Allan Pilger

Letter: Postal Home Food Drive Saturday

May 13, 2011

My mail carrier says the Mission Viejo Post Office is all geared up for a big haul on Saturday. That blue plastic bag you received in your mailbox is your opportunity to help feed hungry people, estimated at 20 percent of Orange County residents, including children and senior citizens. US Postal Service and the Post [...]

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Letter: Street Banner Addiction

May 2, 2011

The City of Mission Viejo’s twisted priorities of frivolous spending over infrastructure funding clashes head-on at the intersection of Oso and Marguerite where a slope tree in dire need of trimming blocks out an expensive banner promoting last weekend’s Arts Alive Festival. The bottom of the banner appears in the photo, taken from the sidewalk, [...]

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Letter: Sloppy Roadwork

April 19, 2011

My brief excursion into three south Mission Viejo neighborhoods shows the City of Mission Viejo allowed sloppy street resurfacing, figuratively and literally. Besides being damaging to tires, pieces conceivably could fly off the edges of tires and become dangerous missiles. All the large and small pieces in this five-foot-long strip on Soleto street are loose [...]

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Letter: City Hall’s Housing Agency Game

March 20, 2011

If there was even a shred of credibility left in the Mission Viejo City Hall, it evaporated at the March 7 City Council meeting, when the City Council majority, city staff and city attorneys came up with entirely new reason for creating a housing authority. In a first reading at the Feb 15 meeting, [...]

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Letter: Uryville, USA

February 27, 2011

Monday night’s Mission Viejo City Council meeting reminded me of the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” a Christmas classic which envisions what life would have been like in the venerable town of Bedford Falls, had the movie hero, George Bailey, never existed. Without George to foil him, Henry Potter, the town’s political and financial oligarch, [...]

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Letter: Self-Serving Studies And Reports

February 13, 2011

Yesterday I started paying attention to the media for any report on any self-serving survey, like the push-pull survey the City of Mission Viejo conducted earlier in the week designed to gain public acceptance of the streets and slope deterioration. I concluded my Dispatch posting by observing that it is common for government, businesses and [...]

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Letter: Showin’ Off ‘MV Wealth’

January 30, 2011

In a recent posting I documented Mission Viejo City Hall’s history of big, secret government building up $100 million in debt and draining $10 million from reserves, mainly to build extravagant public facilities. The public is virtually shut out from decision-making. History marches onward. On Jan. 17, the City Council majority gave the go-ahead to [...]

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Letter: Tax-Supported Dog Lifestyle

January 16, 2011

The OC Register’s demise from a daily newspaper to a lifestyle magazine (and city hall champion) continued Thursday with a piece (Are dog parks worth the cost?) by columnist David Whiting on Mission Viejo’s planned $850,000 dog park. I have long since written off the Register’s Saddleback Valley News, which has shrunk into a lightweight [...]

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Letter: Closed Gov’t Agenda Management

December 30, 2010

A process called agenda management is the underlying issue involving Mission Viejo City Council Member Frank Ury’s proposal to stop recording closed council sessions, and Council Member Trish Kelley’s attempt to thwart a proposal for greater public participation at council meetings. Both items are on Monday’s Council agenda. If you Google “agenda management” you will [...]

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