A Sit Down with Melinda Liu
This conversation was held in the beginning of July 2026.
Budget Shortfall & Impact on City Services
Christopher Wong (CW): How is the budget shortfall going to affect the services that the City offers and specifically for your district?
Councilmember Melinda Liu (ML): We’re gonna have to do a balance between maintaining service, maintaining quality of life, versus being fiscally responsible. Vanity projects need to go. Just like personal finances, you cut out all the eating out and movies or things that are not necessary.
I know there’s a lot of talk about the individual councilmember’s budget. We’ve inherited that, but I have to take responsibility for everything we inherited. We are looking to cut.
There are definitely structural issues that we have to examine. We don’t want to go into a deeper hole moving forward. If you look at the last few meetings, every time we have a new fee structure proposed, we’re looking at close to 100% cost recovery. The current system we’re subsidizing fees at 50%. That means taxpayers who are not using city facilities are subsidizing that. That’s not sustainable. At a bare minimum, we’ve got to recover costs.
Another reason is the economy, right? We didn’t predict it to be this bad. Sales tax went down. We see it. TOT is another one; like people are just not traveling. So revenue went down, and then we have this expense, right? So when we look at it, we need to see where we are spending money. How is this going to benefit the city’s future? If it’s not, then I would say, let’s not spend the money, right? It’s a matter of allocation. We are still a very financially sound city. We have a lot in reserve. We have a lot in investments. So how do we manage finances so that expenses don’t exceed our income?
City Manager Search
CW: So Sean Crumby (The City Manager) is retiring. Is the city going to commit to spending the money for a search for a long-term city manager?
*Note: At the City Council meeting on 7/28/2026, the City Council hired Sean Joyce as interim city manager for a year*
ML: To be honest, I would rather not. In a perfect world, we’ll bring someone up who knows the city, who is knowledgeable, who has institutional knowledge. I think as a society in general, as a whole, we don’t value people’s institutional knowledge and experience. We need someone who knows the city. Now, having said that, I think, and I think what they told us, and this is just off the top of my head, I don’t quite remember this. It’s like $30 to $50,000 to do a search. Probably more than that, actually. So if it’s that, okay, well then it’s worth looking into that, right?
At the end of the day, if we’re looking for someone who is knowledgeable about California law, who has connections in this region, who is experienced, we’re probably gonna end up with either an internal candidate or someone who’s been around Orange County. So, at that point, is it even worth it to go for a nationwide search or just say we’re gonna look in Southern California? We need to see if there’s a price difference. So all of that needs to be considered. I’m not married to any of the ideas. I’m willing to listen and see what makes the most sense. We need to get the best bang for our buck.
Budget & Development
CW: One of the slices of the pie that fuels our budget is property taxes. So would we still be looking at more development in order to help maybe bring in extra money, possibly to help offset the budget woes?
ML: It’s a lot more complicated than that, right? Like if you’re purely—if you’re purely factoring your development decisions on whether you’re gonna bring in additional revenues, that’s not the whole picture, because more people need more service. More service means more expense. So is it gonna balance out?
What services are nice to have? What services do we need? Want vs need, right? What services are absolutely necessary? Public Safety, definitely. You said earlier that we have a lot of police, and we do need a lot of police because we want to maintain our city’s safety. A lot of residents are surprised to find out, when I talk to them, that we are 1,000 residents to one sworn officer.
But we’re safe, but we’re also, you know, that’s the balance, right? Like, you look somewhere else that may have a higher crime rate. That ratio’s gonna look very different from Irvine. So, where do we find that sweet spot? All of these will have to be studied; you know, the decisions need to be backed by data.
District Representation & Services
CW: Shifting to services for the City, I’ve talked to you before about equity and equality for your district in reference to the city as a whole. I know that you serve all of Irvine, not just your district, but how do you ensure that city services are equitably represented in your district and that you’re not left behind in needs or wants?
ML: Well, so you look around, like, this is one of the least affordable ZIP codes in America. So do we have needs? Absolutely. We don’t have a permanent library. The Katie Wheeler Library could go anytime after our lease is up. We don’t have a community center. Anytime we’re doing anything we have to go somewhere else. It’s definitely inconvenient. But is it pressing? Arguably not, right?
Do we have actual needs here in this district specifically? Yes, we do, right?
Fire prevention. We’re doing pretty well working with OCFA on all of the new developments backing up to the open space area. Every time we have a new development, they have to come in, they have to inspect, they have requirements on how to protect homes, with setbacks, setting clearance areas, and all that, and it’s proven to help make homes a little more fire-resistant. The city is working on conservation and restoration to put in native fire-resistant plants. Every little bit counts.
Insurance. We are bringing in the state insurance office to come and bring information to residents. That’s the extent of what we can do on a local level, because that’s out of our control.
These actions are low cost but high return. My Office puts on town halls consistently. We’ve put on about 10 of them already in the last 6 months. That’s just to bring in information, to open up a room and bring in the experts. Those are things that are actually low cost, but high return, right?
You bring that information, and I push it on my social media for free, and people can follow that. So there are things we can do to bring services and benefits to the residents without spending a lot of money. It’s not always let’s throw money at it.
Katie Wheeler Library & Future Infrastructure
CW: You touched upon the Katie Wheeler library. Do you have any kind of long-term plans of what we’re going to try to do as a city to this? I know that you and Betty (Martinez Franco) are in the same position. The land the library sits on is leased and I found that other cities have had to buy out their land at a great expense. I’m not sure that Irvine really wants to spend a good chunk of their investment fund on that. Is there something else that the city possibly can do?
ML: So, this is another problem that we inherited. We’re essentially getting—to describe it in a very short way—half of the money to run the same facilities, which is, for obvious reasons, not the best way moving forward.
Now, my problem is slightly different from Betty’s, because the University Park Library is a city structure on county land; we own that structure. Katie Wheeler is a county structure on county land—we don’t own it at all. On top of that, it is in an enclosed county park, so it’s highly unlikely that there is any interest in selling it to us at all.
Obviously, we don’t want to lose a library. We have identified a site that we could probably get, and it is very conveniently located in this district. The issue now is the design cost, the construction cost, and, obviously, the ongoing operation and maintenance costs. But the operation and maintenance costs would be similar to what we had to do with Katie Wheeler, right? All the other things would be one-time costs that we would spend…
So, what I’ve been told is that to build a structure like that, it will be kind of hard. I didn’t get an estimate, but it will be hard to get that started. That’s the first hurdle—I mean, that’s the biggest hurdle, actually. With the way we are dealing with our library funds right now, we simply don’t even have enough to maintain what we currently have, let alone move forward.
It’s the same issue with the main library, which I’ve been a big part of. Thank goodness the residents in Great Park are really enthusiastic about it and are willing to start fundraising for it. We don’t have that same coherent effort in District 1 because we still have Katie Wheeler for another three years. But obviously, I’m also looking long-term.
If we do secure the community center site, that will turn into a community center/library space. Modern libraries are no longer the libraries we used to have—you know, where you go in with little cards and microfiche. That’s not the case anymore; it’s more of a gathering space. So, that will be the idea. I did go to some of the planning meetings, and residents are very interested in having a new, modern library space like that.
If or when we are able to secure the site and come into funding, that’s definitely something we can pursue. But as of right now, we all have this $6,000,000 budget issue, so we do need to be a little more careful with that.
Budget Balancing & Reserves
CW: Okay, bouncing back to the budget. Do you think we will be able to get a balanced budget during the August meeting?
ML: We should. Because, honestly, this is not the first time (this has happened).
CW: Right. We’ve had overruns consistently in the past.
ML: Yes. So, and that’s my—that’s my frustration. I think there is a lot of misinformation out there. Budgeting in general—you’re just making a best estimate, right? Your best guess based on past data, and it’s a projection. Then you have to balance it up at the end of the quarter, mid-year, end of the year, end of the budget cycle—you know, you need to balance it and reconcile all the numbers. We’ve had budget deficits, and we just moved money from the reserve, which is what the reserves are for.
If you remember back in 2024, there was an attempt to spend down our budget reserve. I was on the Finance Commission at the time, and I put a stop to that.
Because it came on our agenda, and I looked at it and said, “What in the world are we doing?” So I started doing research and realized the recommended reserve level should be two months of your expenses or your revenue, right? Which comes out to be 16.7%. We are at 22% to 23% consistently for a reason, because 5% of that is readily available to be spent—it doesn’t need extra Council approval in case we can’t provide basic services or pay our payroll, or what have you.
Economic Development Office
CW: Are you excited about the Economic Development Office at City Hall?
ML: Yes, actually, I am, because that is actually working. Even if we don’t have the physical center set up yet, the office is already operational, and Karen has done such a great job. I nominated her for the ACCOC Award, and she won, right? I’m very happy to recognize her for that because she has brought in so many businesses to either return to Irvine, invest in Irvine, or expand in Irvine. That represents hundreds of jobs created from all these companies coming in.
I personally had that experience with the SBA when I worked with small businesses, and I realized you have a lot of people with great ideas who know what they’re doing, but they have a hard time navigating the bureaucratic maze, right? The fact that we have this office with experts who are guiding people through and saying, “Here are all these other resources you need,” and connecting them directly—it cuts down on a lot of time. Time is money for a business, and it’s great that they’re able to start, grow, and expand. That’s good for us.
Affordable Housing & Homeownership
CW: You touched a little bit upon affordability in Irvine. Besides trying to keep down fees that we charge people—which you already mentioned you’re trying to do—the only other real tool we have is affordable housing. Are you ensuring that upcoming projects always include affordable housing? How do you ensure that is taken care of?
ML: There’s policy versus politics. The policy states that if it’s public land, 25% has to be affordable. If it’s private land, 15% is required by law.
Here’s another thing I want to discuss: when we say “affordable,” people are like, “Oh my gosh!” I’ve actually had people say to me, “I don’t want to live with those people.” And I said, “Those people are your children, unfortunately.” They’re my children. They’re your children who worked very hard to go to college, get a good job, and now they can’t afford anything. They’re making $90,000.
$90,000 is below the Area Median Income (AMI) of Irvine. To qualify for affordable housing, you need to make 80% of AMI. Our Area Median Income—and we can both cry about this—80% of our AMI, as of a couple of weeks ago when I got curious and looked, is over $100,000. So people making $100,000 are considered low-income in Irvine!
There is a new project that just opened up, Cartwright, for small families. These are households making $90,000 to $100,000. We laugh about it because otherwise, we’d really cry. My kids’ friends are back playing cards at my house like they’re in high school—and these are good kids.
They have good jobs, and they can’t afford to go anywhere else. You feel bad for them because there’s really no future for them to buy a house. It’s not enough for us just to build rental units; I really want to look into smaller units that they can actually buy so they can take advantage of building equity, right? Otherwise, they’re never going to save enough money to move into their own home.
Homeownership is out of reach at this point, and we all know that once you have homeownership, that’s how you build generational wealth. It’s really sad.
So going back to the politics part: we have seven people on Council. We need enough of us to say, “Hey, if you don’t include enough affordable units, we are not going to approve this project.” That’s the politics part—we need enough Council members to stand firm and say if there isn’t enough affordable housing, we won’t approve it.
Utility Costs
CW: There’s been a rise in utilities such as waste management. I know that there are two main drivers to that cost. One was sorting out the green waste and the other was the increase in the overall tonnage rates. Both of those increases are passed directly to customers.
With electricity—natural gas hasn’t hit as hard, but it’s still tough—water has definitely gone up. Is there anything you can do as a Council member to address any of this? I know a lot of it is out of your hands and belongs to the CPUC, but…
ML: Yes. CPUC has a lot to do with electricity costs, right? That’s being litigated right now, and there isn’t much we can do. The only thing we can do on a local level essentially is write letters—the same thing any resident can do. I don’t know how much more weight we carry just having ‘Councilmember’ after our names, right? Maybe a little more because we represent a large group of people, but that’s the extent of what we can do. We’re essentially at the mercy of policymakers in Sacramento and the utility providers.
That’s why I think it’s important for us to continue our membership with OCPA (Orange County Power Authority), because that offers a choice and an alternative to a monopoly, right? Hopefully, that can mitigate some of the impact. We will see, because there have already been two proposed price increases on Southern California Edison’s part. If you can afford it and choose it, that’s your choice. Go for it. I don’t like making policies that box people in and dictate what they have to do or pay.
With trash, we have fewer options because trash is not managed by us directly. OC Waste & Recycling (the county) manages all three landfills. With the Olinda Alpha Landfill closing, we’re looking at extra costs, tonnage issues, and tipping fees.
Going back in history, what happened—long story short—is nobody had the courage to say, “Look, costs went up, and we need to cover those costs.” So we kicked the can down the road for over a decade. All of a sudden, we reached the point where we can’t afford to keep hiding the fact that costs went up, so now everybody has to feel the pain. That’s why there’s a drastic increase in our trash fees—Waste Management just does a direct pass-through, right? They pay the landfills, and then we pay them. It’s basically collecting money to pay the landfill; we don’t have a choice.
The silver lining in this whole thing is that at least we are a host city. We get a benefit—a host fee paid to us by OC Waste & Recycling for being located next to the landfill. That’s one thing.
CW: People were complaining about the landfill, but as you said, that’s a County facility. Has there been enough mitigation citywide to make sure that it stays contained?
ML: Yes. The city has been trying to negotiate with Caltrans so we can build a dedicated off-ramp off the 241 toll road. Caltrans has not been receptive to the idea, so that has been ongoing for two or three years now.
We essentially have every other agency in agreement. Every agency has its own rules and concerns, and we’re trying to meet them where they are. The goal is to prevent trash trucks from using our city streets, which tears up our roads and creates traffic concerns.
As far as odor is concerned, there were some South Coast AQMD complaints earlier this year. I sent a letter to the community saying, “Look, you have to mitigate this; you have to do something about it.” Part of it is that Bowerman Landfill and OC Waste & Recycling had a plan to capture methane. Well, they do capture methane—they have a renewable electric generator up there along with gas flares to burn off the excess.
Anaheim was buying the renewable electricity and wanted to build a natural gas plant up there. That natural gas plant was put on hold due to environmental issues. So when the odor complaints came out, I wrote a letter saying, “This is why you need it.” Instead of flaring it off and creating more air pollution, utilizing it makes more sense.
Last I heard, they received the approval; it’s underway, and the County has already signed off. That should be happening soon, and hopefully, that will mitigate some of the odor issues. I know they are also spraying and monitoring very closely.
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