Many of the City’s workers who perform critical services — including childcare workers, maintenance workers, and seasonal park & recreation workers — currently earn about $16.50 an hour. Under Agran’s proposal, those workers would earn a “living wage” of $20 per hour.

Agran estimated the cost to the City for the pay raise to be between $200,000 and $300,000. That money would come from the City’s reserve fund, which currently stands at nearly $70 million — which is a very healthy 24% above the City’s annual operating budget.

The proposed museum will be one of the main attractions of the Cultural Terrace West area of the Great Park, adjacent to the existing Sports Complex.

The museum will total some 220,000 square feet — including 94,000 square feet of exhibition space and a 125,000 square-foot sculpture garden and plaza.

It will also feature a 300-seat auditorium, a gift shop and conference rooms, and an Asian Food Hall, which will be added in the second phase.

Now that deal, brokered by Vice Mayor Larry Agran with Council support, is on the verge of also putting hundreds of millions of dollars into the City’s coffers.

 
Last year’s deal had All American Asphalt agreeing to sell its North Irvine plant and property to the City. The City would then shut the plant down and use the site and adjacent City-owned parcels to create a 700-acre nature preserve.

The Irvine Company agreed to dedicate to the City a 70-acre parcel at Jeffrey Road and Portola Parkway zoned for residential development, which the City would then sell to developers to cover the cost of purchasing the plant.

 
The cost of the asphalt plant purchase and site cleanup was estimated at $330 million, and the sale of the residential property was estimated to just about cover that.

 
Now, a year later, the bids are in and the Council has accepted Brookfield Residential’s offer of $600-650 million for the land and development rights to what’s been dubbed Gateway Village.

This time, however, Councilmembers Tammy Kim and Kathleen Tresder bizarrely walked out to stymie discussion of two measures placed on the Council agenda by Treseder herself.

As has happened twice in the past two months, with Councilmmember Mike Carroll out sick, Mayor Farrah Khan had to adjourn the official Council meeting for lack of a quorum after Councilmembers Kim and Treseder abruptly left the meeting.

Mayor Khan and Vice Mayor Larry Agran, as they have done in the past, stayed on the dais for nearly 90 minutes listening to commenters who had waited all evening to speak, in an informal continuation of the meeting.

The 2024 Mayoral race has been quietly underway for some time with two main candidates so far: Vice Mayor Larry Agran and Councilmember Tammy Kim.

Other candidates could enter the race — the filing deadline isn’t until August, more than four months from now. But Agran and Kim are likely to remain the leading contenders.

The two Mayoral candidates present a clear choice to the voters on many important City issues.