As I reflect back to the recent Register account of the Anaheim 2010 Rose Parade float entry, and their reference to Mission Viejo’s 2009 float cost, I thought this might be the appropriate time to discuss activism in Mission Viejo.
Mission Viejo activism that was recently attacked by a former elected official who labeled me as “a disgruntled angry person” and my alleged “group of like minded angry friends” simply because we agree with the recall of councilman Lance MacLean.
Larry. Where’s the story linkage? “Return on investment.”
Although I am a fiscal conservative I also understand targeted marketing and support Anaheim’s modest investment to promote their city where, in addition to promoting their destination venues, is their abundance of unsold housing.
Mission Viejo spent upwards of $400,000 to promote our city for two minutes of face time and fame. I seriously doubt that any of the recently opened businesses in our city resulted from that feel good investment.
Let me take you back to the spring of 2004 when six members of our Committee for Integrity in Government, CIG, spent months creating a detailed and dedicated web site to promote Mission Viejo. Yes, we were some of the alleged “disgruntled angry” taxpayers who used our own initiative and business experience to help promote our city with zero encouragement or taxpayer money from our city leaders.
We served as the CIG economic development ad hoc committee who devoted months creating the data, photos and history found on our web site www.missionviejobusiness.com. The web site includes a breakdown of business classes and a city provided listing of every shopping center with relevant contacts.
Yes, we are a bunch of angry old men and women who saw a need not being addressed by the Chamber of Commerce or Mission Viejo’s economic development department and took an initiative to curtail sales tax leakage.
Allan Pilger and myself, two of the six ad hoc members, met with our city manager and Director of Economic Development where we offered that web site link to the city web site with no strings attached. Our proposal was rejected out of fear that we had some sinister motive tied to our offer.
The key point to this post is that there are citizens in every city who have time and talent who are willing to support their city if the powers to be have an open mind.
So while Mission Viejo’s $400,000 Rose Parade float expenditure is now old news our economic development web site remains up and running where anyone in the world can access that data 24/7 at no charge.
The other members of this non-partisan effort were Joe Holtzman, Norm Rosenkrantz, [current council member] Cathy Schlicht and webmaster Dale Tyler who just happens to be one of the candidates in the Lance MacLean recall election.
Dale Tyler was the first candidate to pull papers and was the first of the four potential replacement candidates to turn in his candidate statement and signatures yesterday.
I will be contacting all of the candidates to conduct an interview of their campaign issues and concerns just as I did with Dave Leckness.
Being angry is acceptable. What a person does with the anger can be positive or negative.
If Larry’s group was motivated by anger (I don’t know if they were angry or not), they did something beneficial with their energy, and the outcome was positive.
email response:
Larry:
very meaningful article…covered many points…we sure could use the $400,000. now for infrastructure and solve other problems.
who are the candidates running for office to replace McLean?
Folks.
The deadline for any candidate wishing to particpate in the Mission Viejo Feb 2nd recall election is 5 p.m. tomorrow Nov 19th.
They would need to first meet with the city clerk to get the appropriate package and candidate instructions on how to fill out the documents.
Beyond that they need to submit somewhere between 20 to 30 signatures of Mission Viejo voters to get on the Special Election ballot.
Those “pulling papers” are Dale Tyler, Dave Leckness, Jeff Weekley (who has yet to return my call) and the latest potential candidate Kevin P. Dailey who did not provide any contact information. Kevin just pulled his papers on Monday which doesn’t give him much time to submit his package, especially if he plans to include a 200 word candidate statement.
Stay tuned. I will have an update of the candidates by Friday
Larry:
As I look down from above I recall one of your detractors is a rather pompous individual. Meeeeawww——
Excellent article, and it demonstrates just one of the values of having citizens who make contributions to the their city. It is disturbing that elected officials (including a former one) shoot into the crowd of residents. Larry must be doing something right to become a target of those who have made such a consistent practice of doing something wrong.
I wasn’t aware of the Website until recently — probably because the citizens who worked on it did so without a lot of fanfare. Too bad city hall missed the boat by not promoting it.
“Kevin just pulled his papers on Monday which doesn’t give him much time to submit his package, especially if he plans to include a 200 word candidate statement.”
Yeah, writing 200 words is extremely taxing and takes most of a week for sure.
Dan Avery.
Kevin missed the filing deadline. It’s now a two candidate race