On Tuesday (March 17th), the all-volunteer team at the “Build the Great Park Veterans Cemetery” committee delivered 19,790 signatures to the Irvine City Clerk’s office, moving Irvine one giant step closer to fulfilling the City’s promise to build a beautiful Veterans Memorial Park & Cemetery on the City-owned ARDA site at the Great Park.
Longtime Irvine residents — including veterans, teachers, nurses, and local business owners — volunteered all winter to gather the 12,888 Irvine voter signatures necessary to qualify the citizens’ initiative for the ballot. And their hard work paid off! To help ensure qualification for the November ballot, the volunteers gathered several thousand Irvine resident signatures beyond the 12,888 verified voter signatures required.
Now, the signed petitions go to the Orange County Registrar of Voters for an official certified count before the initiative can be placed on the Irvine ballot in November.
If passed by Irvine voters later this year, the citizens’ initiative would designate the City-owned ARDA site at the Great Park on the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station as Irvine’s once-and-for-all choice for a State-built and State-operated Veterans Memorial Park & Cemetery, at no cost to the City.
Irvine Community News & Views congratulates the “Build the Great Park Veterans Cemetery” committee for their heroic efforts in support of our local veterans and their families, and applaud the hundreds of Irvine residents who joined in this local grassroots campaign. Our publication is proud to have been a vocal supporter and sponsor of this truly remarkable campaign.
Irvine Community News & Views will continue to report on this important local story which involves the biggest land-use fight the City has seen in the last 15 years. Irvine residents are taking on a billion-dollar-developer, FivePoint, and the City’s mayor. (Over the years, Mayor Christina Shea has taken more than $100,000 in “dark money” campaign support from FivePoint.)
Through their citizens’ initiative, Irvine residents are working to ensure that the 125-acre City-owned ARDA site in the Great Park becomes a peaceful Veterans Memorial Park & Cemetery, while the developer and Mayor Shea are intent on turning the ARDA site into a massive development project for FivePoint, projected to add 10,000 more cars onto Irvine streets every day.To learn more about the citizen-powered campaign, click here.
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