Author: Roger Bloom

In the face of federal and state inaction, Irvine has begun exploring the idea of creating a local plan to move highly dangerous nuclear waste now stored at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station site — located between San Clemente and Oceanside — to a more secure and safer facility.

All of the speakers agreed that the current situation at the San Onofre plant site was not intended to be permanent, and that the federal government is still decades away from having a national waste repository, originally promised for 1998.

On June 10th, the Irvine City Council passed a balanced two-year operations budget to guide some...

The Irvine City Council approved a “living wage” ordinance, setting wages for the lowest paid City employees and contract workers well above the state minimum wage.

“The basic question is what kind of workplace do we want to have?” said Mayor Larry Agran, who introduced the ordinance.

Setting up a new library system is no walk in the park — or browse in the stacks. Just ask Julie Zeoli. As Irvine’s first City Librarian, Zeoli has been charged with managing the changeover of the City’s libraries from County to City control.

“We’re doing an interior refresh of both,” Zeoli says. “New furniture, new computers, new carpeting and paint, so there will be a physical transformation of those two buildings.”

Betty Martinez Franco was sworn in as the Irvine City Council’s newest member on May 13th, and got a good taste of what she’s gotten herself into during the meeting that followed.

She closed by saying, “I am ready to get to work, to collaborate with our Mayor and my fellow Councilmembers to build an Irvine where diversity is not just tolerated but celebrated, where equity is not just a promise but a practice, and where inclusion is not just a buzzword, it’s how we govern.”