Latest / The Orange Report with Kira Davis / Ep.51 Ladera Ranch Cancer Cluster Shocker - statistical 200 yrs worth of cases

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Ep.51 Ladera Ranch Cancer Cluster Shocker - statistical 200 yrs worth of cases · The Orange Report with Kira Davis

• speaker-0: Well, hey everybody, we're back. The show is back. It's been a crazy July, but thank you for sticking with us and thank you for all of your kind comments about the loss of my beloved mother-in-law. I really do appreciate that. We have finally moved through through the season of saying goodbye to Faith Davis. And so we're back. And it was a nice I had a nice ⁓ ⁓ cap on the summer, I would say, last night. ⁓ my husband and I or over the week and went to Dine en Blanc, which was a big white party in Los Angeles. We ended up eating right in front of the Beverly Hills ⁓ City Hall. It was amazing. So wanna thank everybody for hanging in there while we just went through the summer. It's ⁓ you know, it's a small production here at the Orange Report. But today we're back in style and we're back with the guests as you can see, and I'm really happy to Welcome my friend and the vice chair of the LaDera Ranch Civic Council, John Gresko, to the show. John, hi, thank you for coming. speaker-1: Hi Kara, thanks for having me and my condolences to you and your family as well. speaker-0: Thank you so much. ⁓ everyone has been so kind and ⁓ yeah, we're just we're moving forward now. But John, I wanted to have you on the show and a lot of our ⁓ readers and listeners are starting to see the story popping up because we have a national audience, but they're starting to see this story popping up of what's going on here in LaDera Ranch in California. I never thought our little suburb would ever be the subject. Of a national scandal, but here we are, and who better to have on to talk about what is going on with the Ladera Ranch Cancer Cluster? As a lot of you know, we have we are suddenly aware, although many people have been talking about this locally for years, but the majority of our community has suddenly become aware that we've got a cluster of very rare cancers ⁓ at a very alarming rate here in LaDera Ranch. And so the residents are sort of going through this process. Of trying to figure out what it is. And the more we talk about it as a community, John, the more crazy stuff comes up. Like the more information is coming out and more people are starting to say, ⁓ yeah, my pets are suffering this. ⁓ yeah, my friend's daughter who moved out of town 10 years ago, she suffered this. So I think there's a lot more ⁓ story here. But John, before we really dig into that, can you just tell people a little bit about you? what your job is there on the Ladera, what the council is, first of all, what your job is and ⁓ maybe some personal details. speaker-1: Sure, sure. I'd I'd be happy to. So I'm a resident of Lodera Ranch. I have five kids. And really what I want to talk to you about today is these are my opinions. ⁓ I don't wanna ⁓ what ⁓ w as a guest today on your show, you're just getting me, John Gresco, the father of five, not necessarily the ⁓ civic council member. ⁓ but I can talk a little bit about you know what the council has done and what I've been doing over the past ⁓ several weeks. And in a little more context on me in particular. So I'm an architect and ⁓ I grew up with forty childhood allergies. And and so ⁓ I used to walk into buildings growing up and I would get headaches right away. And I would start to feel, you know, ⁓ my allergies come on. And what we knew coming out of the seventies and eighties is that the buildings were too tight and people were experiencing what's called sick building syndrome. So when I started my architectural career, I focused pretty heavily on mitigating that. So I specialize in what's called sustainability or green design. And it's making buildings as environmentally friendly as possible for all of the occupants. And what we're looking at today in Lodera Ranch is really taking that same philosophy and applying it to outside of buildings, which is our parks and our green belts and our greenways and pocket parks and so forth. ⁓ it's applying the same principles of really do no harm first. So ⁓ we were made aware on the council about I think it was like July 10th or that week, of many different residents of Lidare Ranch showing some frustration and confusion about what was really happening. And when I ⁓ jumped into this, so my role on the Civic Council over the past five years, this is a vol so the Civic Council is an all volunteer. five ⁓ one C four ⁓ advocacy group. We we advocate for all the residents of Lidera Ranch. Lidera speaker-0: Toopy, I'll just stop you right here. It should just to note for our listeners, Ladera Ranch is unincorporated. We're not a town. We're a suburb. So yeah, we don't have a mayor. We don't have a governing council. We have an HOA. So this is a volunteer civic council. speaker-1: Hundred percent volunteer. ⁓ and and that's exactly right, because we're unincorporated, that comes with a few a few disadvantages. And one is when something happens in the town, there isn't necessarily a a ⁓ a city council to go seek help from or to at least talk to. We have a very scattered and it's been a very scattered ⁓ and somewhat d not now it's not, but there was a disorganized effort to find out what's going on. So that kind of that news reached the civic council. What the civic council did is we had we had a public meeting that was already on the calendar. That was July twenty first, two weeks ago. And ⁓ what we ended up doing is we ⁓ we we offered the venue to be used as a public forum to talk about this issue. So we sent the letter on July tenth to our HOA, and the HOA is the the the the body that maintains this unincorporated community. And we basically said, Hey, we're hearing a lot from the residents. We're not g seeing a lot of action. ⁓ we're asking for a moratorium on pesticides because a lot of folks are talking about, and there's a lot of ⁓ you know ⁓ testimony and anecdotal evidence from a lot of residents here about what they've been seeing ⁓ happening as far as the application of pesticides. So going back to my example of growing up with allergies, when I got when I became an adult. And I wanted to stop giving myself weekly shots after college. I went to my doctor and said, Hey, I'm done with the shots. I can't do this. He goes, ⁓ well, let's start eliminating things from your diet. Said, okay. So we started to eliminate little eggs one week, yogurt the next week, you know, until you figure out how you feel afterwards. That's a that's a metaphor for what we're asking for the council to do now. Let's eliminate one of the things in this community that could be potentially causing some illnesses. And I want to be very careful here. the the civic council has a position. We we don't wanna we don't wanna ⁓ we don't really wanna even imply for a second that there's causation for the illnesses and the cancer. So I want to just reiterate I'm gonna speak to you and the opinions in this interview are mine and mine alone and not at that of the Civic Council. But we don't we're looking at what are some of the things that the people, the residents can do in La Dare Ranch to make our community maybe just one incremental step safe safer. And here's where it gets interesting. ⁓ so the big ask was a moratorium and that means ⁓ you know, ⁓ maybe a temporary ban, but possibly a full time ban on all conventional pesticides. These are pesticides that we know ⁓ are dangerous to touch. They come littered with warnings and labels all over them. speaker-0: And you need and you need to have protective gear to spray these pesticides. And let me I'm gonna let you keep going, but let me just summarize for the listeners so far. And again, I do want to reiterate that John is here in his capacity as a private citizen of Ladera Ranch. But I but also these are these are very rare cancers like Ewing sarcoma is one, but there's a couple of others that we've been looking at, but ⁓ that are have been tangentially linked to pesticides. There is no direct link. There's no direct studies. But over the years there have been some links in studies to this. So that's what we're reacting to here, right? That it's not we're just saying it's got to be the pesticides. There have been studies and incidences over time. So the pesticide issue is a logical place for us to land. speaker-1: For sure so for sure to start. Let me illustrate this point for your listeners. ⁓ and this is how this is why I took a deep dive into this. So I want you know the American Cancer Society says there's two hundred and fifty ⁓ diagnosed cases a year of adolescents. This Ewing sarcoma affects adolescents, okay, not adults. ⁓ and so based on the population of LaDera Ranch and ⁓ an estimated number of maybe ten thousand kids out of the twenty five thousand residents here. we shouldn't be expecting to see one case of ewing sarcoma every 37 years. Okay. And right now we have at least six, maybe maybe eleven, depending on the sources and and the year which these sources are are compiled. We have a lot of cases. We have over 200 years of statistical cases occurring at one time. So that is the number that got me, got me and my family really alarmed, which is why we started jumping into this. So ⁓ so yes, we've been concentrating on pesticides for right now because I believe that's the one thing that ⁓ we can safely do very easily. And I say that because ⁓ number one, the will of the people is there. There's a petition that's been circulating online, it has I don't know, four or five, six thousand people names on it right now. We had a huge attendance at this public forum. We had four hundred people in person. A hundred people online and every single one of our representatives were there, be it federal all the way down to state assembly, state senator, and and supervisor, county supervisor. They were all present. ⁓ we have the attention of everybody on us. We have a nonpartisan coalition of people that all are saying we need to stop pesticides. We have the will of the people here all saying we gotta stop pesticides. This should be an easy thing to do. In that public forum on the twenty first. Not only did we hear from the affected parents, ⁓ and parents who lost some of their child lost their children, and we heard from four different ⁓ families, we heard from some advocacy groups, but I also invited the former mayor of of Irvine, who implemented a very similar great precedent program ten years ago. And then we also invited the current sustainability commissioner of Irvine, who's overseas parks and recreation, which is the integrated pest management program. So to anybody that says, hey, Lodera starting from scratch, that's not true. We've got Irvine as an excellent precedent and they've been doing this for ten years. So we wouldn't be ⁓ necessarily going out on a limb here. Irvine is eleven times greater population than Ladera Ranch. If they can get it done, there's no reason why Ladera Ranch can't get this done. speaker-0: Well, explain to people why we can't get it done. Explain what the hang up is here because we don't have a governing body. We don't have you know, we're not waiting for this to trickle through a city council or go through a mayor. It ostensibly it should be very easy if the whole community is behind it to say, Let's stop. Let's use something else. So what is the hold up here, John? speaker-1: Well the holdup is that we're unincorporated and that our ⁓ our HOA is the the body making the decision. So ⁓ I mean there has been some progress since since the civic council's letter to the HOA asking for a moratorium. One week later, on the seventeenth, the HOA did respond, ⁓ which I believe was from from the pressure of the community with this letter to do a sixty-day ban on herbicides. However That's just herbicides. I think it's just two herbicides that are used here in La Dere Ranch, Lifeline and Atramic. ⁓ it doesn't include rodenticides and insecticides, and those are still being applied and ⁓ are potentially ⁓ potentially just ⁓ well let's just say they need to be changed as well. So ⁓ the HOA right now is ⁓ working with a special task force and advisory group. comprised of, you know, some of the residents and affected families. And I know I'm not in that group, so I can't speak firsthand, but I did read the report ⁓ or the minutes this morning ⁓ from LaDera Health Watch, which is a Facebook group led by Jackie French, yeah, about the progress. And it sounds like the progress is being made. Now, ⁓ you know, I would counter that with it's not happening fast enough. I you know what looks like to me the HOA is really putting the burden on this advisor group to come up with the recommendations. And I brought to the meeting two weeks ago people from Irvine that have been doing this for ten years were not starting from scratch. So I'm famously impatient. I don't know why this is taking so long. We're gonna have speaker-0: This is I but this is not a ⁓ matter of impatience, John. We're talking about the safety of our kids. To me, this is what's blowing my mind. This is a this case here in LaDera actually is the it's a microcosm of a larger issue we have in America, which is red tape, bureaucratic red tape. And sometimes where you don't even have red tape, people feel like they are beholden to the red tape. And really we're not. In my mind, Ladera Ranch is our community. We all pay a a pretty good price to live here in this gorgeous area and raise our children in peace and what we think has ⁓ is a healthy community. You know, people love our community and and they work hard to live here. It should be nothing but lickety split. To me, it should be a press of a button. What could it possi what? There are alternatives. This is 2026. There's alternatives. Everywhere. Forget of e I mean, you've already brought them up, right? Irvine, they came and they said, but forget about Irvine. Let's say we didn't even know Irvine existed. We have AI. You can type into AI, anything. What are our alternative pesticides until we see what's going on? I do not understand the problem with simply saying, as you said, John, we don't know anything. We have no causational link yet to be on the safe side for our kids and their families. We're just gonna put a halt to this and start using the organics that the community around us. That's what blows my mind. I don't get what's going on here. speaker-1: Well, you're right. ⁓ if we didn't have Irvine as a precedent, now we have San Clemente as a precedent because they did this in Tolega. ⁓ there's there's a webpage online that speaks to many different communities around the country that have been doing this. This is not a s this isn't such a novel idea that we need to tiptoe into it. This has been done in practice by communities larger than Ladera for a very long time. So why this isn't happening? I can't answer that until ⁓ probably the HOA meeting that's coming up up on September ninth, where I believe the decision ⁓ the decision will be made on whether to have a permanent ban. So after the moratorium and after our public forum that was you know really successful, ⁓ we followed up at the Civic Council with a letter saying we want a permanent ban now. And we haven't heard anything back other than there's this advisory group. ⁓ so speaker-0: That blows my mind too. So the residents have to wait until September ninth. Now, John, whenever I'm driving by the park and there's soccer games going on or there's practice, I look at that whole a lot differently now. I'm concerned for our kids. I'm concerned for now now we should point out that CUSD, which is our local school district, and we have a couple of schools here at public schools here in La Darren Ranch, they have s supposedly ended ⁓ these harsh pesticides and herbicides, they've agreed to do that. So they are not governed by our HOA. That's a different body. So we're not talking about what's going on on the school grounds. That's a different body. But the idea of like kids are dying. Like people are literally dying and we're going to be like, yeah, we'll wait till September 9th. That's a month away. Two months from when we first started all of this. You know how many other kids are getting sick? How many of them are breathing in or soaking in? Something bad into their bodies. I know again, just to reiterate what John said, we don't have a direct link, but we don't need one when we're talking about the safety of our kids and their very lives. We should be literally doing everything possible to keep them safe, like right away. This is an emergency. speaker-1: Yeah, I agree. We can we can move a lot quicker. I you know, here's an analogy that I mentioned at the meeting. ⁓ if you're shopping for cars and one has more airbags than the other, you're probably gonna choose the car that has more airbags. Now, if you buy the car with less airbags, it doesn't mean you're gonna die in a crash. It just means, yeah, th the odds are maybe a little bit less favorable. You're gonna pick the safer product. Anything you're shopping for, you're gonna pick the safer product most of the times. All we're asking to happen here is pick the safer products. We know they exist out of an abundance of caution, like an elimination allergy diet, let's just slowly take away the things that we suspect have a bad effect on the community. And even if we even if there wasn't cancer cases here, even if pets were not sick, I would still say we should do this. I'm actually pretty shocked. I ⁓ out before this. Before July of this year, I had no idea. I was totally ignorant on what we were doing for weed control in LaDare Ranch. I come from Illinois, Chicago land area, moved here ten years ago, and I had a picture of California that's actually much different in my head than it is today. ⁓ when I th I thought when I moved here I was moving to a hippie green, you know, environmentally conscious state. And it turns out that it's a crooked, backwards, ⁓ loophole filled state. And The state that should be banning glyphosate and dangerous chemicals for use where our kids and pets are are allowing it. And I'm just I'm flabbergasted. So forget the illnesses that are happening. Let's just have a safer product applied. You know, every time you walk into a public building, I'm an architect. So you'll see in California a decal on the glass, and it'll say something like, Hey, there are known chemicals in the building that are potent potentially cause cancer according to the state of California. Okay, that's in our buildings. So how come we don't have those in our communities when we drive into a community and they're spraying the the curbside green areas and the green belts, we should have a sign saying this community is applying products that are known by the state of California cause cancer. ⁓ that doesn't exist. speaker-0: A good point. That's such a good point, John, because I've actually written articles about California's signage problem over the years, right? We have we have a signage tyranny problem here in California where even if you go to the gas, I took a picture one day. If you go to any California gas station, this is gonna sound crazy to people who don't live here, but you can look. ⁓ when you walk in, there will be a sign on the door due to Prop 65. This building is constructed with materials that may be known to cause cancer. You walk in the door, you walk to the counter, that same si sign is on the counter. You walk to the fridge, that same sign is on the fridge. It's everywhere. It's on everything. It's ridiculous. And it's on every so basically at the state is saying everything causes cancer. But the thing that we're pretty sure does cause cancer is a link at least linked to it. We don't get any signage about that. And I would just like to say, and I'm saying this on my behalf, I'm not saying this on John's behalf, but I would like to say to the HOA, you know, as a as a longtime member of the media, I'm going on 20 years in this career. I will tell you when I have questions like the one I just asked John, which is, why are we still using these? Why can't we stop them? You know what I do? I follow the money. So I wonder what that what the HOA's money is looking like and where it's going. And maybe they need to think about that before they come to the next meeting. Come correct. Because y'all need to know where we need to know where this money is or why you refuse to do the very simple act of just stopping this. To me, as a seasoned reporter, I'm always thinking, follow the money. Like people need to think about that. I'm just throwing that out there for Ladera residents. Like if you know something about this. Follow the money is really where a lot of your problems are gonna get solved. speaker-1: I think we need to ⁓ you know uncover that stone. If if you look at San Mateo County, San Mateo County is a county that switched to ⁓ the more green sustainable organic pesticide program, but they did it by eliminating financial incentives to use the current conventional harmful products. They found and discovered, ⁓ this is a couple of years ago. that the county contractors were getting kickbacks from the manufacturers of the products to ply their products. So they couldn't get a ⁓ a green organic program in, but what they did is they eliminated the incentives for the kickbacks, and then that consequently made San Mateo a greener county as a result. So what you're saying has been found to be true in other parts of California and it should be looked at whether there's something similar happening here. ⁓ I know and I've heard from a lot of residents, there's a big HOA election coming up. ⁓ in fact, candidate statements I I believe are already open right now ⁓ for submission, and they're due on September 4th, and the big meeting is coming up on September 9th, and where there's a decision regarding whether to be a ban or they're gonna do something other other ⁓ something else with this pesticide program. There are folks that have been reaching out to me. Saying that when they get on the HOA, they're gonna they're gonna basically try to answer that question that you have, Kira, is are there any financial incentives? And why do we have the same property manager and same contractor working together for so many years? speaker-0: Mm. I think these are questions that deserve to be asked. And again, my splivy senses are tingling when the HOA is less than responsive. at and that's to say the least. I have heard some reports from people in our community that the HOA seems to be blocking their efforts to find things. And so I can't report if that's true or not. And I really don't want to stir up community controversy. That's not what I'm trying to do. But this is controversial because kids are dying. Yeah, so every we should really be we should be upset. We should be energetic about this. We should be turning over every stone. That's what I don't understand. And I'm wondering if the people that are dragging their feet on this have kids. Because this to me, and then John, you mentioned pets earlier. You know, I was in our health watch group and listen, I'm on my my second dive, my first dog when we moved here to La Dera dropped dead one day in our backyard. Perfectly healthy dog. The animal control officer came over and he said, ⁓ that's weird. That really shouldn't happen with a dog that age, that size. ⁓ but we sort of dismissed it. We're like, well, maybe, you know, it's just bad luck or whatever. And then this dog that we have a year ago, she came down with cancer. You may have seen me on News Nation the other night talking about this. California Post covered it today. They dropped the story today. And you guys can go over to the Orange Report on Substack to see that story. ⁓ but I said, you know. Our dog came down with a a brain tumor a year ago. She's only seven or eight or nine. She's not that old. She's not old enough for her breed to have that. We feed her organic homemade food, like I make my dog's food. Yes, I'm sorry. I'm that Orange County. I'm that kind of Orange County. But ⁓ I said, you know, before this happened, I just kind of thought, well, we just have bad luck with dogs. But I put a thide in a thread, John, on our health watch page, and it was dozens and dozens of. And dozens, maybe we're up to a hundred or more responses of people like, No, my dog had cancer. My a lot of nose cancers for dogs. I mean, to me that points to something in the soil. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. ⁓ yeah, I've seen that and I've heard that from folks. I did see her post. You know, they're the canary in the coal mine, the pets, they're closest to the ground. That's why we're very suspicious about the pesticides. ⁓ that's why I think this is a no brainer to implement this new organic program. ⁓ we have to do something. You know, I have I have to say there's a lot of folks that have reached out to me even in the last week who are upset. ⁓ and they're upset because LaDea Ranch is in the news. And they're upset at me because I'm talking about this in the news. And ⁓ what I would say to them, and a lot of them have stories just like you mentioned, where they have a pet or ⁓ or maybe their neighbor ⁓ got sick and has cancer, and maybe their street has three people with the same cancer on it, I've heard. ⁓ what I would what I would say to these people is, you know, if you really want to fix Ledea Ranch. This is we have a national spotlight on us, and that's unfortunate. I mean, no one wants it on them for something like this. This is tragic. But I, you know, I believe, and this is what I said at the forum, we'd be doing a real disservice to all the families that were affected by this illness, and that includes pet owners. ⁓ if we didn't do something that was worthy of the national spotlight, we need to have a band. We need to be the the model community going forward. is in in re in regards to how we maintain our community, how we maintain our landscaping and the products that we're applying. And not only that, but how we trans how we convey what we're applying and when we can and when we post these signs, these signs publicly and we have clear directions on reentry into applied areas. ⁓ that's what I like to see our community do. And I believe that, you know, when we do that and turn this around. That Lidera Ranch is gonna be sh is shine greater than than ever before, and it's gonna be a model to all the neighboring ⁓ communities. We're also asking, so to go back to like why isn't this happening? It's because we are unincorporated. So what ⁓ and there and there's a lot of folks working, but I'm also working with all of our elected as well. And again, they were at the meeting in person, they heard from the families, they heard from me and the organizers, and they heard the questions in the crowd. And they've seen all the comments online. We have a real chance right now in the state of California for Ladera Ranch to inspire a law change. So for the, you know, let's just let's just assume the HOA let's just assume they say, you know what, we're not gonna do anything. ⁓ well then we have another option, back pocket options legislation. We can get a county ordinance passed. And Supervisor Foley has indicated she will help us and she is helping us to do that. And we're gonna get a couple other supervisors on board so we can get a three out of five vote on this. However, that's only gonna apply to county lands. There's a lot of county lands in in Orange County, but not that much county land in La Dare ranch, like a few percent. We really need to get a statewide measure. We need a state law. And we need a state law that's gonna ban conventional pesticides in communities and residences. Problem with that is big farming. Obviously, California is a big farming state. And from what I understand historically, that pesticide ⁓ laws and use and regulation has fallen under the ag bill, agricultural bill. And what we really need to do is divorce farming from typical suburban residences and neighborhoods and have a ban for dangerous chemicals for use where people and pets are, and then let there be something else for the farmers. Now I'd hope that they'd want to ban everything too. But we're never going to get them to see our, I don't think we're going to get them to see our point of view. So we have to divorce the two issues. There's farming and then there's towns, communities. We don't have a farm in LaDare Ranch. We don't have a farm in Irvine, right? These are not commercial, they have small areas for growing vegetables, but these aren't commercial farms. ⁓ so we need state legislation because the only thing an unincorporated community can lean on if an HOA decides to not, you know, change the policy is we have to have state law. And that's what I'm starting to spend more of my time on is making sure that some legislation gets through. And I and I can't see there's this is a this shouldn't be a political issue. Democrats and Republicans are all coming together on this issue. And there are few topics in American society that are truly, you know, bipartisan. And this has to be one of them. Kids and pets getting sick, and even adults getting sick, ⁓ That's that's a nonpartisan issue and I really hope that the folks I'm talking to in the assembly, which is Kate Sanchez and Lori Davies and Diane Dixon and some of the others will will write this legislation that we need. And I know Senator ⁓ Blake Spear is on board. She co signs co signed some ⁓ a letter that's asking for some more work. So I I'm optimistic. speaker-0: And these are Democrats and Republicans for people outside who don't know these what all these names that John just laid out, these are both both left and right, Democrat and Republican. So yes, it's bipartisan. speaker-1: Yeah, and I think we have a real opportunity, ⁓ to let what's been happening here inspire something great, not only for Ladera, not only for the county, but potentially across the whole state. I can't think of a better way to honor these families than to have a state law that does that. speaker-0: Yeah, I would I agree. And I would like to reiterate what you said about some people being uncomfortable with the news aspect of this and being the center of attention, but that is how you make change. And also I think some people are uncomfortable with some of the outlets that are reporting this. But I would say that, you know, for instance, if you see me on an outlet, it's probably gonna be a Republican or right wing outlet because that's my job. That's what I do. I don't go seek these people out. That's l literally my job. And I just happen to be living in La Terra Ranch when the biggest story of our community's history hits. So you when you see me, but but if you don't like the tone or the affiliations of the outlet that these stories are showing up on, then send it to your favorite outlet. Like we don't need to, you know, keep this on one side or the other. You write your favorite outlet. If you like ⁓ you know, ones that are more center or more left wing. Fine too. Who cares? Send them your videos. Send them your research. Send them your op-eds. You don't need to feel uncomfortable about the outlets that this is appearing in. What you need to feel uncomfortable about is that this is there this has been going on under the radar for probably about 18 years here. And I'm hearing from people who are like, yeah, I tried to say something 11, 12, 13 years ago, but no one really paid any attention to me. Well, our kids are dying. So be grateful that someone's paying attention to us so that we can help save them. I just I can't believe people are getting upset about that. Like, you know, you know, suck it up. That's what I want to say. Like, suck it up. If you have a problem with the way the media is covering this, this is a good thing for us because otherwise, what's going to happen is what happened to those other moms 12, 13 years ago. Everyone's going to label us as crazy. That these some families are going to move out, new families are going to move in. And we're gonna forget all about it and we'll start from scratch again. Well, we don't have to do that. This is a good thing. So I think people need to get over themselves. That's what I think. speaker-1: I agree. Yeah. But the coverage has been the coverage has been very ⁓ bipartisan, nonpartisan ⁓ as well. We've had major outlets in La Dera Ranch. We've had major newspapers here. ⁓ the coverage has maybe except for the word Ritzy Enclave, which I which I read. I don't think that describes us too well. ⁓ speaker-0: When I was on News Nation the other night, I was like, you know, I just wanna say that I resent this constant qualifier of wealthy enclave that I keep seeing being pr it it's like we it's almost like it it's a qualifier that disqualifies us in some way. You don't need to say that we're wealthy. Our kid, you know, the we're whatever the income level is here, death affects speaker-1: We have a wide variety. I mean they just yeah, these reporters they don't know. We definitely have a wide variety of folks here. Certainly. ⁓ then it it it's the full gamut for sure. There is speaker-0: I'm one of those people. Yeah. My family and I didn't move here with wealth. We moved here from the hood. We moved here from the inner city in search of our American dream. And I believe we found it here in LaDera Ranch, but we weren't people who came from wealth. We don't have wealthy parents. We don't have wealthy family. We're first generation builders here. There's a lot of people like us here. There's also middle class, lower middle class, upper middle class. The wealthy qualifier is just sticking in my craw because I feel like it's almost permission. It's almost giving people permission to dismiss us. Like we sort of deserve whatever we're getting. I I don't know. That maybe that's just me, but I just let's stop. We don't need the qualifier. speaker-1: We don't need the qualifier at all. You know, Ladera Ranch is an amazing community. ⁓ that's why we chose to move here from Chicago ten years ago. it's full of families. It's there's so many kids. That was the attractive part. We saw all these kids. We moved here with four kids. We had one kid here, so now we've got five. And, you know, we love this community. And I think ⁓ you know, again, we have an amazing opportunity to make this community better. and not sweep something under the rug. And I believe it will. And I think the community is going to be stronger for it. And ⁓ in many ways, this is what has happened here, as tragic as it is, really presents an amazing opportunity. And I think the good that will come out of whatever's happening right now with the legislation and even the HOA ⁓ is ultimately going to benefit us for the better. And the community and the Orange County as a whole. And I and I still think we can get something through the state. You know, if you think about Ledera Ranch, we have fields and there are visiting teams of baseball, football, soccer, flag football that come into our community. We have relatives and friends from all kinds that come to our community and play in our parks for birthdays and you know, ⁓ pop up tent things and bounce houses. We need to have We need to have a a consistent standard protocol across the county for how to treat common space, common common private space in the HOA, common public space in the county, and only state legislation I think will cover as much ⁓ land as possible. speaker-0: Yeah. And I I agree with that. But in the meantime, you know, state legislation takes years. That's a years long process. Our kids don't have years. So the HOA has the authority and the power to act right now. And that's a significant amount of power. You know, you have the opportunity to do good. You have the ⁓ you know, and that's what most people work their whole lives to have to have the opportunity to do something that can change people's lives. And you guys are sitting on this. It doesn't make sense to me, except, you know, I know the follow the money thing. And so some of us are working on following the money. But, you know, in the meantime, it is in the meantime, John, what I'm seeing happening here and what I'm really loving seeing is the community coming together. The community really has become their own watchdog. It's unfortunate that it's something like this that brings us together. But nonetheless, I am watching as you are. on all of our discussion pages and all the meetings that are going on, people really coming together. This mom's doing this research. That mom's doing that research. This dad's looking into this. So it has in a way brought us a a lot closer together and made us more aware. But I want to say I wrote an article about this the other day. But this is a Ladera Ranch is the prime example, everybody, of why Your government that's closest to you is the most important government. And that includes your HOA. You can't just act like those people are just there to to you know write you tickets for the paint chips on your house. The it is important. And John you and I talk about this all the time. We've known each other for a while now. You're a great supporter to me when I was running for school board years ago. But we have talked about this all the time. ⁓ a lot of people don't don't know. Who is their local representative? They have no idea. They can name the president, they can name their senator, their their their federal senator, but they can't name any of their local representatives. And a lot of these people get elected with four, five, six percent of the vote. Like it is a very small sliver of people who are electing the people who are now causing you problems. So this is another reason why it's very important. I don't care if it's boring to you. It's very important for you to know who is running things in your community and what they got elected on. What are they running on? Go out there, ask questions. So I think this is another, you know, good maybe a a silver lining in a very dark cloud, which is people are starting to realize, ⁓ I I shouldn't just be handing over all this control to people. I don't even know what they think about things. That's what that's why I ran for school board. I didn't realize what was going on on my school board. until it affected, you know, my kids directly during COVID. I always I live in a conservative community. I'm sure they got it. And they didn't got it. They didn't got it. And I and ⁓ we all know how that ended, ⁓ for me personally, but Speak a little bit to like what you guys do on the Civic Council, ⁓ just as representatives of the general commute volunteer representatives and why it's important for people to know. You need to know what's going on in your community. speaker-1: I'll I'll talk about that. I I want to respond to something you said earlier. You know, you're really talking about being involved and knowing your who your electeds are. So, ⁓ coincidentally, we have an election coming up. And this this what's happening in La Dera is not political, right? We've we'd established this is a bipartisan coalition. However, we do have ⁓ we do have an election coming up in November. And I happen to know that LaDera Ranch is one of the most important communities For the county supervisor chair the office to win from both Republican and Democrat side. They're both vying for Ladera Ranch. So really strangely, for the first time in years, we're getting attention from the politicians because they both know the numbers show they have to win Ladera Ranch. Okay, so this is my this is my point blank statement to Supervisor Foley. And ⁓ Assemblywoman Diane Dixon, who are both running for the fifth supervisor position, which oversees LaDare Ranch from a county perspective. If you want our vote, want LaDare Ranch to vote for you, get this done before the election. Whoever can get something done the fastest deserves our vote. And we have an assemblywoman who can get state legislature done or get something some miracle maybe ⁓ up in Sacramento, and we have Supervisor Foley who has to work with the rest of her board. But I want to urge both of you, knowing that there's an election coming up, to do the best you can to get something done because it will bode well for you in November. So that is how this timing works out. Well, we need we need a solution. We need the politicians to actually take action. There's the challenge. November is the challenge. You win our vote if you get this done for us. ⁓ going back to ⁓ the civic council and what we do and knowing who we are. Civic Council is, you know, it's an independent ⁓ group of five volunteers. We're we're we have no affiliation with the HOA at all. We're a separate advocacy five ⁓ one C four. What we tend to work on are things that fall outside of the HOA's either purview or abilities by their bylaws. Oftentimes that includes working with the elected. ⁓ so we've been doing that and and we have a ⁓ regular bi monthly meeting. And we bring all of our elected to us because for years ⁓ unincorporated communities have been ignored by our politicians. You know, we do have, you know, it's not a ritzy enclave, but I would say that we're fluent and we put an awful lot of money into the system. And we don't have a city council, and we don't have a a ⁓ representative for Ladera Ranch. Well, that's the civic council is. We're a group of five that try to represent the best interests of LaDara Ranch. And then what we do is we ask you know, Senator Blakespear's office to come. And we ask ⁓ Trustee Zollinger, a school board ⁓ trustee to come. And we ask Kate Sanchez's office and Supervisor Foley's office to come to our meetings. And it's not always them. ⁓ we might get their their district director or some other representatives, but they come to our meetings and they report on the happenings, things they're working on that we should know as residents of La Dare Ranch. And then oftentimes we give them feedback. Or they might ask us to solicit some feedback and then we'll give it to the elected and then may inform something they're working on. For example, like the e-bike ordinance that Supervisor Foley was able to get done, ⁓ I don't know if it was last year or two years ago. You know, coming out of COVID, there was a lot of e-bike crimes in in Ladera. And ⁓ so we, you know, we're we were helpful in getting some input to her on get ordinance getting done. Now we're focused, you know, really focused on getting this ban on the pesticides and ⁓ moving on to the next issue. I again This shouldn't take as long as it's taking. ⁓ common sense should prevail here. Yeah. ⁓ I hope that the there's a board. ⁓ there's a five member, you know, homeowner resident board of the HOA as well, just like us. And ⁓ and then there's a management company. And there's no reason why the board ⁓ can't pass this measure in September. speaker-0: There's no reason, to my mind, John, there's no reason they can't do it now. There's no reason. I don't care what you say about the bylaws. We're human beings. We erect these structures of governance. We can change them. This isn't we're not talking about the constitution of the United States. If you want to do something, you can do something. Because I bet the HOA or any other governing body find finds all kinds of ways to do the stuff they wanna do, right? Let's say I wanna do this, let's let's look. At the bylaws, let's hire a lawyer. Let's see how we get it done. There don't tell me we can't do it. Like that is the problem. Everybody, we're the Spider-Man meme right now where everybody's like, it's like everybody's pointing at the this person and that person. No one's in charge. Who's in charge? You know, this is what I'm saying. When it comes to our kids, it this cannot be bipartisan. You can't be hung up on the left and the right of this. You cannot. Our kids deserve better than this. And I don't care if you are politically affiliated or ideologically with whoever, wherever, and you're like, well, I don't want to say anything bad about them because it'll reflect bad on them. No, just for like five minutes suspend that, okay? Just for five minutes, suspend that. And think of our kids first. Here's the other thing I don't feel like people are thinking about. I I personally don't feel like our HOA is thinking about home values. in this community as well. Because I'll tell you what, I was thinking about getting a a new dog. You know, I was thinking about getting a puppy recently. But after all of this, I'm like, no way, I'm not putting a new puppy into this environment where it's going to develop cancer in five years, maybe. And I was thinking, well, gee, whiz, if that stopped me from just doing that, how many people are considering buying here? And are now going or renting here. We have lots of renters here. Buy you know, how many people are considering moving here and spending their good money for our commun the value of our community? And then going, you know what? I don't know. I don't know about that because I really don't want to risk something like this happening to my child in 10 or 15 years. So we're not just talking about, it's not just about, isn't this a weird cancer cluster or well? you know, we'll deal with it this way or that. It's it's not only about the kids, although to my mind it should only be about the kids. Some people only understand money, unfortunately. And that's another thing we're not talking about, which is that the property values in Ladero Ranch are getting ready to go down. We're already getting ready to hit, you know, ⁓ a property fall here in the state of California, the all of the stuff that's been going on. We're gonna see a decline in in property value pretty soon. But in Orange County, that's very rare for property to really go down that much. It's only ever really going up in Orange County. But in LaDera Ranch, when you're talking about people maybe losing their kids, losing their pets, there are people who are going to be and probably it's already happening, going to consider not moving here and not purchasing here and not buying into the vision of LaDera Ranch because they don't want their kids to die. speaker-1: Yeah, I mean I I understand that concern. ⁓ but my the way I think the prominent thing is kids. Kids, pets, others, people, people and pets. ⁓ property values are like stocks. They go up and down. ⁓ we might take a hit. We might not. ⁓ we'll see. ⁓ if we do t I think it depends on what we do. I think there's a lot of folks waiting. Yeah, I think a lot of folks are waiting to see what happens here. They know what the problem is, they know why it's important. They know how to fix it. We're just waiting on the action. And you're right, you know, the HOA could respond and s and do the right thing. And I'm actually I'm I'm I'm more optimistic now than I have been in the last three or four weeks that they will do the right thing. I still think we don't need to wait to September ninth and have a big rah rah reading ⁓ at the HOA. I think they just issue a statement, Hey, we've we we're gonna change and go forward. That's the best way to handle this. ⁓ but a lot depends on what happens now, and then also what happens with, you know, ⁓ an either a county ordinance or state law coming out. Any of those things happen, it benefits our community, it benefits, you know, the value of all of our homes and property here. But you know, I'm I'm not so short sighted. I know it's like it's like again, buying a stock. We're not day traders here. I live in my house, I have no plans to sell this for a very long time, God will. And so the folks that are only worried about the home value and the property value, well, I'd say shame on you. We're doing a disservice to the people that have been affected by these illnesses, but only thinking about money. And it's time to have an appropriate response. We gotta do the right thing. And when we do the right thing, people will notice, and guess what? We'll be very desirable once again. We're just waiting for that one little we're waiting for it to happen. That's the trigger, this decision coming up. They're the ones that are gonna sell. speaker-0: Yeah, I feel like why can't why don't we just do it the opposite way? Stop everything now and then at the September ninth meeting decide if you're gonna start it back up again. That's how that should work. Not keep everything going and then decide if you're gonna keep everything going. I just to me, again, this is another example of the bureaucratic boondoggle that like people just get caught up in red tape and then I don't know, a lot of people don't feel like they can act as individuals anymore when they join. You have power. You have power. That's what you joined that body for. And people don't want to use the power that they have when they get it. And everybody just wants to be like, well, I can't I don't know. You know, it's not in the bylaws. You know, screw the bylaws. Kids are dying. Kids are dying. I don't know how many times I have to say this. Children are dying. We have lost children in our community. Parents are, they're lives and their families are changed forever. Like get mad of I don't understand. Get mad about that. Get mad about that. These are our neighbors. These are our people. And we should be looking out for them. Nobody else is. speaker-1: Hundred percent. Hundred percent. Agree. ⁓ that's that's why you've seen such a groundswell of support. That's why again we've seen all these politicians paying attention to LaDare Ranch, ⁓ sincerely wanting to do the right thing for us. And I and I credit all of them for for their attention at the meeting, before the meeting, and now the last two weeks following up with letters to the EPA. We've got letters from a lot of you know, we got letters from our assembly woman Sanchez, Dixon, Davies. all requesting that ⁓ you know all federal ⁓ you epa ⁓ all that the EPA come down here do an an event investigation. We've got Katrina Foley asking Governor Newsom to let go of all the agencies and let them come down here and and figure out what's gone. By the way, going back to Newsome and not being able to get anything done in this state, why don't he why doesn't he just ban pesticides like he banned ⁓ you know walking mask free in public during COVID? Why don't we do that? If he has the power to put masks on people Then he's got the power to do a a a moratorium across the entire state on conventional pesticides while the state figures this out. So I'll challenge Governor Newsom to do the right thing here. speaker-0: Excellent point, John. Excellent point. Yeah. I mean, ⁓ think about during the last six years, like all of the regulations that came at the drop of a hat, and we were expected to follow it immediately with no lead in time. They didn't wait. ⁓ we'll give you 30 days to comply. No, we were told to comply immediately. So it can be done. Again, I would say follow the money. You know, we follow the money with it. The nuisance are already under investigation from the FBI. So maybe they don't want that kind of scrutiny. But, you know, maybe he could avoid some of that scrutiny by just doing the right thing and banning it for all of us. You're absolutely right. That was a great point. ⁓ you know, we've spent this entire hour talking about this and and that's great. So I I think I'm gonna wind down the show here. I was gonna get to some headlines, but I'll do that later. ⁓ but before we go, John, tell us where ⁓ just recap where things stand now for the community, as far as you know, ⁓ for the community of LaDera Ranch. And what if there are people in the community who are wondering how they can get involved or where can they find more information? Just run that down for us real quick. speaker-1: There's a long answer to a lot of that. ⁓ okay, first, they're from a political perspective, the electeds, a lot of them, including you know Federal Congress and Mike Levin, they've all reached out to the EPA on our behalf. So we are waiting. And I don't know whether the EPA has responded. I believe they've acknowledged the request, but I don't believe they've started the investigation yet. So there's always been two paths. And I talked about this in our public forum. The first path is is easy. Ban the pesticides, cross it off our list. Second path is diagnose what the heck is going on here. And then we figure it out. Okay, so the first path is what I'm talking about. The first path is getting HOA to approve a full-time ban on conventional pesticides. That meeting is September 9th ⁓ in LaDare Ranch. It's an HOA meeting that's on the calendar. This topic is on it because it's from a letter that I authored for the Civic Council requesting a moratorium. So the ban track The next step is September 9th. Unless they make a decision before that, they will let the residents know by email. The second track is investigating what's going on here. So the agencies are we're waiting for the agencies to come down here, whether it's Cal EPA, US EPA, California Department of Public Health, Orange County Health Agency, all of them have ⁓ been requested to come to Ladera and do investigations. As far as I know. None of that has started yet. We're still very early into the request, but ⁓ the fact that they've been asked for help is a very positive sign. But the ball is in a lot of these big agencies court to come down here and do the investigation and then advise us on, you know, what is causing all of these illnesses and what's the best way to mitigate. speaker-0: Before I let you go, John, have you heard about this ⁓ guy who's been exposing himself ⁓ here in LaDera Ranch at the Trader Joe's? Have you heard this? speaker-1: I you know, I just saw the Facebook post this morning and that was it. Just the post is all I've seen. I hadn't seen anything else. speaker-0: Nothing. Nobody's naked buddy. Nobody no one reports. Well, just since we're on the topic of Ladera Ranch, this is very local for me. I don't usually get this local on the show. But if some community members are watching, just be alert that a man has been arrested for exposing himself to women in the Trader Joe's parking lot here in LaDera Ranch. He's described as a Hispanic male, about six, one. with a haircut that's short on the sides but longer on the top. Sometimes he has a middle part or he has it slicked back. A woman reported taking her groceries ⁓ to her vehicle and the man pulled in behind her, essentially blocking her in, asked her for help. And when she turned to talk to him, she realized that he had exposed himself in his vehicle and was masturbating. And unfortunately, you can imagine she was shocked. Unfortunately, she was not the only one. It turns out it's happened a few more times to young women and women, but young women in particular to some minors here in La Dara Ranch. So if you see this guy's driving some kind of sedan, I think a Honda cord, light colored sedan, if you see this guy report him, the police did end up picking him up, but it's California, so they had to let him go. speaker-1: That's horrible. I I feel bad. I feel really bad for those those women. This should not be happening in the around. speaker-0: No, I keep listening we don't play about this because we move from a place where that is like regular. So I'm probably like the most hardcore Ladera resident as far as like preserving the values and the safety of this community ⁓ at all costs because I know what can happen when you don't hold the line on even the little things. And so I don't want to see that again, but I do want to put out that warning for people. I just want to say, you know, as somebody as the vice chair of the civic Council, ⁓ you know, what might the civic council do in a case like this? Well, could they advocate for us? Was, you know, I don't know. And no one's taken this issue to this. I mean, it's just happened. So no one's taking it to the civic council yet. But I was just wondering, ⁓ if I if I wanted to, you know, could I bring this up at a civic council meeting and could we talk about it there? Or is that something that the Civic Council would even discuss? speaker-1: Well, every time we have a public meeting, we invite Orange County Sheriff's Department and the California Highway Patrol there. So they're present at every meeting and they give us updates on all the crime in the area. And historically Ladera has been very low crime. ⁓ again, an amazing place to live and raise a family. These incidents are so rare. This is the first I've even heard of something like this in LaDera Ranch in ten years at least, so that I've been here. ⁓ but yeah, it's an appropriate topic for the public meeting. And ⁓ I'm sure that our representatives from OCSD would have some recommendations on what to do and how to protect yourselves in the public from just, you know, that and other other situations. Like there has been pickpocketing in the past. ⁓ and so they have advised residents on what to do to, you know, ⁓ protect themselves from pickpocketing. speaker-0: Lidera, before I let John go, can I just tell you, Lidera, listen, I've lived all over this country and I've lived every kind of life. I've lived in the rural America, I've lived in the suburbs, I've lived in the hood. I have lived in the nice part of the city. I've lived every kind of life you could live in this country. And what we have here is special and the way that it is preserved is for the community to police itself. So I'm gonna encourage y'all out there to be Karen's. Go ahead and be the Karen's. Go ahead. That's fine. I'm not gonna judge you, you know. And if someone does judge you, okay. I'm gonna be a Karen, you be a Karen too. I mean, we give Karen's a bad name, but sometimes Karen's are the only ones keeping us on the straight and narrow, as annoying as they are. So LaDera, be the Karen. We have to police our own community and protect ourselves. We can't just wait for outside law enforcement to do it, although You know, not that I'm saying you should do anything crazy, but I'm just saying when we police ourselves, when we report, when we run these people out of town, that's when we're safest because as we've been talking this whole episode, we're not incorporated. We depend on the sheriff to come in and the sheriff might be busy elsewhere, like, ⁓ I don't know, Newport Beach during a teen takeover or something, you know. The sheriff might be busy. So we need to make our home inhospitable. To inhospitable people. That's what I have to say. John, tell us anything you would like to add about the civic council or you yourself before we let you go. speaker-1: Well, we have an election happening right now. It's an annual election. There are three seats ⁓ available. Mine is one of them. And ⁓ we are accepting candidate statements applications right now. You can go to our website, www.lrciviccouncil.org. You can find the form on there and you can submit. The ⁓ submissions are due by the end of August, I believe, and the election will happen in the first ⁓ the first or second week of September, I can't remember, but all the information is on lrciviccouncil dot org and we encourage anybody. We have a lot to fight for in Ledare right now. Yeah. ⁓ I've spent five years on this on the council. It's been very rewarding. I don't think right now I'm running again. I would absolutely love to see good people that love this community run and carry the torch. ⁓ because ⁓ as we've talked about for the last hour, there's some important issues going on right now and you people have an opportunity to step up, work with our politicians, be a voice for all of our residents and make this community better. speaker-0: I agree. I love LaDera Ranch. I feel privileged to be here. I've raised my two children here who are adults now. and ⁓ we have had a beautiful experience in LaDera Ranch. So I feel very strongly about protecting our community as well. And I hope everyone feels the same. We're grateful for this lovely place to raise fam raise families in, and it deserves a good defense. John, thank you so much for taking the time to come talk to us today and sit with us for an hour and just drill down on this. I'll be at the next meeting and I hope everybody else will be as well and we'll we'll go from there. But you know, stay vigilant, everybody. John, thank you so much. speaker-1: Thank you, Kara, appreciate it. speaker-0: And I'll say goodbye to everybody and don't forget that sunlight is the best disinfectant. So keep on shining a light out there. Peace out.