Author: ICNV Staff

Irvine City Councilmember Larry Agran submitted a Memo to his Council colleagues, requesting that his resolution on clean energy be added to the next Council meeting. No one agreed to sign on to Agran’s request. Because of the Mayor’s “Rule of Two,” Agran’s resolution was not added to the agenda.

Earlier this year, the Council adopted an aspirational resolution, supporting the City’s commitment to reaching carbon neutrality by 2030. It’s unclear why the same Councilmembers now refuse to even discuss Agran’s resolution to help meet the City’s goal.

In 2020, the previous City Council agreed to fund the Orange County Power Authority (OCPA) through 2022. So far, the City has advanced $7.5 million of Irvine taxpayer money to the Power Authority, with no oversight by the current Council.

Last week, Councilmember Larry Agran stated: “I have been on this Council since December of last year. Here we are nearly a year later and because of the ‘Rule of Two,’ I can’t even get a presentation from the OCPA to determine if the City should be a part of this entity or if we are being put at grave financial risk.”

Climate scientists say that we must achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, if we are to avoid an irreversible ecological tipping point. That is 20 years earlier than previous estimates, which means we must immediately accelerate our efforts.

Thanks to the commitment of more than 200 Irvine residents who have volunteered to be Cool Block leaders, our City joins two others (Los Angeles and Petaluma) in receiving a $1 million grant from the Empowerment Institute to help fund a climate “moonshot strategy.”

We recently asked readers to let us know where YOU think the long-promised Veterans Memorial Park & Cemetery should be built — here in Irvine on the ARDA site at the Great Park, or alongside the 91 freeway at the Gypsum Canyon site out towards Riverside County.

We are sharing a small sampling of the many, many comments we have received.