Big City Council Meeting Next Week
As we begin the month of July, the Irvine City Council is busy with several things. They are apprising citizens on the long overdue General Plan update, dismantling the Irvine Community Land Trust and hiring a new city manager after 13 years with Sean Joyce at the helm.
The Council faces many challenges, including managing the changes associated with growth as Irvine continues to evolve. While navigating the political landscape, city leaders also are keenly aware that voters are focusing on transparency and good governance.
With that in mind, this Tuesday, July 10th is particularly important. The city council will vote on council member Lalloway’s specific agenda item and motion to recognize the June 5th decision of Irvine voters – to begin anew the process of building the veterans’ cemetery at the originally approved great park ARDA site. This agenda item originates from a voters’ referendum that reversed a council decision by three members (Wagner, Fox, Shea) in October 2017. On June 5th, 63% of Irvine voters rejected developer FivePoint’s proposed zone change, land-swap, and development plan. Now, we will see if our leadership will listen to what the majority of their constituents have said.
If you have time, please come out and attend this pivotal city council meeting on Tuesday, July 10th. Watchdog volunteers will certainly be present to see how our elected leaders respond to the Measure B outcome. Ask yourself – are they respecting the process, listening to the voice of the voter and looking out for what’s best for the city, or are they working for some other agenda? Please don’t pass up this opportunity to be involved. The timing couldn’t be better for this council meeting, because the Mayor’s position is up for re-election in November, and the nomination period to file begins on July 16th. This meeting will be another opportunity for Mayor Wagner to set the right tone at the top. Will he do so? Will the council start work to get the cemetery back on track or cloud the issue in rhetoric and confusing double talk?
If there was ever a time for clear, concise communication and action, this is it.
One thing is for sure. The entire council’s leadership, words, and actions will be showcased. No matter your view on the cemetery, we need our elected officials to utilize their sharpest impartial civic judgment and demonstrate their strong ethical standards next week. Let’s see if they do so.
5 Comments
Gail Lewis
July 6, 2018 at 9:43 amI will be there and hopefully the hall will be filled. The council need to know, we the residents, voters are paying attention and we want the Vet Cemetery in the Great Park.
Ernie Ball
July 7, 2018 at 10:41 amThank you for posting this info. Melissa finds herself in an untenable position, she failed to deliver the vote on the land swap for Emile and went against her constituency by trying to help 5pt. Does she come crawling back to the people or does she convince Emile she’s not totally useless?
Gail Lewis
July 7, 2018 at 12:30 pmEmile now wants the Cemetery in Anaheim and the three, Wagner, Shea and Fox will try to do his bidding. Emile still needs his 3 mouth pieces. I should be an interesting meeting.
Questions
July 7, 2018 at 4:40 pmSince your group is all about transparency, where are the studies for the ARDA site? How much traffic will a cemetery create there? Where will the $40 million of additional money come from to fund the ARDA cemetery? Why does Lalloway say it is reimbursable when the Federal and State laws says it isn’t? How does a no vote on something equal a yes vote on something else? Why wouldn’t IRG be in favor of putting the cemetery at the ARDA site to a vote of the citizens of Irvine and opposing the traffic? How did Agran, an out of work career politician, spend $600,000 on a referendum? Why doesn’t IRG care about these questions?
Karen Jaffe
July 7, 2018 at 6:04 pmTo “Questions”: From our research and calls to several cemeteries in SoCal, cemeteries generate on average 750 to 1000 ADT which is far far less than the entitlements that the land swap was going to put on that site. Given that the city was just fine with the studies that supported 9,000 ADT on that site, the above numbers should be more than supported by those (outdated) studies as well. The state was ready to authorize $30 million last year before the land swap and the city then told the state they didn’t want the money perhaps because they were confident that the swap would go through? Even if the swap went through, your same question remains – where is the money coming from to build the cemetery? During his tour, Brown said he would help the city build the cemetery when the city decided where it should go. The voters have spoken and the city should honor the voters. There is another $10 comes from the federal government. As for your question regarding Agran, Irvine Watch Dog supports any citizen bringing a referendum or petition to forward an issue that they believe is in the best interests of the voters. That is true democracy. The sad truth is that is takes money to play in politics. Should it only be the developer funded PACs that enable political votes and decisions? Is that a true representative democracy? Good for Agran for raising the money and we applaud any citizen who is able to do that. The IRG petition did not raise enough money to combat the false mailers and deceitful campaigns and thus they fell just short of the 12K signatures required. The volunteer efforts however have redoubled and there is more interest now than even before to ensure that the citizens of Irvine get a voice in our city. We DO care, otherwise, we wouldn’t have started this blog!!
P.S. It’s always nice when folks are willing to put a name with their comments. We strive to be open and act with integrity substantiated with fact. As such we put our names with our comments.
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