Since taking office last December, Irvine Mayor Farrah Khan and her Council majority — Vice Mayor Tammy Kim and Councilmembers Anthony Kuo and Mike Carroll —  have downplayed the more than 1,000 complaints lodged by north Irvine residents regarding toxic and noxious emissions from the nearby All American Asphalt (AAA) plant.

Senator Min responded to the City in a remarkable letter — which was almost a legal brief — disputing claims by the Mayor and her Council majority that there was nothing the City of Irvine could do to help residents impacted by the asphalt plant. Min explained that “the City of Irvine possesses broad and sweeping authority to act immediately and decisively in addressing the problems created by the AAA plant.”

The Great Park ARDA site makes up about 10% of the land that was transferred to the City of Irvine from the U.S. Government when the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station was decommissioned after nearly 60 years of operations.

Councilmember Larry Agran has a plan for how the City can preserve the ARDA site forever … and add a beautiful new amenity to the Great Park. Agran is proposing that the City begin building a Veterans Memorial Park on the ARDA site — a vast park filled with trees, trails, and memorial gardens that honor our City’s rich military history and our veterans.

Isabela Lugo is just 15 years old and is already a self-published author, having recently released her first book: Illusions of the Desert.

Isabela says her love of writing (and reading) was sparked when she was 9 years old after reading her first Harry Potter book. Within a couple of chapters, she was totally immersed in the fantasy world … which led to her desire to create her own adventure book.

The Orange County Power Authority (OCPA) was established last year —  by the previous City Council —  promising to deliver to residents and businesses in Irvine and other Orange County cities cleaner, less expensive electricity than what they currently purchase from Southern California Edison (SCE).

When the Power Authority officially launches — scheduled for about a year from now —Irvine residents will automatically be transferred from their current provider of electricity (SCE) and enrolled in OCPA. On December 14th, the City Council will be asked to vote on what energy tier Irvine residents will be enrolled in, even though OCPA has not provided the public with the associated costs for each energy tier.

Just before midnight during the October 26th City Council meeting, Irvine Mayor Farrah Khan and her Council majority — Tammy Kim, Mike Carroll and Anthony Kuo — voted to rescind the City’s “Sunshine Ordinance,” which requires City Council meeting agendas to be made available to the public 12 days prior to Council meetings.

Rescinding a City ordinance requires two readings, so the item was supposed to receive its final vote at the November 9th City Council meeting. In a surprising turn of events, Irvine residents were apparently able to stop Khan, Kim, Kuo and Carroll from taking that second vote.

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.