Apparently I'm Suing Myself

I just saw this item in the Mission Viejo News Blog:

During the Sept. 8 closed session of the city council meeting, the council majority approved suing Saddleback Valley Unified School District. The lawsuit followed the district's reuse of O'Neill Elementary School without conducting an environmental impact report.

City Attorney Bill Curley announced the council's decision. Unanswered questions include who is driving the action or what the city hopes to gain by suing the district. SVUSD stakeholders are paying attorney fees on both sides - suing as taxpayers of the city and being sued as residents of the district.

I live in the SVUSD district, so my tax dollars are going to fund both sides of this silly argument. I no longer have kids in the district, and although they treated us well over the years, I fear for what education will become if the city and the district can't figure out how to talk to each other less expensively.

Many of the kids from the underutilized O'Neill Elementary have been shipped over to our neighborhood school, Del Cerro, where both my kids did K-6. My wife and I take our nightly walk through the school grounds and over the summer the parking lot was significantly expanded and several new classrooms were built. Things are going to be hopping at Del Cerro.

Reality is that school enrollments are shrinking and at some point schools will need to be closed. It's always a decision fraught with emotion because no one wants to ship little Jimmy or Sally (or Dustin or Heather or whatever they name kids these days) off to a school that's not in their neighborhood, but that's the financial reality of 2009. Everybody's gonna have to grow up a bit.

If the city council insists on going through with this, then I would suggest this city needs some new council members.

As the story points out, the district could have the last laugh:

Residents who live near O'Neill say it could be worse. For example, the cash-deficient district could sell the property. With the council majority's record of rezoning property to high-density housing, neighbors are right to be concerned.

You want a bunch of low income housing in your backyard?