• City Council Meeting April 2015

Let's go down the agenda of this quick meeting, it finished by about 8:00pm.

Presentations

• Park Enhancement Project (PEP)- Regency Heritage Park

Seniors and other student volunteers spent four Saturdays in a row, for a total of 185 hours on this project. They raised over $500 and received over 85 donated plants. The students planted 185 new plants, transplanted 150 plants, and removed 1800sf of weeds.

A picture of the PEP volunteers along with some of the sponsors.

• Donate Life California
This was in reference to the pink dot on the driver's license organ donation program. There will be an event on Sunday April 25th, at Cal State Fullerton called 13th Annual Run Walk.

•Neighborhood Watch
There is a neighborhood watch meeting at the council chambers April 14th. Spread the word, the past meetings had been in Lake Elsinore, so show some community support by attending.

•Fire Department Update
During the first quarter of the year there were 777 emergency calls, which projects to be over 3000 for the year. 75% of those were medical in nature. Be proactive, make sure to abate all weeds, especially if you live in a high fire part of the city.

Public Comments (items not on the agenda)

•Kenny Mayes speaking about street sweeping, park security camera rules.
•Johnny Patty spoke about the day laborers that set up camp on Palomar south of Clinton Keith. That he'd like something done about their illegal parking that is a traffic hazard.
•George Cambero, one of our EVMWD directors, wanted to tell the public that if you have concerns, phone calls are the preferred method of getting hold of him over FaceBook messages. His number is (951) 285-9789 and he'll take your calls on anything water related... except billing.

3.1 Measure Z New Appointees
This item was pushed to the next meeting on May 13, 2015.

3.2 Parks Master Plan
It started off with Bob Cashman having to exclude himself from this item since his home is too close to one of the parks.

The audience enjoyed the way he phrased it:
"I'm going to have to excuse myself from this because of a ruling... concerning my property and its proximity to one of the parks. Now why that prohibits me from doing the whole Parks Plan I don't know but that's what they ruled. Since they ruled that way in writing, I'm going to pay attention to it." The crowd was amused. ☺

This was the final vote on the Parks Master Plan.
Here is a link to one of the blogs about the Parks Master Plan workshop from last year.

It's a very ambitious plan. To properly study this plan it would be worth a 5 unit class.

Assistant City Manager Dan York has been doing a great job putting this together, and after tonight's 4-0-1 vote, he'll now start to chase after the money to start funding it.

On the right you see the parks we have today. On the left you see the additional proposed parks over 30 years.

Want the basic numbers?

Are you sitting down?

At today's costs, to fully implement the Parks Master Plan would be about $74,000,000. My basic math skills tell me that 74 million divided by 33 thousand residents, is only $2242.42 per person.

Just tell me where you want me to send the check.

Dan York stated that there are a whole lot of strategies to get funding and financing; local, federal, state and private.

There were two Public Comments of this topic.
•Kenny Mayes discussing the lack of public interest in the whole process.
•John Lloyd said how he was very, very impressed with the plan. "I don't think the price is something you're going to enjoy dealing with, but it's not something that's going to go away either. You'll have to get really, really creative, but if we can pull it off, that's an excellent park plan."

Council comments on the Parks Master Plan.

• Bridgette Moore "This document is so exciting. I can't believe this is something we can actually have one day. What it will mean to Wildomar, our community our house values."

• Marsha Swanson "This document is a dream come true. We may not be able to afford it today... and maybe it is a big dream and you know they say, Build it and they will come. This plan is absolutely great. I want to thank staff for the time and the energy, thinking outside of the box, different ways to put this together. You hear this amount of money and you go, Where are we going to get that, that's more than our budget for the whole city? but we thought of ways, and I think that's super."

• Tim Walker "It's very detailed. This is a good guideline of things we can do in the future. Now we just need to get the funding. Need to still keep our commercial coming in and help pay for a lot of things we want to do here. It's quality of life, quality of life, and quality of life. That's all it is in Wildomar, it's all about that. Good job guys [city staff] it was awesome."

• Ben Benoit "Ditto. Dan, great job. You and the team put a lot of work into this."

I'd love to see such developments for Wildomar, but I'm a "show me the money" kind of guy. If you build it, then I'll believe it. Especially in this town. Let's hope Dan York can work some of his magic here.

City Managers Report
•Rotary BBQ this Saturday, April 11th from 10am to 4pm. $5 entry fee.
•May 9th, city wide clean up at Ronald Reagan School and Elsinore High School.
•Budget workshop April 16th. 6:30pm at the council chambers.
•Water Conservation meeting with EVWMD
•SB 25, sponsored by State Senator Roth to have our VLF returned. It's making good process, unanimous approval in committee. This time they are trying to get this put into the actual budget as a "control item" which would be veto proof.

Future Agenda Items
Tim Walker would like to streamline the process for people looking to build large garages on their own properties. Today, if the building is over 20'x20' you have to go through several hoops that will add at least $4,000 to your garage. The rest of the council looked to be in agreement that it should be a future agenda item.

One final park note. 

Looks like the new basketball nets have a mind of their own over at Windsong park. Though these hoops are set up for the cloth nets, looks like they tried to escape. The nets aren't torn, just no longer secured by those metal coils. I was told that the nets couldn't be zip tied to the rims because there may be sharp edges and someone could cut themselves which is a liability. Since zip ties are dangerous, how about some good old black tape instead? We've gotta do something to keep them varmints from skedaddling. ☺

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Update

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Good news, it was fixed within a week of this blog being posted.

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The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those with too little. 

— Franklin D. Roosevelt 

Wildomar Rap never attempts to halt the incoming tide, and isn't a fan of battling with windmills either.