The Issue of Local Officials Attending League Conference

I am writing to express my irritation at the comments made by Councilman Paul Christiansen with reference to the attendance from Laguna Niguel to the California League of Cities annual conference.

The comments made by Councilman Christiansen were: “This is the first I have heard there were 15 of us,” and “I do not believe we were briefed on this as a council. I knew the council, the city manager and city attorney (were going). Any more than that, I didn’t know about.”

Well, just another example of how detached Councilman Christiansen is from city business. I, too, was at the meeting when attendance was discussed, and I know Councilman Christiansen was not sleeping since there was dialogue between him and City Manager (Tim) Casey. It was brought out by Mr. Casey that department heads would also be attending. So Mr. Christiansen must have a problem counting. If too many people were attending in his opinion, he could have volunteered to stay home and get a report from those attending.

(He also is quoted as saying): “There was a very long argument at our last council meeting regarding whether or not planning commissioners should be attending. After a lot of interaction, the consensus was that the Planning Commission would not be going on this trip.”

There was not a very long argument by any stretch of the imagination. There was a brief request and presentation made by Jim Olmsted, chairman of the Planning Commission, that all planning commissioners would like to attend if possible. The council then discussed the expense and again the number of people attending and decided that only the chairman, Mr. Olmsted, would be included, and he would then give a report to the other commissioners.

Councilman Christiansen seems to thrive on criticizing even staff and other elected officials at every opportunity.

SUSAN PENNEY, Laguna Niguel