Councilwoman Gamble, Care To Explain?

As the Dove Canyon Plaza rezone request heats up with the owners filing their official request last month, we go back and review various communications from the city officials that we believe are interested in seeing this rezone to high-density housing get approved. Let’s go back to May 2017 where a woman in Dove Canyon emailed then Mayor Gamble to express her concerns, I include the screenshots and a transcript to help make it more readable, the sender has been redacted, this was sent to me after the fact as they were pretty upset by what the Mayor had said, the analysis will follow:

-----Original Message-----
From: ***** ********
Sent: Monday, May 01, 2017 5:20 PM
To: Carol Gamble
Subject: Dove Canyon Plaza

Carol
Please support keeping Dove Canyon Plaza a business entity.
It is simply not fair to Dove residence to devalue the price of their homes with the proposal of high density housing outside our gate.
***** ********
Dove Canyon Resident

Dear Ms. ********,

Thank you for your note. However, it appears you have been terribly mis-informed.

The City of Rancho Santa Margarita has not received, nor considered ANY application for high-density development at the Dove Canyon Plaza. There has been no discussion or presentation by any persons or entity to either Planning Commissioners or City Council Members. City Staff has not participated in any planning meetings. We have not been approached by any developer. We have not seen any plans, whether conceptual or formally submitted.

I am aware that the property has been purchased by a developer who thinks they may want to develop a condo project. In my 22 years of service to this community, I have heard no less than a dozen "plans" by developers to try to build something that does not conform to the current zoning and Master Plan. 11 of those plans never came into fruition and the developer, once it was time to put the plans into action, abandoned their ideas. One came to fruition - and that was to change the zoning of the former Nissan site. I fought vehemently against that developer, prevailed in a heated ballot initiative, took a 6 months leave of absence from my job (with NO pay), raised money to personally pay for the opposition to the development (no city funds are legally permitted) and WON, preserving the integrity of our zoning.

I have received many emails from Dove Canyon residents indicating they have been led to believe there is an active application for the zone change. I am saddened to learn you are victim of misinformation. You may find it helpful to know there are two people who are fueling this misinformation campaign in Dove Canyon and you should not be surprised to learn they both were former failed City Council candidates who, may be stirring this matter up to give it another try in the 2018 election!

I completely understand how much you love your community. I am delighted that you do so. However, please know the City and your Mayor have no role in this project and have not been presented any application from a developer.

Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions. I am happy to share with you what I know.

Best regards,
Carol Gamble

Mayor, City of Rancho Santa Margarita
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Let’s break this down a step at a time. First Mayor Gamble asserts that they have not been approached by the developer, but we have this copy of a September 2016 email from the developer to the city that shows otherwise (Cheryl Kuta is the Business Development Director for the city).

Next we have the Mayor saying that she personally, and while on the city council, used her own money and time to fight against Measure Z, so much so that she took a 6 month leave of absence from her job (she is self employed) to do it. Contrast that with the constant claims of not being able to comment or get involved with the Dove Canyon Plaza project. Something doesn’t add up.

Finally, let’s review this statement she makes:

“I am saddened to learn you are victim of misinformation. You may find it helpful to know there are two people who are fueling this misinformation campaign in Dove Canyon and you should not be surprised to learn they both were former failed City Council candidates who, may be stirring this matter up to give it another try in the 2018 election!”

The mayor of the city is libeling two people who are not public officials, but concerned residents who wanted to make a difference and do the right thing, in addition for mocking them for not winning. In full disclosure, I’m one of those people and the other is an owner of a business in Dove Canyon Plaza. As you can see by how history has now played out, none of that was misinformation. I have asked Gamble for an apology on multiple occasions over this libel and have had no response.

Moving on, shortly after William Lyon had a meeting with locals in February 2019 and it was clear that they had no interest in what people were saying other than which model of home they wanted to buy, I decided to reach out to three city council members, Carol Gamble, Anne Figueroa and Tony Beall. To the credit of Gamble and Figueroa, they responded, but Beall ignored my request. I will cover what is happening with Figueroa in another article, but what follows is my exchange with Councilwoman Gamble:

So, after initially denying any discussions, we get an admission that she shared a table with people from Raintree (remember, Raintree owns Dove Canyon Plaza) at the State of the City, where they were a sponsor and paid for the table. Fortunately those days of paid access to the State of the City are now over. This is a great way to have access and have it without fear of any disclosure being required. We don’t know what was discussed, and that is kind of the point, we have no idea what is going on because our city leaders keep hiding behind non-existent restrictions.

To wrap up, let’s look at one other item that deserves some explanation. In the 2016 election for city council there were three people running for two seats, they were the two incumbents Carol Gamble and Tony Beall and myself. Both the incumbents spent around $8,000 each on that election and won their seats, remember I mentioned that I ran with regard to Carols email earlier in this piece. Now looking at Carols campaign disclosure statement form we see that she reimbursed herself $3,007.15 for travel, food and lodging in the 2016 election. That seems like a pretty big expense to get re-elected to the RSM city council.

I’ve asked Gamble multiple times over the course of several months to get backup receipts for those expenses, all of my emails have gone unanswered.

What this looks like to me is a way to cash out some campaign money during an election if you don’t intend to run again in the future, the money has to go somewhere, I’m glad she sent $1,000 to the Little League at least, but without her receipts, we just have no way of knowing how she ran up such a huge tab for travel, food and lodging to win re-election to RSM city council, especially since she refuses to answer the question. Councilwoman Gamble has some ‘splainin to do. Pray for her, don't vote for her, recall her.