We received the article below today from a supporter of Pierre Gilbert, a candidate for the Laguna Hills City Council. It is a thoughtful piece that we thought our readers would enjoy:
With only a little bit under a week left before the general election, there seems to be a forgotten race in South Orange County. The race for Laguna Hills City Council is what I’m referencing. The race includes 8 competitors vying for 3 City Council seats, with three incumbents running and five challengers. Incumbents: Melody Carruth, Craig Scott, and Mayor Randal Bressette; the challengers: Barbara Kogerman, Pierre Gilbert, Randal Oakley, Saeid Hariri, and Ali Djowharzadeh.
The race started off with a bang when City Council challenger Barbara Kogerman came out with a compensation report that detailed salaries of the 34 cities of Orange County. Mainly detailing the compensation of Laguna Hills City Manager Bruce Channing, Mrs. Kogerman was able to start off the race with great publicity. Much has come into question about the report since its release but yet has stood as an issue for residents of the city to look at. The issue has brought great scrutiny to the City and its compensation of City Employees, but there has been no solutions offered by the candidate to fix the problem. The City has taken a step in the right direction by posting a report on the City’s website but I question if it goes far enough.
I did take a look at all the other candidate’s websites and saw that there is some potential for the other candidates as well. One challenger’s website that really caught my eye and I was impressed by was the website of Pierre Gilbert. The reason his caught my eye is he identifies problems in the city and offered solutions to the problems. If I was a resident in Laguna Hills, I would strongly recommend taking a look at his website gilbertforcouncil.com. Outside of having a beautiful family he shows that he really has something to offer the city instead of just identifying the problems.
One thing I stress for voters to do in this election and all elections is to look at who is going to listen to your issues. Candidates can always identify problems but very few offer solutions to those problems. Prime example is in the race for City Council in Laguna Hills. Laguna Hills has a great list of candidates to go along with the incumbents, but even the incumbents don’t offer much for their City. Just to give you an example, go to the website of Mayor Pro Tem Craig Scott’s website. Mr. Scott’s website offers a list of accomplishments but not problems to address and mainly to keep
the city the same because there are no problems.
In the essence of time, I encourage all voters to look at all your candidates thoroughly and hard. Whether, they are an incumbent or challenger, take the time to make sure that we are putting the correct representation in office. The time is critical and the time is now for us to get this correct and make sure that we change the path of where we are heading. We have no more time for excuses and no more time to point the finger. Please make sure that you take this election serious and remember that it is our livelihoods that are at stake and take that into consideration.
Leave a Reply