Straight answers from City Hall

No incumbent is eligible to run in Rancho Santa Margarita this year. Districts 1, 2 and 4 are all open seats. That is worth saying plainly, because it changes what this election is: nobody on this ballot is defending a record and nobody is running against one. The question is just who should do the work next.

The city only moved to district elections in 2023. District 2 is the central band of the city, and only District 2 voters can vote in this race. That is a real change and it is worth using. A district councilmember represents a small enough piece of this city to actually answer the people in it.

So the thing I most want to change is not any single vote. It is whether a resident who emails the city gets an actual answer, in plain language, from someone who read the question, and whether the reasoning behind a decision gets published rather than just the outcome. Those sound like small things. They are the things that decide whether anyone believes the rest of it.