City of RSM

RSM mayor hopes audit efforts will improve after promise of cooperation from new superintendent

Tony Beall_2
Tony Beall, Trabuco Canyon News "Despite these prior unacceptable delays, we now have reason to believe CUSD will provide our auditors full and complete access and cooperation. CUSD just hired a new Superintendent, Dr. Dennis Smith. RSM Mayor Pro Tem Gary Thompson and I recently met with Dr. Smith and he personally assured us that Rancho Santa Margarita’s auditors would be given full cooperation and immediate access to all financial records relating to the tax dollars CUSD collected from RSM residents. I welcome and appreciate Superintendent Smith’s promise of a new era of openness, honesty and accountability at CUSD."

Beall is the Mayor of the City of Rancho Santa Margarita.

RSM city council made tax audit of CUSD top priority after discovering proof CUSD misinformed the community

Tony Beall_2
Tony Beall, Trabuco Canyon News "For years, the Capistrano Unified School District had insisted they were going to pay for their luxurious new $52-million administration building in San Juan Capistrano with redevelopment monies from that City. However, despite repeated public denials, in November 2006, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, CUSD leaders were forced to admit they had been providing “misinformation” to our residents. In fact, the CUSD leadership now admitsted they arewere diverting millions of Mello-Roos tax dollars from Rancho Santa Margarita and other south Orange County cities to pay for this massive office building in San Juan Capistrano. As a result of these serious misrepresentations, our City Council made auditing the CUSD Mello-Roos payments its highest priority."

Beall is the Mayor of the City of Rancho Santa Margarita.

RSM tax audit of CUSD delayed due to lack of cooperation, responsiveness by district; Mission Viejo has had similar delays

Tony Beall_2
Tony Beall, Trabuco Canyon News "Unfortunately, progress on this audit has been somewhat slow. CUSD officials have not always been as cooperative and responsive to our requests for this important public information as we would have expected. The City of Mission Viejo, which is also conducting an audit of CUSD, encountered similar delays. Their auditors actually suggested the City Council might have to consider asking the California Attorney General to intervene."

Beall is the Mayor of the City of Rancho Santa Margarita.

RSM mayor pro tem dissappointed with interim superintendent over blanket EIR

Gary Thompson_2
Gary Thompson, Rancho Santa Margarita News “We thought we had an interim superintendent who was actually going to come in there and make some good changes.”

RSM Mayor Pro Tem Gary Thompson opposes the district-wide environmental impact report. Discussions about the report stirred hard feelings from last year’s conflicts with then-Superintendent James Fleming and the school board. In December 2005, school trustees voted to contract for the report. Reform trustee Larry Christensen wants the board to discuss abandoning the study in its Feb. 12 meeting.

RSM city council letter urging CUSD to abandon blanket EIR

Alejandra Molina, Rancho Santa Margarita News "The city will send a letter to Capistrano Unified School District, urging it to abandon the preparation of an environmental report studying the effect of maximizing the number of portable classrooms at schools. The City Council on Wednesday voted 5-0 to authorize Mayor Tony Beall, who made the recommendation, to send the letter."

A report to the City Council, written by Beall, says the environmental report would threaten the 1,050-student cap at Arroyo Vista, a kindergarten through eighth-grade campus, and possibly lead to higher enrollment at crowded Tijeras Creek Elementary.

RSM mayor pro tem requested audit of Mello-Roos taxes spent by CUSD

Gary Thompson_2
Gary Thompson, Rancho Santa Margarita News “I think it’s important that the residents and the businesses that pay Mello Roos fees in their property tax have a comfort level knowing that the money got spent as it was intended.”

RSM Mayor Pro Tem Gary Thompson requested the audit.

RSM mayor makes audit of Mello-Roos spent by CUSD a top priority

Tony Beall_2
Tony Beall, Rancho Santa Margarita News “I want to know how that happened and I want to see our residents’ tax dollars stay in our city.”

After learning that the Capistrano Unified School District used Rancho Santa Margarita Mello-Roos funds, along with bonds from Mission Viejo, Aliso Viejo, San Juan Capistrano and Talega, to help pay for a new administration building, RSM Mayor Tony Beall put the completion of the audit on top of his to-do list.

CUSD proposes blanket EIR to maximize portables throughout the district, City of RSM opposes EIR

Alejandra Molina, The Ladera Post "The Rancho Santa Margarita City Council backed Mayor Tony Beall in sending a letter to Capistrano Unified School District, urging it to abandon the preparation of an environmental impact report. The EIR would study maximizing the number of portable classrooms on each of the district’s school sites. The discussion recalled hard feelings left from last year’s conflicts with then-Superintendent James Fleming and the CUSD board."

The proposed blanket EIR is particularly offensive, since Marlene Draper and other CUSD leaders assured voters during the recall and ABC reform slate campaigns that CUSD had a "strategic plan" to remove portables. Now, just weeks after the November election, CUSD is scheming to circumvent the environmental process with a district-wide EIR for the purpose of "maximizing" the number of portables at every CUSD campus. Molina is a reporter for the Orange County Register.

RSM Mayor Tony Beall expresses hopes for CUSD in 2007

Tony Beall_2
Tony Beall, Rancho Santa Margarita News “Over the past five years, the biggest challenges and controversies our city has been forced to deal with have come from inappropriate actions taken by leaders of the Capistrano Unified School District. I am pleased that with the departure of former Superintendent Fleming and the recent election of three new trustees to the school board, the stage has finally been set for real school district reform.”