Page 5 Foothills Sentry FEBRUARY 2025 JOHNSON MOTORCARS 34 Years of Specializing in the Service and Repair of Mercedes-Benz Gary Johnson 714-997-2567 982 N. Batavia # B13, Orange, CA 92867 gary@johnsonmotorcars.com @ramblingroseoc FCA 62th Annual Meeting Monday, March 3, 2025 – Save The Date Representatives from government agencies will be present to discuss your issues. This is your chance to get answers. Organizations invited include staff from Offices of Supervisors Don Wagner and Vicente Sarmiento, Congresswoman Young Kim, Assemblyman Philip Chen, OC Public Works, Orange County Fire Authority, Sheriff’s Department, California Highway Patrol, and the East Orange County Water District. There will be a Q&A panel of government agencies to take questions from the attendees. Note: presentations begin at 6:45. AGENDA • 6:00pm Doors Open for Check-in • 6:00pm Representatives from Government Agencies Available • 6:00pm Pizza Available • 6:45pm Presentations Begin o Update on Racquet Club Lawsuits o Congresswoman Young Kim (invited) o Supervisor Don Wagner (confirmed) o Supervisor Sarmiento (invited) • 8:00pm Door Prize Drawings • 8:15pm Q&A Panel • 9:00pm Meeting Adjourned . the 2017 wildfire. When that wildfire occurred, we did not have the level of drought and unpredictable extreme weather conditions we have today. And with global warming, these issues will only increase, making the area higher risk. It’s become extremely clear, from current wildfires, that tracts of homes do not stop the spread of a wildfire. They can become kindling that produces unstoppable embers in high winds, that could ignite homes for miles across East Orange — from Jamboree to Hewes, Portola to Cannon, Cowan Heights and beyond. This is a High-Risk Wildfire Area, and it must be maintained as open, defensible land. We also care deeply about maintaining these 400 acres as a wildlife corridor for the mountain lions, coyotes, and endangered species that we see when we walk Peters Canyon. We already have had more coyote sightings in our neighborhood since the scraping of some of the hills by TIC. We implore The Irvine Company to offer up this land for sale, to be maintained as public lands or donate the corridor for the safety of humans and animals alike. And we urge our Orange City Council to fiscally protect the city and homeowners by opposing a development that would put East Orange in fire’s way. Susie Vanderlip Orange Crack the books Dear Editor: Measure Z was defeated by 28,792 voters and now demands answers on how the city got into the budget mismanagement problems. We are asking for a forensic audit to give voters transparency and oversight. We believe the city is delaying a forensic audit and has been covering up budget issues for decades. There are examples of mismanagement of Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) with regards to El Modena, where, despite the overwhelming commonsense evidence of a community underserved and in poverty, the City of Orange hides behind misleading federal data which overlaps adjacent wealthy areas of unincorporated county land, which skews household income upward, making this community ineligible for federal dollars. Reasonable questions on the creation of a map of eligible CDBG areas of the city by the public and by members of the city council were ignored and covered up. It took two years to provide a simple answer, that a municipal employee was responsible for the creation of the CDBG map. It has been demonstrated that over the last 30 years, any CDBG money that has been spend for El Modena has been spent only on handicap access ramps on the very edges of this community and thus are legally dubious regarding the city’s compliance with federal law. Since 2013, issues with enterprise funds within the Public Works budget, specifically restricted enterprise funds, have been brought to the attention of the city manager, several city council members and several mayors. Requests for information about the now defunct street sweeping enterprise fund and its subsequent final disbursement still have not been properly addressed. While publicly available documents clearly demonstrate what was raised and what was legally spent, there was a significant surplus in this fund. Despite requests for information, there has not been a public release of withdrawals from the street sweeping enterprise fund account, nor has our request for information formally been responded to by the city. Lastly, the renewal and revamping of the city’s refuse service contract, merging refuse hauling and street sweeping services, flies in the face of an open and competitive bidding process. During the negotiations, either the city demanded or the contractor offered $8,000,000 upfront and additional $2,000,000 every year as a "fee" for asphalt repair throughout the city. Since the city does not charge "franchise fees," this fee for activities lies outside the scope of either street sweeping or refuse hauling. The recent defeat of an additional sales tax demands that the city conduct a thorough and transparent forensic audit. It is not enough to discover any hidden funds or discover that public funds were misspent, it is important to determine that money that is spent complies with local, state and federal laws. John Nelson, Chairman Committee for a Transparent City of Orange Hard to say Dear Editor: In our 237 years of American presidencies, we’ve had a wide range of characters in the office. A few were unequivocally good and righteous in character; some were arguably self-serving and despicable in character. Most were somewhere in between. What we have not had, until now, is a convicted felon. How do we explain this to our children? Mitchel Faris Orange tivity before we can stop it.” “I want to hear that you are handing out tickets left and right,” Slater emphasized. “Tickets for possession, not just for firing them. I want people to get the message.” The vote to approve the ordinance was 5-2, with Arianna Barrios and Ana Gutierrez dissenting. "Fireworks" continued from page 1 "Audit" continued from page 1 complete. He also said that the city does an audit every year, and that it just completed one that will be brought to the council. Instead of a financial audit, Denis Bilodeau suggested, maybe we need an operational examination of our organization. There’s no missing money, but we should be finding more efficiencies. Arianna Barrios agreed, and called for a management assessment. She referred to a recent library audit that found the operational budget to be “way out of whack.” “We need to do the same thing with every department to make sure we’re operating to the best of our ability for our residents,” she said. “We need to lay it all bare; we need to get to a better place.” Looking for what? John Gyllenhammer noted that a financial audit might be necessary if there were malfeasance, but as a member of the council budget committee, his examination of the city’s financial history produced nothing suspect. “I’m not seeing any smoke in terms of somebody doing something wrong,” he said, “but there is a need for us to proceed organizationally, to make sure all departments are running efficiently.” “I’m not seeing any evidence of any money being missing or stolen,” Mayor Dan Slater acknowledged. “But there is a perception from the public that something is wrong. I’d like to kill the idea that something happened that was less than above board. The public needs assurance.” He added that he would favor having “menu options” for an audit, whether it be citywide or department by department. “What would it cost to look under the hood?” Gutierrez emphasized that options are what she is looking for. She noted that she is not on the budget committee and doesn’t know what other council members might. “I’m not saying anyone stole money. Maybe it was used inappropriately. That’s what I’m looking for, that’s what the public needs to see.“ No smoking gun From the vantage point of his seat on the budget committee, Gyllenhammer explained what he saw as the root of the city’s budget woes. “I saw a decision made to absorb additional costs that continued at a certain rate when we didn’t have the revenue stream to support it. There was a conscious decision by the then-council to spend without adequate advice as to how to sustain it. You can see the inflection point in spending relative to revenue. Whether it was inaccurate, out-of-date fees, or how we collect property taxes, spending outpaced revenue.” Kisela agreed to look at options for a financial audit and an organizational assessment. But, he warned, be careful what you wish for. “We did a similar audit of the police department 15 years ago,” he advised, “and found that it was understaffed and underfunded.” Barrios made a final plea for an organizational study. She stressed that the council does not know what it is looking for, and that there are inefficiencies that don’t show up in a financial audit. Citing the library review, she noted that it had practiced constant staffing, like the fire department. “Why were we doing that?” she asked. “And if 6 p.m. is the busiest hour at the library, why are we open until 8 or 9 p.m.? We don’t know what we don’t know. That’s what we should be doing.” Correction OUSD Board Member Sara Pelly was incorrectly identified as former principal at Sycamore Elementary in the January issue of the Sentry. Pelly was a teacher at Crescent Primary and principal at Fletcher Mandarin Language and GATE Academy.
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