Month: May 2021

For many veterans and our families, the words spoken by public officials at this year’s Memorial Day ceremonies will ring a little hollow.

We still don’t have a Veterans Memorial Park, even though thousands of residents have reached out to the Mayor and Council to voice their support; 19,790 Irvine citizens signed an initiative petition that designated the ARDA site as the only legally available location for the Veterans Memorial Park; and 28,638 Irvine voters cast their ballots in support of the Veterans Memorial Park being built on the ARDA site.

For five decades, individual members of the City Council have been able to place items of concern to citizens on City Council meeting agendas for Councilmembers and the entire Irvine community to discuss.

From a political standpoint, the Rule of Two has been an effective maneuver to silence Councilman Agran. But, in doing so, tens of thousands of Irvine residents have also been silenced.

The City of Irvine has hired a large law firm in anticipation of a costly legal battle over the City’s refusal to transition to district elections.

On May 18th, Orange County officially moved to the least restrictive yellow tier in the State’s COVID-19 tier system.

However, the State’s indoor mask mandate will remain in effect until June 15th. The four-week delay is intended to give businesses time to make adjustments and for more people to get vaccinated before the State fully reopens.

Last May, Mayor Farrah Khan and Councilmembers Anthony Kuo and Mike Carroll voted to rezone the ARDA site in the Great Park exclusively for a Veterans Memorial Park & Cemetery.

A year later, Khan, Kuo, and Carroll say the project isn’t moving forward because they are waiting for a $700,000 CalVet study to be completed (comparing the ARDA site to another piece of property in Irvine) before they decide which site the City will transfer to the State — ignoring the fact that it was their vote last year that changed City law, making the ARDA site the only legally available location for a Veterans Memorial Park.