According to Barbara Kogerman, a candidate for the Laguna Hills City Council, their city has not even posted full agendas for their City Council meetings, online. Until now. It looks like Kogerman was able to convince the City Council to put their agendas online. Well done! Here is Kogerman’s press release:
Press Release: For Immediate Release
Contact: Barbara Kogerman Phone: 949-855-9889 or 949-422-6203 (cell)
Date: Jan. 8, 2010
Cat and Mouse Game Starts In City Council Race
Council Tries to Diffuse Opposition Candidate’s Platform
Evidently Laguna Hills City Council Candidate Barbara Kogerman is already shaping City policies—10 months before the election.
In a stunning reversal of a decades’ old policy of denying citizens easy access to information about how the city allocates its resources and other pending Council business, the Laguna Hills City Council has for the first time published a full agenda for a future meeting on its web site, after Kogerman’s well-publicized call for transparency.
Even more surprising, a council member who recently turned down Kogerman’s offer to sign a new Term Limits Initiative to be filed Monday has placed term limits on Tuesday’s Council agenda.
“It’s obvious that my platform of creating openness and transparency and establishing term limits is already improving how the city conducts itself,” Kogerman says. “Voters should remember, though, that this council has had since 1991 to enact these reforms yet failed to do so until the public started responding to my campaign.”
Kogerman’s website clearly spell out her issues of creating transparency, establishing reasonable spending priorities, increasing citizen participation and establishing term limits.
She notes that in December, however, the Council approved another $23,000 bonus for the City Manager, after buying him a $60,000 car over the summer, and deemed citizen commissions “unnecessary and cumbersome.”
“So they haven’t gotten the entire message yet,” Kogerman adds. “Wasteful spending is still taking precedence over the needs of Seniors , the business community, and humane animal services. And citizen participation such as our neighboring cities enjoy seems like a foreign concept to them.”
Kogerman is the only announced candidate for the November election. In December the Council selected two of the three incumbents up for re-election as Mayor and Mayor Pro-Tem. (Kogerman: “Clearly, they’re circling the wagons.”)
All three incumbents were on the original City Council elected in 1991.
Click here to visit Kogerman’s web site, go to . The City’s web site is www.ci.laguna-hills.ca.us.
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Barbara Kogerman
Barbara Kogerman for Laguna Hills City Council 2010
25231 Mawson Drive, Laguna Hills CA 92653
949-855-9889
ID # 1318852
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