Opinion: City Council Buys High-Priced Baby Sitter for 25 Kids

At Tuesday night's Mission Viejo City Council meeting the council, in a stunning approval of mediocrity, voted to extend the rental use agreement for the Potocki Center with Outta Bounds Events.

In other words the City Council voted to pay an outrageous amount of money to babysit "as many as 25 middle school children" from 3 p.m. until 6 p.m. weekdays. The vote was four to one; the same vote as a year ago, and was the only dissenter.

One year ago the City Council charged Recreation and Community Services with finding a better use for the severely underused Potocki Center, and they agreed to a one-year lease to Outta Bounds Events. From all appearances the Recreation and Community Services department swung into immediate inaction. Then in February the department put out a request for proposals.

The wonderful thing about our city is that they are very open about information; all of those proposals were available online. I downloaded them and read each one carefully. All but one of them read like it was written the night before the deadline, or like the author of it knew the fix was already in.

There was one that I would actually classify as a "proposal." It belonged to the Modjeska Playhouse and was 112 pages long. The proposal included all the "standard" parts of a proposal. There was a full resume for each of the founding artists, a complete business plan, a proposed course of action complete with drawings from the architecture firm of Robert Coffee Architect & Associates to convert the center into a 100-seat black box theater, a complete plan for educational classes which would be available to all ages of Mission Viejo Residents, and an expected revenue plan to repay the city for renovations needed to the Potocki Center. The directors of Modjeska Playhouse are on record as being open to sharing the facility.

Outta Bounds hopes to increase the number of Mission Viejo kids being served to 35 in the next year, but there weren't any details as to how they plan to do that. Their proposal was 26-and-a-quarter-pages long. After the cover there was a photocopy of the certificate the California Secretary of States send you when you incorporate. Pages 3 though 21 were boilerplate articles of incorporation. Page 22 was a copy of their commercial insurance declarations page. What followed was actually almost a proposal.

Page 23 is sort of a history of Outta Bounds; since 2009 their "enrollment has grown steadily" and they now provide services to "as many as 25 children" all of whom go to Newhart Middle School. Part of that growth was fueled by a grant from the City's Community Services so that there would be scholarships for residents who can't afford the $275 a month per child cost. I would imagine that the cost is what is keeping enrollment down. 

Page 24 was the entire meat of the proposal. Outta Bounds takes in $119,500 and spends 80% of that on themselves. There are not too many non-profits out there that spend 20% on who they are supposed to be helping and then describe themselves as a "benefit to the community." 

Last night at the council meeting most of the parents who have kids attending Outta Bounds spoke. They all said pretty much the same thing. They don't have to worry about their kids and their kids "get their homework done" at Outta Bounds. As a taxpayer I am already paying for a place where kids can get their homework done after school: it's called the and the library is giving this community a lot more bang for its buck than Outta Bounds.

The Outta Bounds proposal struck me as the one that was written because the lock was in. I didn't really know anything about them and then I started to look into it. Outta Bounds likes to mention the City's Community of Character Program in their literature and when they speak. It's how they keep vote. They have the city's blessing because the Director of Outta Bounds is a good friend of Steve Bell who works under Kelly Doyle in the Recreation and Community Services department. The word on the street is that Doyle and Bell freaked out when they actually got proposals for using the Potocki Center.

There's a pattern at city hall that is very disturbing. The staff members request proposals and then ignore them, change the rules, and do what they wanted in the first place. Or they say they "need to analyze" things further, wait another year or two, and then do what they planned to all along but at a greater cost to us. If you look into almost any city project that is what you'll find.  It's becoming very expensive and not just in economic terms. Our community becomes poorer each time this happens. 

I called most of this to the council's attention last night. The only two actually paying attention were Council members Ury and . Mr. Ury is always paying attention and he does the homework. Ms. Reardon is starting to follow suit. I hope someone on the council investigates this matter. There is something seriously rotten about this whole deal.