Another Week That Wasn’t

City Manager Dennis Wilberg’s Aug. 13 insider newsletter (“The Week That Was”) addresses the topics of pot and potholes. One paragraph describes a resident getting busted for a marijuana-growing operation on Via San Jose, and other information is about the city’s pavement maintenance projects.

With a city election on the horizon, Mission Viejo’s deteriorating streets have become a hot topic. The cracked asphalt in front of residents’ homes is now the cracked asphalt in front of voters’ homes. Council incumbents would like a fresh coat of slurry applied prior to the November 2 election.

Here’s an assessment from a reader commenting on another blog. Mission Viejo resident Steve Caporaso writes: “The city’s 7 year cycle of ‘repairs or slurry’ was fine when the streets were new, but after 25 or 30 years they need complete regrind and the powers-to-be forgot about that. Beautiful Mission Viejo won’t stay that way without funds to keep the basic infrastructure in shape. Sure could have used the Float $$ now. Good thing elections are around the corner.”

Read the article and other comments at http://missionviejodispatch.com/budget/letter-pavement-ratings-bogus/#comments

When the occupants of city hall changed the maintenance cycle, they got it exactly backwards. They should have shortened the cycle to compensate for aging pavement, but they increased it from five to seven years. City hall has approximately 150 employees, and many of them are engaged in coloring character posters, planning festivals and creating other events that have nothing to do with essential city services. Streets and infrastructure? The city’s top administrators don’t live in Mission Viejo.

Instead of addressing residential streets in poorest condition, Wilberg in his Aug. 13 newsletter writes, “The Civic Center asphalt parking lot is receiving a fresh coat of sealing and refreshed striping this week. The Public Services Department coordinated the efforts in advance with the many affected City staff, City Hall and Library patrons to determine the least intrusive days for the efforts to occur.”

Anyone who was stopped for years in the daily gridlock of the Crown Valley Parkway project might ponder the careful consideration city staffers gave to preventing their own inconvenience of the “parking lot intrusion” while they’re on the payroll. Wilberg refers to the parking lot project as preventive maintenance. Meanwhile, taxpayers can put up with deferred maintenance of residential streets.

ACT! for America Plans Picnic

ACT! for America, Mission Viejo Chapter, will have its first Pre-Victory Potluck Picnic. The event will feature world-famous composer, singer, actress and peace activist Ema Shah.

Mission Viejo Chapter leader Bruce Mayall invites members to bring a friend to the event on Sat., Aug. 21, from noon to 2:30 p.m. The location is Norman P. Murray Community Center, 24932 Veterans Way, Mission Viejo (patio area in back).

Join this celebration of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Come early to get a good seat. Instead of a formal chapter meeting this month, the group will have an informal potluck lunch at the usual meeting place. A very talented and brave young woman from Kuwait will be the featured musician.

Attendees will dine and socialize on the back patio area. There’s no charge for this area but it’s on a first come - first served basis. This is a great opportunity to get to know the other chapter members and leaders better and to learn more about ACT! for America.

What to bring: enough food and beverages for yourselves and some extra to share. If you have a spare table, chairs and umbrella or canopy, please bring them in case of an overflow crowd. Bring children, friends and colleagues, sunglasses and sunscreen lotion.

We may also have a well-known and much-loved author at our gathering. Our past informal group get-togethers have been highly successful – hope you can make this one.

Bruce Mayall
Chapter Leader

CUSD Update

The next Capistrano USD board meeting will be on August 24. The agenda and supporting documentation are available on the Website 72 hours prior to a meeting, http://capousd.ca.schoolloop.com The first day of school for CUSD will be Wed., Sept. 8.

With the Nov. 2 election 80 days away, constituents should brace for an ugly battle. Five candidates backed by the teachers union will try to take control from reform-minded trustees who are leading the district. Some parents estimate the union will spend up to $1 million to prop up its candidates.

Three seats are up for reelection. Martha McNicholas is challenging incumbent Ellen Addonizio. Saam Alikhani, an 18-year-old who is a recent graduate of Dana Hills High School, is challenging incumbent Anna Bryson. Lynn Hatton is running against incumbent Larry Christensen.

In the recall election of two board members, John Alpay is challenging Trustee Mike Winsten. Retired teacher Gary Miller and Paul Hebbard are running against Trustee Ken Lopez-Maddox.

The contrast between the two slates is clear. Candidates associated with “Children First” support the teachers union. The incumbents won easily when they ran against the big-spending regime of ex-superintendent James Fleming. If memories of old faces are fading, taxpayers have reminders of Fleming’s legacy, including the $50-million Taj Mahal administration center next to the freeway in San Juan Capistrano.

Candidate Saam Alikhani implies his focus hasn’t changed from his days as a student. As a representative of his high school, he sat alongside the trustees during board meetings. Here’s a sample statement from Alikhani’s Website as a school board candidate:

“ … please be assured that my allegiance to the taxpayers, homeowners, and students of this district will remain my primary focus, as it was during my tenure as the appointed Student Trustee to the Capistrano Unified School District Board of Trustees. By making fiscally responsible decisions and placing high quality public education the top Board priority, all stakeholders will benefit.”

Last week, a county blog published a statement by Saam Alikhani, who was a candidate last year for student body president of his high school. Alikhani’s 2009 platform called for more dodgeball tournaments and less adult supervision at dances.

There is little else that could define the union-backed “Children First” candidates better than their attempt to put an 18-year-old in charge of the district’s $364-million annual budget.

Transition and Upcoming Election for CUSD
by CUSD Trustee Mike Winsten

Since you first elected me to serve on the Capistrano Unified School District Board of Trustees in the November 2008 election, my Board colleagues and I have embarked on the important work of reforming and improving CUSD.

Among our biggest achievements was the successful hiring of Dr. Joseph M. Farley as our new permanent superintendent starting July 1, 2010. Dr. Farley most recently served for five years as superintendent of nearby Anaheim Union High School District. He brings an impressive body of experience in all aspects of public education, including instruction, curriculum and facilities maintenance, improvement and construction, as well as a fresh, common-sense perspective. His hiring has been praised by all the major CUSD stakeholders – even the public employee unions that continue to disagree with us on so many other important issues.

Dr. Farley’s arrival and reception is a promising sign the future of CUSD remains bright - despite drastic funding cutbacks imposed by the State and continuing opposition from the leaders of CUSD’s public employee unions.

Of course, bringing reform and transition to a large organization like CUSD is never easy. Change is made more difficult in our current fiscal conditions. Bringing reform and positive change is especially difficult in our public school district, which spends approximately 85 percent of its entire budget on salaries and benefits for our employees – most of whom are represented by powerful union leaders.

We saw how hard this can be in April when union leaders called a strike, rejecting our school board’s offers of a balanced package of labor expense reforms. Ultimately, your school board members showed great courage and leadership by successfully modifying the unsustainable union contract in a manner that reduced labor expenses by 10.1 percent annually and imposed a cap on future health insurance contribution increases. This decision, while very unpopular with powerful union leaders and their activists, has been hailed throughout the State of California as a necessary measure to ensure the financial sustainability of our school district for the foreseeable future.

This past June, in the face of severe funding cutbacks from the State, our school board members approved a new budget for the next school year – and we kept our promise to voters by keeping our focus on our core mission of educating children. Union leaders urged us to increase class sizes as a way to balance the budget. We refused to do so – we would not agree to balance the budget on the backs of our students.

Instead, we successfully protected most music, sports and numerous secondary school electives. We were able to do so, in large measure, because we had successfully reduced the school district’s annual administrative overhead expenses and the cost of our contracts with the unions. In fact, as a result of the reforms we’ve implemented, CUSD’s annual administrative expenses are now among the lowest in the state for comparably sized districts. We accomplished this by upgrading the talent levels, efficiency and capabilities of our central administration and school site administrators.

Nonetheless, union leaders and their activists who never voted for our current school board members remain steadfastly opposed to our reform efforts. They complain in one breath that we brought too much reform in a short period of time – and in the next they complain we have not brought enough change quickly enough. The truth is, the critics of our current reform Board of Trustees have opposed us since the day we were sworn into office. They are a coalition of union leaders and activists who are still fighting to preserve an unsustainable status quo. In various ways, these critics have benefited from favors extended to them by the previous administration that controlled CUSD for 15 years. They are furious that voters rejected their union-backed candidates in the past elections – and now they are gearing up for another attempt to unwind all the positive reforms voters in CUSD elected us to accomplish.

In the November 2, 2010, General Election, control of our school district will be at stake (as five of the seven reform trustees will be on the ballot). Reform Trustees Ellen Addonizio, Anna Bryson and Larry Christenson (the “ABC Reform Trustees”) will face reelection. In addition, reform trustee Ken Lopez Maddox and myself are facing an early recall election that was promoted and supported by the public employee unions in CUSD.

Voters will have a clear choice in the November election – reelect the current conservative trustees who are dedicated to bringing positive change and reform to our school district, or replace them with candidates who are supported by the powerful public employee unions that want to preserve an unsustainable status quo.

In my view, the upcoming CUSD Board election will be a referendum on public education in South Orange County. Both sides of this debate will be airing out a lot of information during the upcoming election season. I urge you to do your own research and make up your own mind. 

Visit http://www.CUSDfacts.com to learn more.

The Buzz

On Aug. 12, the Secretary of State used a random drawing to determine the alphabetical order of candidates on the ballot. In the Mission Viejo council race, the order is: Rhonda Reardon (Retired Business Manager), Fred Carr (Local Businessman), Patricia “Trish” Kelley (City Council Member), Ken Golemo (Consumer Marketing Consultant), Bill Barker (Registered Professional Engineer), Neil Lonsinger (Retired Service Executive),
David “Dave” Leckness (Mission Viejo Councilman/Businessman), Brian Skalsky (City Commissioner), Rick Sandzimier (Mission Viejo Commissioner/Businessman), Lance MacLean (FDIC Operations Specialis), Sam Mamola (Trust Attorney/Businessman), Mark Dobrilovic (Commissioner/Financial Advisor).

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Check out a county blog article about Councilwoman Trish Kelley’s lies in her ballot statement: http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2010/08/mv-city-clerk-refuses-to-challenge-mayor-kelley-candidate-statement-lies . The article describes Kelley’s false claims. Two years ago, the MV City Clerk not only challenged statements from two council candidates, she sued them. Here’s an excerpt from Larry Gilbert’s OJ Blog article: “Fast forward to Friday, August 6, 2010 when I sent an email challenge to our city Clerk with my first challenge against mayor Trish Kelley’s candidate statement. On Saturday morning August 7th I added a second challenge based on the mayor’s falsely reporting of our city reserves. That same day I received a response from our City Clerk stating that “I, as the City Elections Official, reviewed the candidate Statements prior to my upcoming vacation and did not find the statements to be in violation of the California Elections Code.”

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Kelley in her ballot statement claimed she “saved” the Casta del Sol Golf Course from housing development. Since the golf course is still for sale, perhaps Kelley should explain what she saved it FROM. The council’s phony moratorium on rezoning contained a loophole, whereby housing developers could not legally be prevented from proceeding with housing development.

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Does anyone not understand the union’s motives for recalling CUSD Trustees Mike Winsten and Ken Lopez-Maddox? Union leaders indicated they wanted to recall the trustees from the time they were first elected. Those associated with “Children First,” the union-backed group promoting the recall, tried to explain the animosity toward the board members: “The two trustees just don’t do a good job of communicating.” Winsten and Lopez-Maddox are among the seven current trustees who ran on a platform of reform, and they’ve held the line with the teachers union.

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Heads-up from a resident with regard to the neighborhood streets being repaved: “Please warn everyone who is leaving a vehicle on a side street while roads are being repaired. Many cars were parked on my street when an adjacent street was being slurried. My son saw someone late at night going from car to car with a flashlight, probably looking for valuables. I would have called the police immediately, but my son came home late and didn’t tell me until the next morning. This might be a crime ring of opportunists who watch for cars being left out that are usually parked in garages.”