I’m a little tardy here, but I wanted to respond to the July 17 reader response in the OC Register written by Irvine Council members Christina Shea and Stephen Choi. Here’s the link to the original story.
They write:
“Larry Agran misled your readers in his July 2 Reader Rebuttal about the county grand jury’s report criticizing his leadership of the Great Park project. He based his allegations on a false premise that the report called for the county of Orange to take over the project.
It’s simply not true. You can read the report for yourself on the grand jury’s Web site, www.ocgrandjury.org. ”
So wanting to be an informed citizen, I clicked the link and read the report.
Page 7: “The Grand Jury believes the BOS (board of supervisors) should want to expert its power to wrest some control giving the county a proper voice in this important project.”
Page 11 (the recommendations page): “The Board of Supervisors, representing all Orange County citizens, should consider legal action to return control of the Great Park to the people of Orange County.” (who are represented by the Board of Supervisors).
And my favorite sentence in the report, on page 5.
“At this time, Irvine maintains ownership of the property.”
The false premise is from Shea and Choi.
Council members Shea and Choi are counting on Irvine residents to believe their interpretation of the Grand Jury report instead of reading the document for yourself. They simple want to brand council member Agran and Mayor Krom as liars. After all, what are you going to believe. Your own eyes or what they tell you? The later portion of the column hovers over non-Great Park issues. That’s right, the same people who were against the new ethics ordinance in Irvine are calling Krom and Agran’s ethics into question.
But better still, should Shea, Choi gain control of the city council this fall, it certainly looks like they are advocating handing over city property to county control? That’s like your mother-in-law making all the decisions about how your house is run but you’re stuck with all the bills for it.
The Park is going to be built and there won’t be restrictions on entry for Irvine residents only. The Park will benefit all the residents of Orange County and that is the promise of Measure W.