• City Council Meeting May 2015

Tonight's meeting was started off with a moment of reflection for missing Marine Eric Seaman. A crewman on a USMC helicopter that disappeared while carrying out humanitarian duties in Nepal.

Presentations
• Comments from a county representative about Mental Health month —May 2015.
• Library update and how they are getting close to getting their Chess Club up and going.
• Fire Chief Joel Vela reminded the council that 2003 and 2007 were the most devastating fire seasons in the past and that this year is looking to be as bad or worse. He said, "Pay no attention to the rains" as he reminded all in attendance that they will not remove the looming fire danger.

Public Comments that are on Non Agenda items

• Darrell Ruff  Spoke of a six month long bureaucratic nightmare dealing with AFV and a nuisance animal.
• Miss Miller brought her hymnal and sang. I thought it was LAME! But I uploaded the video if you want to see her asking for the police to "escort her out". If you want the full sized video, click trough to the youtube location. I don't want to give her anymore free press than she earns.

• Ron Borgeson spoke of a threat he received over traffic issues and how difficult it's been to get police attention on the matter. He later had a chance to chat directly with Chief Leonard Hollingsworth about the situation.
• Ken Mayes was talking about things I couldn't decipher. Here's what I jotted down before my brain melted: Central Committee of the Politburo in conjunction with the Standing Committee has, after indoctrination by the Secretary General, and vigorous polling of the heavily censored facebook chapters of the regime...

Come on Kenny, every time you make good points something like this is waiting to remove all your credibility. I'd have posted the video, but there was too much chatter in the audience that interfered with a clean audio for it.

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The consent calender is where items that are considered routine are bundled together and voted on as a package. The only item I found of interest was 1.13. This is where we got two new commissioners for the Measure Z oversight committee: Doug Ames and Sheila Urlaub.

Item 3.1 was bumped to the front of the agenda
It was a report by EVMWD regarding the recent executive orders by Governor Brown (order B-29-15) regarding water conservation. Water conservation is a pressing issue, and I have plans of a blog dedicated to it. So I won't get into the specifics here.

2.1 Development Impact Fee Update
Since Council Member Bob Cashman was out with a bad wing (he had rotator cuff surgery) the council elected to continue this to the June 10th meeting. The gist of it is that our building fees are lower than all the surrounding areas and it's been long overdue to raise them. It's a double edged sword to be sure. No one likes fees, but we need the fees to live in a modern community... and you might as well face it folks. The days of Wildomar being wide open is long since past.

Though there was a presentation, and a few speakers on this, since it's being continued, makes since to save the write up about it until then. From the looks of it, my guess is that the final vote will be 3-2 but not sure in which way.

I marked down Council Members Bridgette Moore and Marsha Swanson as potential YES votes and Tim Walker as a NO vote. I couldn't really tell which way Mayor Ben Benoit was going to vote, and Cashman wasn't there for me to gauge.

If it passes, the fees will jump considerably for building houses here.

2.2 and 2.3 almost seemed like they should have been added to the consent calender. They both passed 4-0 and without much ado. 2.2 was about about street lighting zones and 2.3 was about cell towers (which you read about in my blog covering the Planning Commission meeting last week)

3.2 and 3.4 were also business as usual. The former was about the Special Events calender and the latter was about the 3rd quarter budget report. Both passed without debate.

3.3 Street Name Consistency
This was interesting to me. This is where we're going to get a new main road that starts at Grand, heads east, crossing Palomar and the freeway, hangs a right on Porras, heading south onto George and end up on "Shopping Center" while winding up at City Hall.

Follow Wildomar Trail to Wildomar City Hall.

When I first heard about renaming those streets to Wildomar Trail I liked the idea. I still like the idea. What I'm not a big fan of is the price tag for the name conversion. The price to upgrade those signs will be in the neighborhood of $35K. 

The rest of 3.3 deals with streets that got bisected when the freeway was put in back in the 20th century (funny to hear it put that way isn't it?).  The fact that many streets are on both sides of the freeway, yet are not actually one road, has caused many problems over the years. It's also not good for the emergency services when trying to figure out which Orange, or Waite St they might be being called to.

The cost for the entire street naming project is nearly $220K. It's not something that is being fast tracked, and it is to be phased in over time. 

I'm not too sure about that number in red.

I liked the part of the agenda packet that included the blurb about the city branding being valued at $100K. But that part of the powerpoint had a mind of its own and flew by. Luckily I'd already seen it at home and made a few notes. The claim was that the value of some of the signage was $5000 a month while the Cal-Trans signs were valued at $100,000 a month —a MONTH Louie! 

Come on, that's flat out silly, and why I suggested from the podium that "If it's worth $100K per month, we should sell off the naming rights to Coca-Cola for  $1.2 Million a year."

After the meeting was over, I was told that I had the numbers wrong. That the $100K wasn't monthly. Well, I'm just quoting from the agenda I got from the email. Take a look below... I love it when I'm right. ☺

I told you that the claim was 'per month.' ☺

Part of 3.3 was adopting a standard street sign design. Below are some of the options. The first two are from the city, the third one was a hybrid that I put together. Though, honestly, I prefer the standard county green with ALL CAPS that my street already has. Each street sign is $200 where as the signal signs cost $900 a piece... installed.

This was the topic of a recent Press Enterprise article (click the link). It caused a flurry of action on the local Wildomar FaceBook page. Mostly due to misleading reporting. The story there is all about Wildomar Trail, but the writer gives the full price of the Street Name Consistency plan ($218K) instead of the price tag for Wildomar Trail alone ($36K).

City Manager Report

The only thing of note was that at the recent community clean up, that the Ronald Reagan Elementary location filled more than 30 bins. Due to the heavy influx of users at this event, they will be factoring in more participation in the future and having crews on call if needed.

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A torn rotator cuff is a cancer for a pitcher and if a pitcher gets a badly torn one, he has to face the facts, it's all over baby. — Don Drysdale

Wildomar Rap wishes Councilman Bob Cashman a speedy recovery and hopes he doesn't need Tommy John Surgery next.