Posts Tagged ‘Mission Viejo’

Tea Party Day in Mission Viejo

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

UPDATE: Here is another account with more information. I didn’t know, for example, that a guy attended with an Obama tee shirt and was invited to speak several times but declined. That was across the street where there was more room and where the speakers were.

Here is the OC Register with a typical undercount. There was a head count of 600 by one observer but the Register gets it wrong more than it’s right. I was a subscriber for many years but no more. Oddly enough, the Register is delivered to my house every morning and goes straight to the recycling bin.

I went down to the corner of La Paz and Marguerite, the putative city center of Mission Viejo to see the Tea Party rally. I would say the group was larger than the last one last year. There were groups on all four corners although the southeast corner seems to have the largest group. They filled the sidewalk and, this time, spilled over into the parking lot of the office building. The total number was about 750 to 1,000. I took a number of pictures to show the signs, especially.

This is walking up Marguerite from south to north. This was the most crowded corner, I thought.

Lots of flags, big and small

This is looking across at the northwest corner. This was about 6 PM and there were 100 to 150 people there.

More signs.

This is from the parking lot behind. The sidewalk was too crowded.

More signs and again the view across the intersection. Lots of honking.

There was music and some speeches on the corner across La Paz. More room there.

There were lots of kids there. I would say the average age was about 50 with the median very close to that, as well.

Democracy in action. I saw few signs that were not about spending.

I don’t know who this guy is but will find out.

More signs.

Spilling over the curb into the street. Nobody seemed to mind. Lots of honking.

Here’s the spillover into the parking lot behind as the crowd got bigger. This was about 6:30. I headed home after this. It was a successful demonstration for a small town like Mission Viejo.

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Why I like Sarah Palin

Monday, November 30th, 2009

UPDATE: The New York Times actually prints a favorable review of her book and most of the comments are about what one would expect from the Times readers.

I like Sarah Palin and have since I first heard about her record as governor of Alaska. I reviewed her book and was particularly interested in the sections on her career in local government. One reason is because I know someone a lot like her and because I saw what happened to reformers in local government in my own small city. A history of the reform group in Mission Viejo, where I live and have lived since 1972, is here. I became vaguely aware of the group when the apartment issue reared its ugly head. Mission Viejo is a small city that was planned in 1962, at a time that Orange County was a bedroom community for people who commuted to Los Angeles to work. It was definitely middle class and new homes sold for about $25,000 to $65,000. There were model homes and the homes were typically sold before they were built, at least in the early days. There was a cluster of apartments in the center of the city and these were almost completely occupied by families waiting for their home to be built.

The huge apartment project that first got my attention was a change in the city master plan and violated the principles of planning that made this a good place to live. The first planned cities did not anticipate the rise of small business and the information economy. The assumption was that most residents would commute. The city plan did not include much of a commercial zone since local offices would probably be local businesses like lawyers, doctors and accountants. Newer developments have included large swaths of low industrial park that reduces commuter traffic and allows small business to be located in proximity to the homes of the owners and employees. That was still to be learned when Mission Viejo was planned.

In 1995 or so, real estate developers proposed a large apartment project that would require changes in the master plan and zoning laws. Large apartment projects are not very friendly to neighbors. They increase traffic and often demand additional school construction while contributing little to the tax base. They also tend to attract crime and often add to parking problems since the parking codes do not anticipate families with four cars occupying a two bedroom unit. In my time on the Transportation and Planning Commission, I became very aware of these issues.

Others, who knew more about it than I did, organized a petition drive opposing the project and the master plan change. I signed the petition and attended the Planning Commission meeting. I got a lesson in local government tyranny. The agenda placed the item last so the enormous crowd, probably 500 or so. had to wait until midnight to get a hearing. This, of course, was planned to tire out all but the most enthusiastic. The Commission cared little about the comfort of the protestors. They voted approval of the project in spite of the petition and the attendance of hundreds. The scene was reminiscent of the town halls last summer.

In 2000, I became aware of more nastiness during the election. I had voted by absentee as I had to be in Ohio on business election day. Ironically, the person who was the victim of the nastiness and the cause of my entry into electoral activism, when finally elected to the city council, turned out to be a faker and made lots of new friends among developers and other shady characters. If you get involved in politics, prepare to be disappointed. The rest of the story is pretty much at the link.

My story begins about here:

Fall 2000 CIG members support Gail Reavis for city council.

Gail Reavis is a very nice lady who reminds me of Sarah Palin. What follows explains why.

Nov 2000 General Election. CIG member Gail Reavis, in her first race for elected office, defeats an incumbent after he spent $80,000 in the most costly candidate expenditure in city history.

The election of Gail to the city council infuriated the majority, which had had things largely to itself. The first of the reformers to be elected, John Paul Ledesma, was a minority of one and could be ignored. He, however, was the one who got them in trouble over the Brown Act violation since he knew they had violated it. For this mortal sin, he was ostracized. When Gail was elected, the majority felt a chill.

The majority, which consisted of two women and a man, decided that she would not be tolerated. The women would not speak to her and, more frustrating, they refused to confirm her appointments to city commissions. This had never happened before but they would not allow her to exercise the normal functions of her position. At this point, after they had voted down her nominee for the Planning Commission, I was asked if I would be willing to serve. I was interested and she nominated me to the commission. I had never met Gail before that meeting. I did have one quality the others didn’t. I had operated on one of the councilwomen or her husband. I really didn’t remember them but didn’t let on as she voted for me and then congratulated me.

For the next two years I served on the commission and got a real dose of nasty local politics. The new city hall was built in spite of opposition from the CIG group. It was far too expensive for our small city. When it opened, a reception was held by the council majority to which the city residents were not invited. It was that kind of situation. When I went to the city hall for my first commission meeting after it opened, I was informed by the receptionist that I could not go to the first floor meeting room without an escort. I wrote a letter to the local paper complaining about the whole tone of the “Taj Majal” city hall, as many of us had begun calling it. The day the weekly paper came out, I got a furious phone call at home from the city manager. He was in a rage because I had criticized the city in a newspaper. He was in such a rage that spittle could have shorted out his phone. I informed him that I did not work for him and when that didn’t calm him down, I finally told him I was recording the call. He quickly hung up. He also had a couple of rages that affected Gail who is a small stature woman and which occurred in the city hall. She called me and I suggested she get the names of witnesses.

Then came the earthquake:

Nov 5, 2002 “Shock and Awe.” Clean Sweep. Three city council candidates, strongly supported by CIG members, defeat high profile incumbent mayor and mayor pro-tem. Trish Kelley, John Paul Ledesma and Lance MacLean finish first, second and third.

Now, we had four of five council members from the reform group. The city manager knew his job was in trouble so he filed a harassment lawsuit against the tiny woman he had threatened in one of his rages. His remaining allies on the council plus a turncoat from the supposed reform majority, gave him a $500,000 settlement.

By 2004, the reform majority was breaking up under the stress of learning that power corrupts and political allies will sell out or just go off the reservation for no good reason if they are silly enough (Examples of both). Gail, however, continued to read the city check register and find all sorts of nasty little “easter eggs” in there. For her troubles, she was hated by the friends of the old majority and some of her supporters were hassled and nitpicked. Finally, she decided not to run for re-election last year. Her husband said it wasn’t worth it and she had no higher office ambitions.

Knowing the story gave me a lot of insight into what Sarah Palin went through and is still going through. Henry Kissinger once said that the politics of the Harvard faculty were far more cut throat than anything he saw from the Russians. The reason, he said, was because the stakes are so small. I think that is also true of small city government although the feckless city council of Mission Viejo may eventually bankrupt the city. There are too many employees with too high salaries and pensions and the city gave away too many handouts to friends. Some of the story can be found in exchanges of letters in local papers, like these. The big newspapers show little interest in small cities so a lot of this goes along under the radar. Fortunately, we have some local blogs that make up the difference. And sometimes we get really good local office holders like Gail Reavis and Sarah Palin and some us know enough to appreciate them.

Not enough, though.

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Newspapers and local politics

Monday, June 15th, 2009

As a brief diversion from the world-shaking events going on right now in Iran, I have a small tale of local politics. I have lived in Mission Viejo most of the past 37 years. I moved here in 1972 and opened my medical practice when this was a small new development, one of the first master-planned developments in the west. The Mission Viejo Company developed a portion of the family ranch into this city. The ranch extends from El Toro on the north to Camp Pendelton on the south, to the Cleveland National Forest on the east and the Santa Fe Railroad tracks on the west. Since the tracks run along the beach south of San Clemente, the ranch extends almost to the ocean. Originally, the ranch was twice as large and extended to Oceanside but in 1942 the owners donated/ sold the land to the Marine Corps for Camp Pendelton.

Mission Viejo prided itself on the planning that went into its city and there is considerable pride on the part of residents. About nine years ago, I got interested in local politics. The city council had been taken over by a small clique in the city and had begun to make decisions that did not follow the master plan. The first I became aware of this was when the planning commission decided to rezone some land that was planned for office buildings to multifamily residential. They were going to approve a 700 unit apartment complex in an area zoned commercial. The significance of this includes the requirement for services, such as schools, plus the volume of traffic and parking and even crime. Prior to that time there were very few apartments in the city. The residents were unhappy with the proposed zone change and I attended a planning commission meeting where the matter was to be considered. In an effort to avoid citizen involvement, the commission placed the matter last on their agenda and it was after midnight before the matter came up. They squelched comments and voted to approve the project in spite of local opposition. The residents, led by a small group of activists, took up a petition and got nearly 8,000 residents to sign it. The city ignored the petition and the residents wishes and the project was built.

Several years later, there was another controversy over the cost of a new city hall. The city council placed an item on the ballot with a low ball estimate of the cost and voters approved the project. Activists, and by this time I was starting to pay more attention, opposed the measure suggesting that the city hall project would cost far more than the estimate in the ballot measure and, sure enough, it turned out be almost twice the cost. Finally, in 2000, I joined a group called the Committee for Integrity in Government and we managed to oust the majority of the old city council in 2002. Some of that history is here although you won’t see that history on the official city web site.

We are now in an era where the traditional newspapers have less and less excuse for their existence. One of the remaining best excuses is local coverage of local issues and local government. The Orange County Register has done an excellent job over the years of doing so but that seems to be waning and it is a damned shame. Read this. We had a local reporter who was actually ferreting out some of the ugly little local stories.

The OC Register announced new staff assignments last week. For more than a year, reporter Lindsey Baguio covered Mission Viejo for the Register and Saddleback Valley News. She has been reassigned to Laguna Niguel.

In April 2008, Baguio exposed the city staff’s wasteful spending on 500 custom-built easels. She followed the city’s 20th anniversary spend-a-thon, which ended with easels thrown in a heap on a hillside. A city contractor took up to 200 of the easels to a county dump while city employees claimed the trashed easels were being “stored for future use.” City administrator Keith Rattay lied to Baguio – she quoted him – about costs and volunteer participation, and activists combed city records to expose the true figures. For a brief time, residents saw the real city hall through SVN coverage.

Baguio at first reported both sides – activists’ statements alongside city hall’s spin. But before the dust settled on Easelgate, City Manager Dennis Wilberg invited Baguio to his office. Baguio’s investigative reporting ended, and SVN published almost no letters about city hall after July 2008. Requests for public records revealed an email trail in which Wilberg pressured Baguio for favorable reporting. Records show he directed her to solicit community comments from a list of people he identified as supportive of his staff and how city hall spent taxpayer funds.

We finally get a local reporter who cares about these local issues and reports the facts. So what happens? The overstaffed and lazy city government calls her in for a “talk” and the reporting stops. This is why newspapers are dying, although on a very small scale. Still, this is where that reporter was learning her career and this is what she learned. What a shame.

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Mission Viejo tea party

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

UPDATE #4:For those of you who are alarmed by the tea party phenomenon, here are instructionson how to reduce your risk.

UPDATE #3: For those of you who still don’t know the little joke the MSM was playing on the normal people at tea parties, this explanation of what “teabagging” is might help. Ugh !

UPDATE #2: Here is somebody who does understand what this tea party phenomenon is about.

In the last few days before Wednesday, I began to hear rumblings that the virtually-0rganized Tax Day protests had finally grown to such an extent that the Republican Party wanted to jump on the bandwagon. It was too late. Even the head of the RNC was denied a speaking role. This was a movement that had already grown outside the mainstream of American politics.

Oprah Winfrey, accustomed to giving unknown authors a portion of her prominence by featuring their works, felt compelled to jump on the Boyle bandwagon after only one song. It was only two years ago when, it took until Paul Potts that years’ BGT winner, was already crowned, before Oprah, then still ahead of the new media curve, introduced him to an American audience. Now, Oprah has to make the introduction early–or at least as early as she can, since millions of Yankees have already seen Ms. Boyle, even though her singing career spans a grand total of two minutes and twenty seconds.

This is the speed of the modern internet. Instead of needing the establishment to give credibility to a movement–be it political or cultural–the establishment needs those movements to keep them relevant.

I was wondering if anyone would figure this out besides me.

UPDATE: Not everybody thinks that the tea parties were a good idea.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) blasted “tea party” protests yesterday, labeling the activities “despicable” and shameful.”

Of course, her opinion might be affected by the fact that her husband is going to jail for fraud and tax fraud. That will color your attitude toward tea parties, I guess.

I arrived at the tea party in Mission Viejo at 5 PM. There were between 400 and 500 people standing on the four corners that intersect adjacent to the City Hall and LIbrary. I thought I had taken a bunch of photos with my iPhone camera since I had forgotten my camera. Then I went home and attempted to download the photos. It was then that I learned that I had been pushing the wrong button, turning the camera off instead of snapping a photo. I was fooled by the shutter sound that apparently was the camera turning off. I went back at 6:30 PM and took these photos when the crowd was down to about 100.

Here is the rear view of one group that was about 150 people at 5 PM

This is the opposite corner and still has about 100 people at 6:30.

That corner is down to a few but had about 100 people at 5 PM.

This is a small table when attendees could sign a petition to recall a city councilman. They got 60 signatures today. Many of us had already signed. There was another petition for Obama about spending. I doubt it will do much good but the numbers were significant for a small city in Orange County.

This one is included because I liked the sign “Tax and spend has got to end.”

I would call this a success although Mission Viejo has a tradition of community activism which is bipartisan.

On the other hand, we didn’t have anything like this.

The robber, a 32-year-old man identified by Life.ru as “Viktor,” burst into the salon at around 5 p.m. waving a pistol and ordered all of the stylists and clients to hit the floor and toss him their money.

At this point, 28-year-old Olga, whom Life.ru describes as a “delicate” girl trained in martial arts, was apparently still standing when she offered to hand over her cash. But when Viktor tried to accept her contribution, Olga surprised him with a quick punch to the chest, knocking the wind out of him before she flipped him to the ground.

Olga proceeded to tie Viktor up with a hair-dryer cord, gagged him and dragged him into a storage room…

She tied him to the radiator with handcuffs covered in frilly pink fabric, gave him some Viagra and had her way with him several times over the next 48 hours. When she finally let him go on the evening of March 16, Viktor had been “squeezed like a lemon,” Life.ru reported.

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