Truth Slips into Print

Saddleback Valley News stopped publishing letters of local interest years ago. Letters to the editor were often the most interesting part of the paper, but SVN management put an end to it. However, residents are still welcome to send in a photo of themselves holding a copy of the paper while on vacation.

In a bygone era, letters provided residents’ insights on the community, especially about local politics. The letters currently being published in SVN are regurgitated from the Orange County Register, and they rarely address city issues.

The reason the “real” letters to SVN ended can be summarized with one name: City Manager Dennis Wilberg. Wilberg’s 2008 communications with SVN were captured by a request for public records following a City Hall fiasco known as Easelgate. A young SVN reporter had embarrassed a city employee, Keith Rattay, by interviewing him, catching him in lies about the cost and careless disposal of 500 custom-made easels that had been used in a failed attempt to engage residents in a City Hall spend-a-thon.

Here’s a sample paragraph of coverage on this blog in July 2008:

“On July 23, the city released public records requested on July 10 by community activist Lisa De Paul-Snyder. She went to city hall on July 25 to review files she requested regarding city contractor Jamey Clark, who apparently constructed 500 easels at $45 an hour. Clark’s contracts aren’t the only point of investigation, but the huge amounts he charged between January and May are among the few places a city administrator could have hidden costs of the city’s 20th anniversary photo display, now estimated at more than $90,000.” http://www.missionviejoca.org/News/2008_Q3/2008_07_26/article2/article2.html

This blog published the 2008 communications between Wilberg and SVN, in which Wilberg pressured newspaper employees to interview people from his list of shills and Kool-Aid drinkers. City Hall is one of SVN’s most reliable advertisers, which shouldn’t influence the paper’s editorial content, but it does. Letters to the editor ended, and SVN turned from investigative reporting to printing drivel written by city staff members.

Last week, the OC Register published a letter from a Mission Viejo resident, breaking through years of a blackout of letters of local interest. Ray Estrada’s Aug. 26 letter described a neighborhood near Trabuco Hills High School, comparing the area with Santa Ana, http://www.ocregister.com/articles/-135836-ocprint--.html

One way or another, the truth about Mission Viejo gets out. Media outside the stranglehold of City Hall include this blog and Brad Morton’s blog, http://MissionViejoDispatch.com

City council majority members (Frank Ury, Trish Kelley and Dave Leckness) are dismantling the Master Plan and contributing to the decline of neighborhoods. They don’t like a spotlight on their payoffs from developers, city contractors and other trough-feeders who reward them with “campaign donations.”

During the Aug. 15 council meeting, Ury told whopping lies about the city’s affordable housing situation, trying to deflect blame for the lawsuit against the city. Only this blog and the MissionViejoDispatch.com corrected the record: Ury – not any community group or other individual residents – set up the city to be sued by an affordable housing advocate. SVN should have addressed it, but they didn’t.

When Saddleback Valley News stops publishing a weekly paper, will anyone notice?