told him to go jump in the lake.”

During the March 7 council meeting, Leckness, Kelley and Ury voted to add decorative stuff to a marker on Olympiad Road. In 2004, the city’s Heritage Committee wanted to commemorate the finish line of the bike race from the 1984 Olympics. The request for a line in the pavement grew into a viewing spot with a park bench.

The 1984 Olympics are over, and the finish line has already been memorialized. But many of the city’s 150 employees have nothing to do, so why not spend another $30,000 to make them look busy?

Drivers who are trying to dodge the holes on Olympiad Road won’t notice enhancements to the marker. A city that cannot maintain its streets is now trying to Disney-fy a finish line. While it’s not the role of government to decorate anything, city staffers like to demonstrate their prowess at creating eyesores. Look at the junk they put on Crown Valley Parkway.

Adding to the waste of $30,000, Hee-Haw asked the city to place a donation box at the marker site to collect cash for the Rotary Club – to which he belongs. If residents aren’t stupefied with all this, perhaps what happened next will do it. The motion passed 3-2 with Kelley, Ury and Leckness voting for it.

Will the city now need a security firm to guard the donation box? If that sounds crazy, consider what happened when the city went wild buying patio furniture for the community center. Although the pricey outdoor furniture is bolted to the concrete, it still requires policing.

Instead of calling attention to Mayor Hee-Haw in the newspapers, shouldn’t City Hall try to keep it quiet?