The language of the “Build the Great Park Veterans Cemetery” Initiative, which was adopted word-for-word by the Irvine City Council on May 12th, clearly expresses the will of the people to promptly deliver on the promise of a beautiful Veterans Memorial Park & Cemetery at the 125-acre ARDA site.

Now we need to build it. We can begin construction of the Veterans Memorial Park & Cemetery right now! I lay out the specifics in my “Build it NOW!” plan.

For many of us, the May 12, 2020 Irvine City Council meeting will long be remembered as a moment of supreme triumph for the people of Irvine. 

In a virtually empty City Council Chamber — closed to the public because of the COVID-19 pandemic — Councilmembers nevertheless felt the pressure of 19,790 Irvine residents who had signed the Build the Great Park Veterans Cemetery Initiative, demanding action.

After months of hard work, the all-volunteer team at the “Build the Great Park Veterans Cemetery” committee officially submitted 12 boxes of initiative petitions bearing a record-breaking 19,790 Irvine resident signatures (nearly 7,000 signatures more than required) to qualify their citizens’ initiative for the November ballot.

During the November and December holiday season (when they thought that nobody was paying attention) the Irvine City Council’s two unelected members — Mayor Christina Shea and Councilman Michael Carroll — pushed ahead with yet one more corrupt land-use scheme.

The entire Irvine community owes a huge debt of gratitude to Ed Pope, founding Chair of the “Build the Great Park Veterans Cemetery” committee. For the past five years, Ed has been urging the City Council to follow through on its pledge.

In Irvine’s 48 years as a planned City, some land-use decisions and projects have been so profoundly beneficial that they’ve earned the title “legacy projects.” As a former Mayor and Councilmember, I’ve been fortunate to play a role in advancing three of these citizen-driven projects.

As most Irvine residents know, construction of a beautiful Veterans Memorial Park and Cemetery should have begun two years ago, in 2017 — on the City-owned, 125-acre “ARDA” site in the Great Park. After two years of delays, there’s a new strategy to finally get it built!

Even as Assembly Bill 368 — to again designate and fund construction of a Veterans Cemetery at the original 125-acre “ARDA” site in the Great Park — is moving through the State Legislature, Irvine Mayor Christina Shea is trying to steer the Council toward yet another unplanned, unstudied, and unapproved “alternative” site.

In pursuing their delay-and-defeat strategy, including their latest scheme, Shea and Fox are testing voters’ patience yet again.

2019. That’s the year when construction of Phase 1 of the planned-and-approved Veterans Cemetery in the Great Park was supposed to be completed and become operational by Veterans Day, November 11, 2019.