The first edition of the Mission Viejo Dispatch was posted on November 7, 2007. Founder/editor Brad Morton, who once served on the Mission Viejo Planning Commission, told me he felt he could better serve the community by creating an on-line Public Forum where readers could add comments to the Dispatch stories. In fact some resident submissions were posted as featured letters with acknowledgement given to the authors.
In our meeting Brad said that his daily reports cover the gamut from community events, which probably represents 50% of the content, to local school board issues, city politics and city hall to a wide spectrum of news and sports reports.
The name Brad Morton is well known in our city. Brad and Milt Jacobson were the co-founders of the highly recognized Committee for Integrity in Government, CIG. CIG watchdogs met almost every month for around six years where we critiqued pending CIP’s and recent policy decisions by our city council. Most of the recent members of our city council were members of this non-partisan “brain trust.”
Brad Morton, along with Alan Pilger and myself, were co-recipients of the OC Register’s Jan 2000 “Faces of Freedom” recognition entitled “Vigilant in Mission Viejo.”
There is one unique aspect of the Mission Viejo Dispatch that I would be remise in not pointing out. Two of the featured authors are Smokey and Bandit. This team of liberal, lovable authors are friends of our four legged dogs.
As such they are best qualified to provide their opinion on the needs, size, location and cost of a Mission Viejo dog park. Their guardian, a conservative resident, told me that “they are in support of this project as they are tired of sniffing each others backsides and want to sniff some other backsides to get a fresh approach.”
They have expressed comments that ‘the city should make the people “happy”
as that is the true purpose of city government citing their approval of Mission Viejo spending $400,000 for Tournament of Roses float.’ However, Smokey and Bandit were somewhat dismayed that “their suggestion of having real bears on the Rose Parade float, instead of photos of bears, was rejected.”
Smokey and Bandit’s last comments, through their guardian/interpreter before taking their afternoon walk, was a word of caution to all readers. Whenever you hear the term “infrastructure” your ears should turn upward. They strongly feel that this term is nothing more than a dangerous conservative “buzzword” that should be ignored.
The Orange Juice team wishes the Mission Viejo Dispatch many years of continued success as we jointly aim to expose government waste while promoting transparency in government.
Larry Gilbert, former member, CIG
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congratulations, brad, on your two year anniversary. i have not only enjoyed reading it, but contributing to it.
thank you for your commitment in bringing timely information to your readers and for providing this communty forum.
i definitely hate it when you leave for vacation!!
keep up the good work, cathy
Thank you, Brad, for two years of excellent news coverage, and the political commentary has been priceless. Happy Anniversary!
Thanks, Larry. Congratulations to Brad, but Larry’s comments show that we, Smokey and the Bandit, are the stars of the Dispatch blog and deserve top billing. Brad, though, says he is only looking out for us. If we are featured we would become big celebrities, and it could go to our heads. Worse, Paris Hilton would invite us up to the manse. Maybe he’s right. All that white powder laying around and you know how dogs like to sniff.