As the 1990s came to a close, the City found itself in a very difficult — but ultimately successful — battle to preserve our City’s quality of life when the Orange County Board of Supervisors decided they wanted to build a huge, noisy international airport in what is now north Irvine. The proposed flight paths of the 747s would have gone directly over Irvine 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The next two Irvine Mayors — Beth Krom & Sukhee Kang were also dynamic leaders. Mayor Krom expanded affordable housing, controlled growth, and tripled our City’s “Rainy Day Reserves.” Mayor Kang is responsible for our City’s iShuttle service and ensuring that every child in Irvine had health insurance.

In 1990, the religious-right took aim at Irvine Mayor Larry Agran, who had authored and won approval for a comprehensive Human Rights Ordinance which was years ahead of other cities and the first of its kind in Orange County.

Two years later, Shea secured her own spot on the Council, joining three other newcomers. Just as the national recession set in, the inexperienced new Council made the fateful decision to invest $200 million of Irvine taxpayer money in Orange County’s investment pool. In 1994, the County made front-page news for all the wrong reasons — it became the largest county in America to ever file for bankruptcy. The City of Irvine had invested a whopping $200 million in the fund, far more than any other Orange County city.

The new year provides each of us with an opportunity to reflect on the past while looking toward a more hopeful future.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we began construction of this beautiful Veterans Memorial Park in the first half of 2022?

The 1980s was when our City leaders began to brand Irvine as one of America’s great “international crossroads” cities, welcoming immigrants from throughout the world. Policies were put into place during the late 1980s to make sure that Irvine would become one of the most diverse and thoroughly integrated cities in the United States.

In the late 1980s, City leaders successfully rallied Irvine voters to pass a ballot initiative that set aside 10,000 acres of beautiful wilderness for families to enjoy forever … and Irvine made international news when it became the first city on the planet to ban CFCs and other ozone-depleting chemicals.

If Mayor Khan had simply followed the law that she and two of her Council colleagues — Anthony Kuo and Mike Carroll — adopted in May 2020, designating the Great Park ARDA site as the legal location for the community-supported and voter-approved Veterans Memorial Park & Cemetery, construction would be underway right now.

The latest scheme is particularly cruel to the families of veterans; it pushes the Veterans Cemetery completely out of Irvine and shoves it alongside the busy, polluted 91 freeway (Gypsum Canyon), just a few miles from the Riverside County line, and more than 20 miles from Irvine.

Through my previous work on the Irvine Planning Commission and Irvine Transportation Commission, I saw firsthand how, with the right leadership, our City can do big things — preserve thousands of acres of open space, ban harmful chemicals in our air, establish thousands of attractive affordable housing units, and build a beautiful Community Parks system.

But, that is no longer the case! As I watch City Council meeting this year, it has become clear that our new Mayor and her Council majority have no interest in hearing from residents, particularly when it comes to a number of critical issues directly impacting thousands of Irvine citizens.