Council factions repeat serious mistakes

Residents have good reason to express concerns about Yorba Linda's political direction, as City Council members and a few vocal supporters are on track to repeat serious mistakes from the not-too-distant past.

Factions vying to control a council majority are involved in the same behavior that led to wide-spread voter discontent with council decision-making generally and votes on high-density development specifically, just a few years ago.

My May 23 column detailed the return of outside, special-interest money in campaigning, as evidenced by big-dollar donations from “independent expenditure” committees run by public employee unions and coalitions of businesses and real estate interests.

This column focuses on other danger signals, including meetings between developers and individual council members and the continuing noxious payback attitudes exhibited by both sides of recent 3-2 councils.

Simply, council members should not meet privately with developers before projects come up for a vote. Some claim the meetings have resulted in reduced project densities, but without published agendas, meeting minutes and citizen oversight, there's no assurance the claims are true now or will be in the future.

The same results could be achieved at open workshops and council meetings where all discussions and decisions are on the public record.

A past council created a Town Center Ad Hoc Committee where council members, city staff and developers met in secret to discuss plans for the high-density 2005-06 Old Town project that was eventually withdrawn.

This group met in private, unrecorded sessions, despite the existence of a Town Center Standing Committee that required agendas, minutes and citizen participation.

A subsequent council banned closed-door ad hoc committees as part of an ethics ordinance that later received 85 percent voter support in 2010.

The ordinance doesn't end all bad practices, but provisions also limit campaign contributions from city contractors and prevent council incumbents from strong-arming the 20 council-appointed city commissioners for election-year endorsements.

Decisions appearing to be political payback are further proof council members are repeating past mistakes.

Annual selections of the mayor, mayor pro-tem and council representatives on four key county boards lately follow a reward-your-ally, screw-your-opponent format. And politicized appointments to citizen advisory committees distract from the important tasks assigned to these groups.

Subjecting Tom Lindsey to a November recall election when his term ends in December is evidence of political payback, probably for his vote against contracting with the Sheriff's Department.

A more logical choice would have been to target Gene Hernandez, along with Craig Young, since they vote similarly on development projects and their terms run through 2016, unless the real aim is to pump up negatives on Lindsey's campaign for a second term.