Lately I have written about the city of Mission Viejo’s upcoming council election where there are multiple candidates seeking one of the two brass rings up for grabs.
This post will be about our neighboring city of Rancho Santa Margarita (RSM).
For those not familiar with this south County City let me share some background information. “City of Rancho Santa Margarita incorporated on January 1, 2000, and became the 33rd city in the County of Orange.
The City is a general law city and operates under the council-manager form of government. Rancho Santa Margarita is a Contract City. Police services are provided through contract with the Orange County Sheriff. Fire Protection services are provided through the Orange County Fire Authority.’
The Contract City of RSM has 47,214 residents (2000 census) who are served by 22 FTE’s. The Contract City of Mission Viejo, with 98,000 residents, currently employs 157 FTE’s along with 111 HFT’s better known as “temp’s.
Another stat of note is that the Mission Viejo Library has more employees, at 23 or 24, than our neighboring city.
Back to the story.
Have you heard the old cliche “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?” That appears to be true for RSM’s upcoming city council election where incumbent council members L. Anthony “Tony” Beall and Jerry Holloway are up for reelection. Jerry replaced council member Debra Lewis after she moved to Escondido in 2002. He was reelected in 2004 and is running again.
Councilman “Tony’ Beall, one of the key leaders in the successful CUSD RECALL efforts, was first elected in 2004. He too is a candidate for the Nov General election.
As of now no citizen has expressed any desire to challenge either of these fiscal conservative leaders who have created a reserve account with 119 percent funding.
We in the media typically follow the expression “if it bleeds, it leads.”
That is not the case with this recognition of a job well done by these five RSM council members.
It will be interesting to see if any objective third parties who live in RSM want to comment. If the RSM council members aren’t trying to sue each other and they don’t leave a trail of blood, guts and eyeballs after every council meeting, it at least looks good to outsiders.
If no challengers enter the race, I’m sure the incumbents will proclaim everyone is happy.