for the meeting. Please come to order. This is the adjourned regular meeting of the Irvine City Council for May 13th, 2025. I'll note that the time is 505 and with the meeting now convened, I want to turn to the city clerk to call the roll. Councillor member Carroll. Here. Council member Goll. Here. Council member Lou. Here. Council member Traceter. Vice Mayor May. Here. And Mayor Aigren. Here. I'm going to ask the city clerk at this time to provide information as to how those watching at home as well as those who are gathered here can participate in the proceedings this evening. Mr. Peterson. Thank you, Mayor. Members of our audience who wish to speak may submit their name into one of the speaker kiosks next to the city clerk or in the main lobby. We also offer the ability to provide live comments via Zoom and submit written comments through our e-comment system. For those who wish to participate virtually, visit zoom.us using any web browser or the Zoom app on smartphones or tablets and intermeeting ID 8484531263. The passcode is 272906. You may also also dial in by calling 669-900-6833 or 346-248-7799 and entering the same meeting ID and passcode. Those who wish to provide comments via Zoom are asked to enter the speaker queue by raising their hand electronically. The City Clerk will call your name and allow you to unmute your microphone at the appropriate time. Those dialing in by telephone will be identified by the last three digits of their telephone number. We ask that you please state your name for the record. The time limits per speaker are noted in the post-it agenda and are established based on the number of requests submitted. All requests submitted after the first speaker is called shall receive 90 seconds. Those who wish to provide written comments may do so by clicking e comment on the city council meeting agenda webpage at cityvervine.org slash ictv. All comments will be provided to the city council as part of the meeting record and will49-724-6078. For any other questions or assistance, please contact the City Clerk's Office at 949-724-6205 or via email at clerk at cityvervine.org. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, City Clerk, Carl Peterson. With that, this meeting is the meeting at which newly elected council member Betty Martinez-Franco will be sworn in. However, at this time, because there's a reception that has already gotten underway in the foyer of the city hall here, we'll be recessing at this time to that reception, and we'll all be back here at 6 o'clock. Please try to be on time so we can start the proceedings, restart the proceedings at that time once again. Otherwise enjoy the reception. Thank you. We're in recess. . Here we go, guys. the meeting please come to order. We're now reconvening this council meeting of May 13th, 2025. The time is 610. Did everybody have a good time at the reception? All right. Before going on with the ceremony that we're about to conduct, I wanted to acknowledge three people I saw at the reception that I wanted to introduce three former mayors who are here for this noteworthy event. Former mayor Beth Krom, would you stand up? And former Mayor Suki Kang, who just flew in from Korea and is still conscious here tonight. We appreciate your being here, Suki. and former Mayor Christina Shea. And we welcome all of you. So we have a bit of a complicated agenda this evening, but it begins with everybody's invited. There we go. It begins with the Pledge of Allegiance. This time, OK, listen to these instructions. I'd like to ask those in the audience who are able to please rise for the pledge. And we're going to have the national anthem after so remain standing after the pledge. With that I'd like to request the chief Kent call forward the Irvine Police Color Guard to lead the pledge. Irvine Police We saw in a guard. Present. Colors. Here. Let's guard. Present colors. Please place your right hand over your heart. Enjoy me in the pledge. Ready? Begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands for nation under our indivisible with liberty and justice for all. At this time, I would like to invite forward Minji Choi, a sophomore at Northwood High School, a violinist who will perform the national anthem and after the national anthem will be be seated and then she'll proceed to play yet another song. With that, Minji, would you come forward? Welcome. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm I'm not a good boy. I'm not a good boy. I'm not a good boy. I'm not a good boy. I'm not a good boy. I'm not a good boy. I'm not a good boy. I'm not a good boy. I'm not a good boy. I'm not a good boy. I'm not a good boy. I'm not a good boy. I'm not a good boy. I'm not a good boy. I'm sorry. The beautiful, please, you It was beautiful. Please be seated. Minji will now play for us what a wonderful world. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm gonna have to go to the bathroom. The I'm going to play a little bit more. Thank you so much, what a beautiful, beautiful rendition of a beautiful song. We wish you well in your future musical and other endeavors. Thank you again. So now we move forward to the administration of the Oath of Office for newly elected City Council Member Betty Martinez-Franko. I'd like to invite Betty forward at this time. Welcome Betty. This is a wonderful evening. Not just for you, but for all of us, your election completes our City Council as we transition to a larger Council and district elections. On behalf of all of us, of course, congratulations. If you would like to, at this time, please introduce and invite forward your special guest, if you would, to administer the oath of office. Wait a second, I don't think we can hear you, can we? Is it... There you are. Well, I say I wasn't going to cry, but this is so emotional to me. I'm sure it's emotional to my daughters, after all, that we have gone through and just to be standing here, this is really special. At this moment, I would like to buy my daughter, Paola Lopez, Paola Cosmiki, to do the author of this. My name is Paola Cosmiki, I'm going to do the oath with my mom. All right, you ready mom? Yes. Okay. Right hand. Up. Okay. Repeat after me. I, Betty Martinez-Branco. I, Betty Martinez-Branco. Do solemnly swear. Do solemnly swear. That I will support and defend. That I will support and and defend the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the State of California, against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That I will bear. That I will bear. True faith and allegiance. Truth faith and allegiance. To the Constitution of the United States. To the Constitution of the United States. And the Constitution of the State of California. And the Constitution of the State of California. That I take this obligation freely. That I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation, without any mental reservation or purpose of a vision or purpose of a vision, and that I will well, and that I will well, and faithfully, and faithfully discharge the duties, This charged duties upon which I'm about to enter, upon which I'm about to enter. All right. All right. I'll tell you what, if you'd like to invite down anybody else, your family or others for a couple of memorable photos, now would be the time. Okay. There we are. Great. Now Councilmember, your colleagues are going to get into the picture literally right now, okay? Why don't we step down? I'm going to go to the bathroom. Okay. I'm going to go to the library. I'm going to go to the library. Go to the library. Go to the library. Thank you. I'm here to reach the red zone for the red zone. I'm here to reach the red zone for the red zone. I'm here to reach the red zone for the red zone. I'm here to reach the red zone. I'm here to reach the red zone. I'm here to reach the red zone. I'm here to reach the red zone. I'm here to reach the red zone. I'm here to reach the red zone. I'm sorry. Thank you. Now as is our custom and tradition, newly seated council members and their colleagues have an opportunity to just say a few words. We'll begin with council member Betty Martinez-Franco. Thank you so much. Just give me a second. I didn't have an opportunity to set up everything here, but give me one second. Before you defer your call, raise your hand around the chair. You know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to interrupt this for a moment. We appreciate the cover guard being here. They're probably exhausted from standing. And. moment. We appreciate the color guard being here. They're probably exhausted from standing. And I know some of your colleagues, myself included, can sometimes offer extended remarks. I wouldn't want to have to have them wait through all of those. So I'm going to turn to the chief now and have him dismiss the color guard and at this time I would like as the color guard has been dismissed. once again ask everybody in the audience to please rise. I'm going to start with the student. Here, come on. Please be seated. Now, I'll turn to you once again. Go right ahead. Okay. Thank you so much. Well, good evening, everyone. What I'd like to be here with you tonight. When I first decided to run for office, I'll be honest. Most people didn't think I stood a chance. I hear a lot of well-meaning comments like, this will be a great practice for you, or no one wins the first time. And the classic, you don't have the name recognition or the right connections in Irvine. But the one that really stuck with me was this. You will never make it in Irvine because you are not the right ethnicity and you are definitely not rich. And you know what? They were right about one thing. I didn't have money. Jars signs, don't run trees. And last time I checked, Canva didn't offer me a pay what you can option to bring campaign mailers. But I did have something more powerful than a big budget. I had my story. I had my values and I had this incredible community. I told people, if borders get to know who I am and what I stand for, they'll And I was right. We run a grassroots campaign powered by heart, by hustle, and by the belief of what is possible when the entire community shows up, and it worked. And guess what? I am the right ethnicity. I am so proud to be the first Latina and Mexican immigrant elected to serve. To serve this amazing city, Irvine is the 13 largest city in California and home to a beautiful diverse population, including a growing Latino community that makes up the 30th century. to 30th Amazing City. Urban is the 13 largest city in California and home to a beautiful diverse population, including a growing Latino community that makes up the third largest demographic here. We are laborers, cooks, cleaners, students, teachers, engineers, artists and entrepreneurs. We're not just part of urban, we help make urban drive. But let me be clear, I'm not here to represent only one group or demographic. I am here for everyone. I am here for the single parent juggling to jobs and still trying to make and submit. I am here for the student drowning in tuition debt, hoping to become the first in their family to graduate. I am here for the immigrant families from all corners of the world who have made urban their home. Families who enrich our culture grow over economy and remind us why diversity is so beautiful. And let's be honest, what other cities let's let's you enjoy Korean barbecue, Persian kebabs, Greek food, and Mexican tacos in the same day. That my friend is Irvine Magic. I'm here also for the women navigating the unimaginable challenge of domestic violence. I am here to help build a city where every person feels protected, her, and value, because I am them. Their stories are my stories. And while I only have a year and a few months to serve in this seat, I promise you I will make every day count. I will work hard. I will listen. I will fight for a city that leads with equity, compassion and courage. Now I want to take a moment to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. To those of you who believe in me from day one, you were my strength. You knocked on doors, made calls, brought a cafecito when I was running on fumes, and gave me advice when I needed the most. Do you know who you are? To my friends, thank you for reminding me who I was and I was starting to forget and for always saying you got this even when I wasn't so sure. To my incredible staff, your strategy, energy and passion kept this campaign alive. You lift me up. To my children Paola, Ashley and Zach, thank you for supporting all my crazy ideas and standing by my side. You remind me why this work matters. To my grandbabies, Hari and Mimi, you are my light. Mimi, you were the best little can't-basser anyone could ever ask for. And finally, to every single person who booted their fate in me with your boat, thank you. I carry your trust with deep humility and unshakeable sense of purpose. I am ready to get to work, to collaborate with our mayor and fellow council members. To build an urban where diversity is not just tolerated but celebrated, where equity is not just a promise but a practice and where inclusion is not a buzzword. It's how we go burn. Thank you for being here tonight and sharing this moment with me. Now let's get to work. Gracias, Issa Pula. I'm going to give you a big round of applause. I'm going to give you a big round of applause. I'm going to give you a big round of applause. I'm going to give you a big round of applause. I'm going to give you a big round of applause. I'm going to give you a big round of applause. I'm going to give you a big round of applause. I'm going to give you a big round of applause. I'm going to give you a big round of applause. Thank you so much, Councilmember Martinez-Franco. And you obviously have many, many friends in this chamber and beyond. We welcome you. Now's opportunity for my council colleagues to also say a few words if they wish. I think if people want to volunteer or I'll go right down the line, whatever you like. Would you like council member Melinda Lou? All right. So I'd love to welcome you to City Council and I am so proud of what you accomplish and so glad you're here to complete our council and your dedication to public service and the staff your campaign show what truly grassroots campaign is all about and what local politics is all about so congratulations I can't wait to work with you. Thank you, Mayor. Council member, it is so nice to address you as Council member. That's a pretty good ring to it, doesn't it, ladies and gentlemen? I really look forward to working with you. Congratulations, and yeah, let's get everything started. Really excited to like, it just feels so wonderful. You are completing us up here as number seven, lucky number seven. So thank you for being here, and yeah, we really look forward to working with you. Applause. Council Member Goh. Congratulations, Council Member Betty Franco. I'm really looking forward to working with you and your team. I'm glad that we've got a chance to meet a couple times and it's exciting to have a complete council now. We'll be able to get to work and we don't have those type-breakers anymore. I'm looking forward to sharing the load with you. Congratulations. And Council member and vice mayor James May. Congratulations, Council member. Love saying that now. When I first met you at an event recently, you said, I don't know if I can do this. You guys have it tough. And I said, you know, you'll just watch. I see you out there, really great campaign that you ran. As my colleague said here, you really round us out here. You're a background. I talked to you, and I also learned more about your background by just researching very impressed. You truly embody the American dream, what you've accomplished here. Um, I'm just looking up here, we come from all backgrounds and diversities and it really brings, uh, Irvine together. Your, your background is amazing and your contributions to, to all of us to the city are going to be great. So look forward to working with you. Councilmember Kathleen Traciter. Hey welcome and so glad that you are joining us. You have no idea. Really wonderful to have you up here and I I'm looking forward to working with you. Happy to help you out. However you'd like, just let me know. I have to say, I really, I enjoyed watching your campaign develop. It was very smartly run. And I watched the different roadblocks that you encountered and watched you just deal with them so deftly. So I really appreciate that. And then also I'll just say, I love how strong your voice is. You say what you want to say and say it in such a compelling way, and I'm really looking forward to hearing that from you as you're up here. And I guess I will say that, you know, there are seven of us. So each have only one vote out of seven. But on the other hand, we always have a voice. And the voice has power in and of itself. So welcome. And I'll just conclude this segment by saying just about everything that I was going to say has been said. So I won't make the same points other than to say you're sitting on this council represents an important end to a process in this city under which we enlarged our city council and created districts to give more local representation while at the same time all of us have a stake in citywide issues that affect everybody. And it's been said before again. So I'll just say to you, you complete us. Thank you so much. And with that, we are going to go to work right now. So those who came just for the food and the ceremony, now's the time to quietly exit, if you wish. However, we have two presentations. We have two presentations tonight. A presentation number one is 1.1 water safety season floaty exchange program. By the way, the public can weigh in after the presentation with public comments. Those who might be at home and wish to participate via Zoom. This would be the appropriate time to raise your hand electronically, get into the queue, and we'll take public comments in a few minutes after the presentation. With that, would our presenters tonight please introduce themselves and the subject. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Conn. I'm sorry. Good evening, Mayor Agrinch. Vice Mayor Mai and Councilmembers. Is Mayor Conn here tonight? No, okay. I'm Community Services Manager Cory Hildren, and with me this evening is aquatic supervisor Jen Priest. Tonight, we pleased to share about one of our Dr. Annay Prevention Initiatives, the Floatty Exchange Program in support of water safety season. As of January 1, 2026, California Assembly Bill 2146 will prohibit a person or entity for manufacturing, selling, delivering, holding, or offering for sale in commerce, a wearable personal filtration device, or floaty, as defined, that is not approved by the United States Coast Guard, USCG. In support of the city's Water Safety Initiatives, the floaty exchange program will promote active supervision in, on, and around the water, and add an additional layer of protection using life jackets. The floatODY Exchange Program will roll out this Saturday at the William Millet Junior Aquatic Center and participants will be able to exchange a non-US Coast Guard approved personal flotation device or FODY for a US Coast Guard approved life jacket any time will it is open while life jackets supplies last. Staff will assist in providing a fitting and a parent or guardian will be required to watch a short video on lifejacket fittings and sign a waiver. Marketing efforts in support of the FLOADE exchange program starts today with collateral, social media posts, and information on the city's website. Staff, alongside with our partners from OCFA and the American Academy of Pediatrics, Orange County, will be at several community events throughout the summer starting with the Studio Arts Festival at Heritage Community Park and the Swift Nation Concert at Great Park Live on Saturday, June 7th. Staff would like to thank Dr. Phyllis Agren for her assistance in creation of this program and her continued support of all the city's drowning prevention efforts. And that concludes our presentation on the Floody Exchange Program and Staff are available for any questions. Do my council colleagues have any questions or comments? If not, I'll just start off with a comment, if I might, which is regrettably among childhood injuries and fatalities. We've made almost no progress in decades on preventing child roundings. And the legislature interestingly enough actually took the lead with this measure to retire as quickly as possible and actually prohibit the future sale or distribution of so-called floaties which appear to give an error of safety to them for children but in fact are simply toys that can prove to be very dangerous and actually lead to drownings and that in this city I asked for the data on it and there was a five-year period recently up through 2018, 2013 to 2018. We had four fatal drownings in the city of Irvine. And this is something that simply we have to do something about. And the idea of these wonderful life jackets as in exchange just seems The community is in the community. The community is in the community. I have some command of the information because my wife has besieged me with this information for years now. And I'm delighted that our city is moving forward in this regard. How many are we talking about exchanging and otherwise just repeating this summer? Yeah, staff estimate that we can deliver about 400 life jackets throughout the course of water safety season and then we'll we'll regroup next year and see if we want to continue the program. And are you putting the focus on those who you find at the athletic, the aquatic center, the William Wollett Aquatic Center? Yes, so starting this Saturday, any time that Wollett is open, someone can come in and exchange a floaty for a life jacket. And if they don't have a floaty exchange, we obviously will provide them with a life jacket as well and you guys will have a life jacket on the IS-2 as an example of the ones that we will be handing out. Wonderful. Wonderful. Thank you are there others who have questions or comments and otherwise we'll turn to the public. questions or comments. At this time, City Clerk, Carl Peterson, do we have any public commenters? Thank you, Mayor. We have two requests to speak both in person. If I could call forward Julia, followed by Phyllis Hagrin. And we'll start with Julia. Welcome, Julia. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Julia. I am 16 years old and a junior in high school. When I was seven years old, I witnessed a near drowning at the Woodbridge Lake here in Irvine. A three-year-old boy nearly drowned in a single foot of water, but luckily was rescued by my father and other bystanders who performed CPR and called emergency services. That moment stuck with me. Since then, I have been very interested in making Irvine a safer place for our young swimmers. I am a coach for the Irvine Swim League, Gosharks, and have been CPR trained and water safety certified for three years now. Through this, I learned that water safety is best accomplished by a multi-level approach, including ensuring that children are closely supervised on the pool deck, implementing Coast Guard certified life-best in flotation devices, and the use of high quality resuscitation when needed. Since 2023, I have been an advocate for water safety and drowning prevention. I approached the Irvine Aquatic Advisory Board, and we worked together to try to get an AED installed at my neighborhood pool. AEDs, or automatic external defibrillators, have been proven to decrease the risk of death in the case of a near drowning or cardiac event. I am committed to continuing to work on this just as I am committed to the Floatty Exchange program. I commend the city for this initiative. It is a huge step to equip the children of Irvine with approved life-saving, saving, flotation devices, and this program will save lives. I look forward to supporting the city and its efforts to make Irvine the safest place not just for kids but for everyone to swim. Thank you. Thank you. Mary, I apologize they did miss one. Christina Shea. Welcome. Well, I'm so glad to be here. Sorry. What a great evening and congratulations to our new council member. So nice to see the full board here. So I'm just here just to briefly state that I support Dr. Phyllis Agrin and OCFA. These water floaties are not safer children. They can be punctured. They're not safe in appearance. I think they feel like they can relax at the pool, but they don't realize that these are not something that they can really depend on. So I'm 100% behind this program. I look forward to the city implementing it and so good to see everybody tonight. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. So let's say, Green. Welcome, Dr. Reagan. A few PowerPoint slides. I just want to thank our community. We can't hear you. Oh. I said, I'm here. I'm here. Speak right into the microphone. Here now. Well, here's the lecture. Can you hear me now? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Phyllis A. Green, pediatrician, injury prevention specialist. A little close. You see Irvine. I first want to thank Corey because you didn't say this Corey, but you're president of the National Aquatics Professionals. And he's our go-to person when we have questions about swim lessons, aquatic safety, and so forth. And I also want to acknowledge former mayor Sally and Sheridan. I just saw her because in the 90s, this city modified the California building code and required pool of fencing. So do you have the power points up? So I just want to tell you, Julia Ball's father saved a child at Woodbridge Lake, a 13 year old girl scout saved a child at Woodbridge Lake. Nurse's trained in CPR saved a child at one of our HOA's spas who full cardiac arrest. And at University Hills, swimming pool, another teenager who had just taken CPR, rescued a kid when the adults panic. So this program of putting kids who are unskilled swimmers and even adults who are non swimmers in in life jackets is life-saving. And just a couple of facts, it's the leading cause of preventable death among one to four year olds in the US, California and here in Orange County. We and our partners up there have been doing this water safety program and distributing life jackets in our low income communities in Orange County and Family physician Dr. Elaine Kim and Irvine assisted at the Ocean Institute in South Orange County next one So this is our basic educational piece I'm talking about US Coast Guard approved life jackets instead of floaties next slide and. And basically these air filled swimming aids, and you can see examples here, are not life saving and potentially dangerous. Because they fall off, they get punctured, and they're toys. They are not US Coast Guard approved life jackets. And next one. And basically Cory Hilderbrand and his staff explain the bill and from our perspective as pediatricians were engaged in the campaign to inform the public, the parents, our childcare community and our policy makers to institute programs for water safety because we have a vision of no more drownings. Thank you. And that is all mayor. That concludes. Nobody held these up. They brought them. There we are. There's one for each of us. I tried it on, but it didn't seem to fit me. We hope in the months and in the years ahead that these life jackets, We hope that they actually become part of the swimming attire for non-swimmers. Please, pass the word, you know, I wanted to make note of something. Phyllis and I were very involved in the child passenger safety matter. We started a program here at City Hall. Actually, it was at our old City Hall, more than 40 years ago. It was a pilot program, kind of a lending library for child passenger seats. We took that then to the legislature and instituted pilot programs throughout the state. And then finally, child passenger safety seats, which are taken for granted nowadays, became mandatory. It was been a 40-year struggle, but when you think about it, child passenger deaths in Orange County and throughout the United States have been cut by three quarters, by 75% as a result of that initiative that started here that went statewide. We want to see too that drownings, child drownings, preventable child... that started here that went statewide. And we want to see to it that drownings, child drownings, preventable child drownings, become something of the past. So let that trend begin here. Thank you. Anybody else? Applause. Oh, here we are. Council member Goh, who actually has some personal familiarity with this entire subject. I just want to thank Dr. Phyllis Ayrin for spearheading such an important measure. And more importantly, as well, I want to recognize Corey and Jennifer. The countless lives that they save on a daily basis by teaching kids how to swim or learn to swim program. And Irvine is one of the most heavily heavily used programs. I'm really proud to represent growing up. I didn't have access to a pool. I actually didn't know how to swim until I was an adult. And a place like Woolett allowed me to take classes, join swim groups, and even becoming a certified lifeguard under the program. So just to have this facility in our city, it's such a gem in the countless lives, thousands of lives, Jennifer's, been through almost how many decades now? A few. So I mean, even kids she taught how to swim are having their children, and now she's able to teach them the swim as well. And for us to have this program to save lives with clotheys and I'd like to challenge her right to take it one step further and make sure that everybody has access to water safety programs and learn to swim programs. And I believe with their third pool that we're planning there, it's going to be a great addition and hopefully as well as adding another aquatic center here at the Great Park. Thank you so much for everything you guys do. Thank you, Council Member Goh. Thank you for your comments and also for your services, a lifeguard right here in the city. We appreciate all that. Council Member and Vice Mayor Mai. Thank, Mayor. Thank you, Cory and Jennifer for your presentation. Also, Cory, thank you for your work over the years with the swimming program. Also, thank you, Dr. Agram, for your work with the Child Care Committee and making sure our children are safe. I always like to leave on an action note. So hopefully we can maybe formulate an informal committee or maybe led by Dr. A. Grant and Cory, I don't know if you guys have something going on like that, but I think it's important to address and have something that is tangible that we can move forward with as well. Thank you, anything further? With that, I think that concludes this item. This is basically a received and file action at this point. Everybody have a good summer and a safe one. Thank you for all you do. That takes us to item 1.2, the Urban Forest Master Plan update. This is yet another matter that I and others are eager to be promoting. With that, would our city staff please introduce themselves and make your presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor and Council. It's a pleasure to be here this evening. Luis Sestoves, the Acting Director of Public Works. And I'm happy to present here a quick presentation on the status. Pull that a little closer to you as talk right into the microphone. Thank you. And happy to provide a brief presentation on the status of the city's or before forest master plan update. So by way of background, the city council approved an agreement with DUDEC Corporation in September 2023 to prepare a comprehensive urban forest master plan that will analyze how we expand our our tree canopy, seek out opportunities to build them more sustainable urban forest, modernize city codes, and maintenance practices across a 30-year planning horizon. A great deal of work has been completed on the master plan thus far, and we anticipate presenting the final draft of the City Council for its consideration and adoption in August. These elements of the work scope, we will discuss, um, it's of the work scope that you see here, we'll discuss in greater detail here in a moment. Overall Irvine has more than half a million trees spread out over 66 square miles. The city owns a little more than 61,000 of those trees, all of which can be found along public streets and city-owned parks and open spaces. Approximately 482,000 trees are owned by private properties and of those a little more than 36% of them are owned by the Irvine Company. We are currently just shy of 22% canopy coverage across the entire city and we'll talk a little bit more about the importance of expanding the city's tree canopy in a moment. The city maintains a very robust tree maintenance program for 61,000 trees. We have our trees on a four-year trim cycle with our eucalyptus trees trimmed every two years. We respond on a weekly basis to tree-related service calls from the community and we're able to respond within one to two days for non-emergency issues. The city invests over $2 million each year to maintain its urban forest and we have a very capable and talented staff that oversee the program for whom are certified arborists. So when it comes to an expansive urban tree canopy its chief benefits really are to reduce the heat island effect created in a built environment, consisting of a lot of asphalt, concrete, and steel. Well, at the same time, maximizing carbon sequestration. And no doubt that an expansive canopy coverage also improves aesthetics and property values. The city's current canopy coverage, as I mentioned, is just shy about 22%, and a 30% canopy coverage is achievable. You can see here that we nearly doubled our canopy coverage over an 11-year span that saw a tremendous amount of growth and development. Here at Irvine, as well as a natural maturation of the city's urban forest as the city celebrated its 50th anniversary during this time. This table provides a quick snapshot of how Irvine's canopy coverage compares to other cities throughout California. This data was sourced through publicly available documents and shows that achieving a 30% canopy coverage in Irvine would set the standard for the rest of the state. As part of Dutics fieldwork, they evaluated the condition of the city's trees as part of the inventory process. Nearly 40% of the city's urban forests is rated as being in good condition, while 57% of the inventory has been identified as being in fair condition. These conditions vary across tree species and overall tree health is contingent upon a number of factors such as steady access to water, planting, environmental and exposure, de pests and or disease. So understanding the importance of a healthy tree canopy, we asked the question ultimately what will it take to achieve a 30% canopy coverage in Irvine? In order to achieve that goal, we need to plant trees and we need time. We need time for those new trees to grow mature and we need our existing urban forests to do the same. The team was able to calculate that we will need to plan approximately 67,500 trees on public and private property and allow those trees to grow mature in order to hit that particular goal. That's a goal that we can not only achieve but maintain over the course of the next 30 years as outlined in the Urban Forest Master Plan. The City Council can't allocate funding towards annual tree planting programs and staff can ensure that we incorporate tree plantings with our capital projects. But we also know we're going to need help from private property owners planting new trees on private property as well. And we will also want to ask the public for its input on where they would like to see new trees planted throughout the community. Of the 67,000 plus trees needed to reach our goal of 30% canopy coverage, almost 40,000 can be planted by the city and we'll discuss how we can get those trees planted in a few moments. With the city leading the main effort to expand our urban forest canopy, we would need private and institutional property owners to plant approximately 28,500 trees on those properties. There are some potential incentive programs the city could choose to pursue as such as working with the National Arbor Day Foundation to provide tree saplings to residents and other members of the community as well as potentially funding a rebate program through the one Irvine program to encourage private property tree plantings. This table provides a quick snapshot of the environmental benefits planting over 67,000 new trees would provide to the community. And this is, of course, an addition of the benefits derived from the more than half million trees already growing throughout the city. The recently completed tree inventory identified more than 19,000 empty tree sites located along private properties. These are sites where a tree previously was located and was removed and not yet replaced. Just replacing these trees alone would push the city's tree canopy coverage to about 25% at full maturity. These 19,000 sites will be evaluated in the field by staff to confirm planting viability and sure the appropriate trees are planted in those spaces. What's important to note is that the city loses about an average of 1,200 trees or 2% of our inventory every year for various reasons. Sometimes trees are removed as part of a capital project. Sometimes they die for any number of reasons and while others still become infected, it have to be removed before they infect other nearby trees. Sometimes we have trees that develop safety issues and we have to take them down as well. So the 19,000 trees noted here are really in addition to the 1,200 trees that we have to plant each year just to break even and ensure that the city's urban forest is not shrink over time. The Irvow Ranch Conservancy has developed a proposed tree planting project at Coil Hill. This is a real legacy project that they're proposing and it would result in planting 7,500 native tree saplings on over 245 acres of that site. This is a 10 year program, so it's very involved, but there's probably close to two years worth of prep work before the first tree saplings can actually even go in the ground with extensive maintenance and monitoring to ensure the new forest takes root and is able to thrive. But you can imagine what that hill would look like from the freeway 40 to 50 years from now when that forest has matured. Tree planting programs in our regulated nature preserves is possible, but there are significant regulatory hurdles involved because of how sensitive those habitats can be. Anything that is planted within preserves is part of a very detailed master plan that requires permits and plan reviews. So ultimately, those efforts can be fruitful, but they do require a significant more effort to execute. The Great Park will provide the best opportunity to expand the city's urban forest. The team estimates We will be planting about 20,000 trees across more than 1300 acres in the Great Park at full build out. To put that figure in perspective, a New York Central Park is 843 acres and includes an estimated 18,000 trees. Balboa Park in San Diego is 1,200 acres and includes approximately 16,000 trees. Golden Gate Park on the other hand is a bit of an outlier here. It's 1,017 acres but includes an estimated 130,000 trees. Although the vast majority of Golden Gate Park is passive, whereas a great park will have many more active uses and amenities, which obviously leads less planting space. However, there's currently 3,100 trees planted in the Great Park today. And as you know, construction of the Great Park is underway with a number of key features reaching critical milestones soon as noted on this slide. Several near-term projects will see a rapid increase in the number of trees planted in the Great Park with 662 new trees planned for the Boston enhancement, 946 trees for the perimeter park, and another 692 trees for the Boston enhancement slash pickleball center. A robust community engagement process was implemented at the outset of this project to ensure we solicited and obtain as much input from the community on our proposed master plan as possible. The consultant team participated in 100 in-person events thus far and we have received 630 responses to the community survey thus far. The team has continued to engage with various property managers around the community to ensure we get participation from renters as well. And they also conducted two separate meetings with community-based organizations recently. Overall, the data collected thus far indicates that the community values neighborhood trees as an asset and they support expanding the urban forest on public property throughout the community and they're interested in participating in urban forestry projects as well. The community did indicate in their survey data, however, that they are less interested in planting trees on their private property. In addition to these events, the city conducts an annual Arbor Day event in April where we engage with local school children on the benefits of a healthy urban forest and allow them to participate in planting new trees on their school pampus. This year, the Arbor Day event was held at and with students from West Park Elementary School, which was well attended and enjoyed by the community and some of you as well. The interdition of the program was the community. The first part of the program was the first part of the program was the first part of the program was the first part of the program was the first part of the program was the first part of the program was the first part of the program was the first part of the program was the first part of the program was the first part of the program was the first part of the program was a the community to encourage greater participation in the community. There's a handful of items left to complete on the master plan, mostly administrative tasks, but the consultant team is working to complete an update to our 3T planting plan, and the public outreach process is continuing. We expect to receive the administrative draft of the master plan by the end of this month, which we would then present to the Sustainability Commission in June to receive their input, followed by publishing the draft for public review and comment and then finally presenting the final draft to the City Council for its consideration and adoption. As outline of this presentation, the team has developed several tree planting programs and the City Council could consider as part of the annual budgeting process. There are more than 19,000 vacant planting sites the city can refill with new trees, a legacy planting project on Quail Hill in partnership with the IRC. There's 513 additional tree planting sites that have already been feel verified by staff and are ready for planting today. There's also an opportunity to add another additional 250 coast live oak trees near the entrance to Quail Hill, as well as a separate annual program that seeks to replace the trees that are removed on an annual basis to do to death disease or to make way for capital projects. Approximately 2% or 1200 trees are removed each year, as I mentioned, for various reasons requiring an annual planting effort that will ensure the urban forest is not shrink, but continues to grow and expand and thrive. All of these proposed planting efforts can be considered by Council as part of the annual budget process. In terms of next steps, we anticipate releasing the administrative draft of the urban forest master plan in June to continue soliciting public review and input and then present the final draft and sustainability commission in August. I'm sorry in July and then to the City Council in August. I'm sorry I got that backwards in September to the City Council for its final consideration and final adoption. So that concludes my presentation. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you very much. Are there any questions or comments at this point of regarding staff? Let me just say before we turn to public comment that this is such an important program. It's unclear to me though. Is the 2527 proposed budget? Is that going to include ample resources to see to it that we continue to plant and maintain as many trees Consistent with that trajectory that you pointed out. Yes, sir. That's the proposal and that would be included in the CIP budget for Council's review and consideration. Okay, so that should be coming to us in a matter of weeks. Correct. Good. And one other thing, you had a phrase in there that I hope we'll be doing a lot of follow-through on. You said that we've invited the public, including homeowner associations to make requests for trees. And I think this is a way to expand our tree canopy in a much appreciated way by involving homeowner associations, making requests. And presumably those would be installed, planted by the city and then after a short period of time, the maintenance of those trees would be the responsibility of the association. Is that correct? That's correct, yes. We'd be kind of like a rebate program. Excellent. That's it for me, Councilmember Liu. Thank you, Mayor. Well, first thank you for presenting today. And I just have a few comments. I believe I spoke with you about replacing the trees that we were told that the replacement Treats will be native trees that will be good for the environment and basically more I guess fire resistant and Hopefully use less water. So I wanted to commend all of you. I actually met a few of the city's arborists and the crew and they're so professional on the Arbor Day, when Mayor and I and Vice Mayor all went to plant trees with the kids and learned a few things about tree planting and understand why I kept killing plants. I was doing it wrong the whole time. So just a quick question about eucalyptus trees. I know that we have a lot of them and many of them are diseased and infected. Is there a more comprehensive way I understand some of them are HOA property? But is there a more comprehensive way to get this done? I say this because we had a resident, as you know, that had a tree fall on their house and then the second tree was about to fall. And thank you for being very swift with that. That we're able to take care of it within two weeks of him contacting us, and luckily that didn't fall on his house, but is there any other way for us to maybe do it kind of preventively? So this doesn't happen again. That's a great question. Thank you, Council Member Liu. Yes, we actually, all of the trees are on a four-year cycle, except eucalyptus, which are on a two-year cycle. So every two years, they're being visually inspected, trimmed, and they're looking for specific pests in the infestation that eucalyptus trees can be susceptible to at times. And when they see that occur, they do take action and remove them. Thank you so much for all you do. Thank you, Council Member Triseter. Thank you. I appreciate the presentation and I just have a few questions. One, for the potential city tree planting sites, what were your criteria for selecting those? That's a great question as well. Thank you, Councilmember Triseter. The consultant team is looking for focusing on trees. There should be more native to this area. But then also that will be sustainable in a parkway. Not all trees will grow very well in residential parkways. And so part of that factors into that decision making it. We don't have an updated list yet but that's something that's going to be done as part of this final package. Thank you. My apologies. I wasn't asking about like which species but how you determined the potential city tree planting sites. Oh good point. Well the planting location is part of it so if the parkways too narrow to support a tree probably won't put one there. We also take into account a line of side issues, in particular on arterial streets, near intersections. We want to make sure that we're keeping trees back away from the intersections and creating line of side issues. Typically access to water as well, if there's an irrigation system nearby, that's helpful, otherwise they have to be hand hand water and requires a bit more maintenance so some of those are some of the factors that are looked at Okay Yeah, it sounds like that is those are criteria for you to decide we're not to planetary But where were you what were the criteria for picking like priority sites for where you want to put a tree priority sites Typically we'll find them on park areas. So the little sea lines of trees up and down the street also with mediums as well. Parks are a great location obviously for trees because how much open space you have to work with. When it comes to parks typically you'll want to plant them in more like grows or drifts and make sure you're preserving field space or open or active uses around the park space. And so you'll typically will put trees around the perimeter of the park not necessary within the middle of the park depending on the site and situation. Okay, that sounds good. And then how many of these tree species are not native that you're planning on planting? That I can't answer. I can get that answer to you. Okay, and then yeah, so great about the Quail Hill tree planting project. Wonderful. And I guess you can't answer what trees you would like to put in the open spaces. What species are types of trees? In terms of species it more native.. So oak trees create murdels, do well in this particular climate as well. But we would get the input from the arborists and get their opinions on that. OK. Thank you. And then I noticed, so IBC has very few trees. I guess I'm kind of curious about why IBC doesn't have a special project for them. I mean, Quail Hill, that's great, but Quail Hill does have lots of trees, but what about IBC? When it comes to the, I mean, that would we part of the tree, the master's tree planting list. And that will, again, that will depend on the planting environment, the kinds of species that we use there. Okay. When do you think that you'll be able to get those details that I've been asking about? We should probably have that in the next two months. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Traceter. At this time, we'll turn to our city clerk and ask if there are citizens who wish to make public comment at this time. Thank you, Mayor. We have four requests to speak to a person and to unzume. I'm sorry. We have four. Or two in person and two unzume. Please call in person citizens first, if you would. Thank you, Marified. I could call forward Jay Bruce and Beth Crumb. And we'll start with Jay Bruce. Welcome, Mr. Bruce. Hello, council members. I don't have a lot to add here. I just want to say, you know, we've been seeing a lot of hotter summers recently I don't know if that's a recent thing, but you know it's been getting up to the 90s the hundreds So I think this is really beneficial, you know straight forward ways just combat the excessive heat because it can get very Difficult for people that go outside for obvious reasons. I was happy to see this in the presentation, but I also wanted to say I can speak personally to my local community park or orchard park. I have seen, we used to have this long row of euclip industries. And that was pretty unique because they had obviously the very tall, but also it's sort of a connection to the city's history, I think. Those were used in the Irvine Ranch under a chainsaw in the second and they were actually preserved by the city council. So it's a pretty interesting history, I think, to have that in our park over time because they corrode and stuff. We've seen them slowly over the past few years get cut down and disappear and it's been kind of sad because now I think there's only one left and that area of the park has become really kind of barren. So I think this is, you know, that way to make local parks even more beautiful that way. I've also heard just a few over and like comments over here and there that we shouldn't you know why the city is spending so much energy on this. But I really think it's because we're already doing pretty good as a city, but that doesn't mean we can't do any better, right? I think the difference is really stark when you look at a place where, ecologically, they already have, like, overgrowth, and you just see greenery everywhere, like, integrated into the city. And it's just really beautiful. And I think, you know, as long as we move, you know, the city moves forward to that, we I don't take this for granted. I think we can achieve that sort of similar goal and make the city a much greener, more beautiful place. So all around, very good idea. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Beth Crom? Welcome, one more mayor Crom. Thank you, Mayor A. Grant. And let me just congratulate Councilmember Martinez Franco. I am your constituent. I live in University Park. And people ask me what have I been doing since I left the City Council. Most recently, I joined my community association board, taking my leadership skills to the closest level of government to the people. And I am now the president of the Village Park Community Association Board. And I wasn't planning to speak tonight. Certainly during my years on the city council, I was well aware of our commitment to trees and having trees and replacing trees that we lose and being recognized as a tree city. But I note that this project was initiated before the fires in Los Angeles. And as everybody knows, insurance companies in the state of California are engaged in an effort to compel the state to give them the right to increase their rates and to move people off their roles and our association and I'm sure we're not alone received a requirement from our insurance company that we do an inventory of all of the trees that are proximate to residential homes and to remove trees that are at risk of having rude intrusion into properties and to private properties. Individuals have indicated as well that insurance companies have advised them that they must remove any tree or part of a tree that is hanging over their roof. And this is only going to get more complicated. So when you are speaking about where these trees can go on private property or association property, it's gonna be coming at a time when most of these institutional communities aren't gonna be having to contemplate how they are going to preserve their trees. And we love living in University Park. There's a reason it's called University Park. And we wanna keep those trees, but I would invite the city to start with our community for outreach if you wanna test case. And I do think the city has an opportunity to become far more engaged with the community associations here in the city of Irvine because we really are micro-governments within the city and I would venture we have more associations in Irvine than any other city on the planet. So any help I can provide in that regard don't hesitate to contact me. Thank you. Your time is up. Thank you. Thank you for the offer and you make a very, very good point about engaging HOAs. I think that's critically important. Next. Thank you, Mayor. Our next speaker is Matt. Matt you may unmute your mic. Hello Matt. Can you hear us? Hi. Hi. This is Matt from Quail Hill. Can you hear me? We can hear you. Great. Thanks for letting me speak here. Real quick. My comment was in line with the former mayor's comment. Just regarding fire hazard. And I heard the presentation and the one thing I didn't hear a lot about was considerations regarding fire risk. I know the state released new fire maps most recently. I saw some areas of Irvine were listed, Portola Springs, Turtle Rock, some of those areas where I saw that replanting was going to happen. So I would just ask that the proper due diligence is done on that front. Are we consulting with the fire department or whomever just to make sure we're being extra careful there because neighbors, fortunately, we have not got squeezed, but I know neighbors across the street they've had issues with insurance as well. So that's my comment, and I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Sylvia Walker. Ms. Walker, you may unmute your mic. Hi, this is Sylvia Walker, or if I'm resident. I commend this program, and I ask you to look for ways to improve fruit trees in this program. If that happens, then these fruit trees could be harvested and used as part of the food giveaway program in Irvine or given to second harvest or something similar. Also, it was mentioned in the presentation that homeowners seem to favor this program, but did not necessarily want to get trees planted in their yard. Perhaps if it was true trees, they might be more interested. That's my comment. Thank you. Thank you. And that is all, Mayor. Thank you. I'll just turn for final comment to my colleagues once more. Council member, Vice Mayor, mine. Thank you, Mayor. This is for City staff, Lewis. I have two questions. One is, as former Mayor Crom mentioned, have H O A's have been engaged at all out of these numbers? Yes, I don't know which ones are to what extent, but they have been outreaching to various H O A's and to get their input. And that input process is continuing. Great, great. The common thing I hear from H.O.A. boards and members is that some of the areas are barren. For example, at the ranch, I know you know about this project, but there's a lack of trees and shade and there has been and we've kind of been stalling on that. So I would highly suggest that we take a look at that as well. The other question is, are we having problems with any of the utility companies, such as Southern California Edison? I know Walnut Trail is a targeted area for station. Where are we at within that realm of getting progress with SEE for letting us force? Because that's a huge three point something mile trail that we can really get trees in there, but we haven't been able to, where are we at? And we have, we have road brought locks, similar to that. Not yet, I hope not. We're actually supposed to hear back from them on Thursday. They have completed their review of the initial landscape plans that the team developed for that. And so we're gonna wait to hear what their comments are on Thursday. Great, thank you. Thank you, and I think concludes the matter. We appreciate very much the progress you're making. I think all of us recognize that an ambitious tree planting program represents an investment, a real serious investment in the future, not just the beauty of the city, but in helping clean the air, cool our city, and otherwise enhance the value of living in the city of Irvine. We appreciate what you're doing. We'll be looking for the budget item dealing with all this. Remind me how many actual arborists do we have here in the city now? For it, four licensed arborists. It's terrific. It's a terrific bunch. This is a great master plan that's coming along. And yes, we want our investments to be very wise, mindful of native trees, installation, or planting of the trees in a way that's safe for the community going forward and recognizing, of course, that we have to sustain a maintenance program as well. But I think about this program every time I drive up and down Culver with those magnificent, magnificent pine were put in, it must have been 45 years ago, and what a payoff to the community. Culver drive itself is not only more beautiful as we sit in traffic, but it is cooler as well, which makes a difference. Thank you very much for all the good work you do. This is basically a receive and file item. With that, we move now to the portion of our agenda that is the public comment on non-agentives. We call generalize public, on non-agentized items. We allow for 30 minutes at the front end of our council meeting for people to come in and speak with us within the time limits about any issue within our subject manager jurisdiction that is of interest to them and upon which they wish to comment. I'll turn to the city clerk now and ask just how many requests for public comment on non-agentized items do we have tonight? Thank you, Mayor. We have 20 in person, three on Zoom. I would note though that there's just a couple of individuals who inadvertently signed up under general public comments I believe are actually speaking on item 4.1, but we'll work through that as they Revis this within 30 minutes. I believe if we allow 90 seconds each and Let's welcome the first public commenter Thank you, Mayor. If I could call forward the first five speakers, Susan Sayer, Ellen Meiersen, Wing Chow, we have California precinct activators in Robin Gourian, and we'll start with Susan Sayer. Welcome. Well, hello, good afternoon. My name is Susan Sairon, and I'm an Irvine resident. I and my region's point colleagues are looking forward to participating in the resident survey, which would indicate the ridership level for an expanded Irvine Connect public transportation system. My proposed survey process is as follows. Have the survey locations with each being given a survey location number at a senior centers, Irvine Village Community Centers, independent living senior communities in mobile home parks such as the Meadows and the Groves and City Hall. Survey structures should be interactive with the purpose of establishing ridership interests in the proposed Irvine Connect routes, determining the locations wanted but not included also in determining the locations wanted but not included the Irvine connected routes and having participants inspire others to use the Irvine Connect transportation system. They would do this by having the city staff set up multiple man stations with large poster boards with route maps with numbered route destinations and with clearly labeled street names on stands and hopefully they'll place a large piece of paper naming. with numbered route destinations and with clearly labeled street names on stands and hopefully they'll place a large piece of paper naming the various amenities located at each destination. Thank you your time is up. Thank you thank you miss here. I'm gonna have to cut you off we just got a number of tonight. 90 seconds please. Thank you. Alan Meirson. Good evening Councilmembers. Alan Meirson, Councilmember Martinez Franco. I live in your district. I'm very proud of you. I'm very happy to live in your district. And I look forward to seeing what you can do for our district. This council right now looks to me as one of the most beautiful city councils I've seen in this country. The diversity is amazing. I'm looking forward to seeing you all work together. I would make one suggestion at the risk of sounding like an old-mact white man that thinks he knows everything. I will say this, when I was working and I got a new job, I always tried to cozy up to the people that had been there doing the job. I was gonna be doing for a long time. So I could learn from them on how to get things done. I would suggest that you do the same. There's a lot of people that's set up there that have been doing this job for a long time and they know how to get things done. And it's a good way to go. On final, I wanna say something about the WUSH program, the Gondolas in the Great Park. Been hearing a lot of negativity from a lot of environmentalist, which is just kind of baffling me since they want green and they want to get vehicles off the road, but they're already against this project. I would encourage them to wait until all the information is out and available and everything has been negotiated to see whether or not this will work or not. Don't put the cart in front of the horse. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Wing Chow. Welcome. Good evening. Honorable Council members, ladies and gentlemen, Irvine residents, my name is Wing Chow. I live in Irvine for 40 years. Last year, I was one of seven candidates running for mayor. Here I wanted to say something positive for the city of Irvine that they have done an excellent job for the city of Irvine and its residents. I just find out that recently that Irvine gave out a box of 30 pounds of grocery to those who qualified, once a month. Actually, I found out from the honorable James May. He told me that I pick up my box for those senior who live on Social Security for two people who make less than 40,000. You are qualified to pick up a box of this 30-pound grocery. Also, I want to compliment that the Urban Connect, I try once. It's wonderful. And then the driver's very friendly. Actually, I go to the NICBUSINESS Center, every day to launch a pure compliment. Now they can get a ride to go there instead of paying for the trip. So I appreciate all the wonderful things the city had done for this residence. I want to come for all of you for a job well done. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. California precinct activators. Well. Good evening. We are California Pre-Sync Activators. And we are here because we go all around local governments to ensure that we, the people, understand that we are the government and that you are accountable to us on all constitutional issues. And I witnessed today for the first time a swearing in. And so Miss Franco, then I'm sure you understand under Article 6 section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, the Supremacy Clause, and that you understand Marbury versus Madison in 1803, established judicial review allowing the court to strike down laws or government action that violate the Constitution. So I'm here to make sure that you will not be entertaining any sharia law, because I would be under a violation of the supremacy clause. In addition, my understanding is Irvine is a sanctuary city, and that is a violation of the 14th Amendment. Okay, so I will read that to you. Under Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, all persons born are naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction of the government. Thank you for your comments. Thank you for your comments. Actually the State of California is the Sanctuary State. City of Irvine is not a self-declared sanctuary city. Thank you. Robin Grian and if I could also call forward Lee, Kwan Narula, Jamie Morgan, Critt and Darren Parker. So over the past couple of months I've noticed a really disturbing pattern that's been going on during public comments in which sometimes comments from the council is allowed after a speaker and sometimes it's not. And it just looks very arbitrary. It looks like there's a really capricious standard that is being set. As an example, two weeks ago, or at the last meeting, when council member Tristeeter wanted to make a comment to someone who was speaking, she wasn't allowed to. And yet right now, right before me, the speaker who spoke, we heard somebody from the dios make a comment to that speaker. I'm simply asking that you please choose a standard and stick with it, because it looks capricious, it looks arbitrary. On top of that, at the same time that that happened on the same day, you had a council member who asked for a point of order and was overruled. And she was silenced in an incredibly bullying way, even though her process was following in Robert's rules. And so please, don't turn this dius back into the impression of a 1970s board. Let's please have a stand. Here your time is up. Stick with it. Patty Lee, next please. Welcome. Hi, I'm concerned about the Wush Gondola system that's currently being proposed for the Great Park. When you hear about a gondola system being built in Irvine, you'd assume that safety would be our primary concern and that it would be built by an established proven engineering firm. You'd also assume that the gondola itself would be tried and true like the ones you see in London or Colorado. Unfortunately, that's not the case here. The company, Building Disgonglet, from what I can tell, was founded four years ago, has only 13 employees and has zero completed projects. I asked the City Council to do some due diligence here. This WUSH technology works differently than any other gondola that has ever been built for example instead of using a simple cable and pulley system WUSH uses motorized autonomous gondola cars. The WUSH technology I don't think has been approved by any California regulatory agency. Again the city council can look into this and prove me wrong. Irvine wants to build and never before seen extremely complex form of transit. Irvine is a city that stands for safety and reliability and this project is unsafe and unproven. Irvine should not be a guinea pig for something this risky, especially when the physical safety of our residents is at stake. So I beg your time is up. Thank you for your comments. Quann, Naurula. Welcome. Thank you. I'm here to talk about also my concerns regarding the woosh with city's gondola system that is currently being proposed. The process for selecting a gondola system should be very simple or any sort of transport system. A third party should come in, compile this to potential transit options, and then do a side by side comparison to determine the differences in cost and ridership capacity. In fact, two years ago, Irvine contracted Swarth's engineering to do exactly this. However, instead of doing another side-by-side comparison report with the Swift Cities Gondola, Irvine hasn't said contact with HDR Inc to conduct an analysis without side-by-side comparison and without cost analysis. Shouldn't we be considering potentially cheaper, more efficient, and more reliable alternatives? Furthermore, HDR's report hasn't even been completed yet, and the preliminary results have not been shared with the City Council or the public. Despite this, the City of Irvine has already spent $734,000 of taxpayer money on Swiss City's gondola marketing. Why is the City of Irvine marketing something that has yet to be approved? I have no stake in this and I am simply a concerned resident that everything about this seems problematic. This is a project that could cost millions of taxpayer dollars in operations alone, but we don't know how much it will actually cost or whether superior options are even available. I'm not the only one who's concerned. Marie Fuji, the mayor appointed transfer chair and Ross Bhattia, the mayor appointed planning vice chair Have published articles expressing their attention. Thank you your time is up. Thank you for your comments. Great Welcome Good evening mayor and council members. I'm Chris Dan Tile founder of the Irvine dog parks association. We're a grassroots coalition of residents dedicated to advancing thoughtful community driven planning for dog park across Irvine. We gather input, share best practices, and work to align residents needs with the city's vision. First, thank you. We genuinely appreciate how the city has begun responding to the changing needs of our residents, recognizing that with over 100,000 dogs in Irvine, dog parks aren't just a luxury, they're a public good. Dog parks promote physical and mental health, reduce social isolation, bring people together across neighborhoods. There where friendships form, energy gets burned, and for once it's socially acceptable to sniff strangers. We're excited about the city's openness to dialogue and collaboration. Together we can plan a dog park system that reflects urban values, safe, healthy, inclusive, and forward thinking dog parks. Thank you for your time and for taking this seriously. Thank you for your comments. Darren Parker, and if I could also call forward Jason Garzfield, Darren Parker and if I could also call forward Jason Garzfield, Aradia S. Ray and thank you for your comments. Deerren Parker, and if I could also call forward Jason Garfield, Aradia, S. Ray, Mona, and Dean Carstens. Deerren Parker. Jason Garfield. Welcome. Thank you. And welcome to Council Member Martinez Franco. I'm very glad to have you here. So one of the bragging points of Irvine, which you'll hear over and over and over again at these meetings, is that we are the safest big city in America. Well, I walk into the Albertsons on Jeffrey and Roosevelt, and I had to press a button like a child in school asking to go to the restroom simply to get a tube of toothpaste. The entire aisle was blocked off with glass. I spoke to the lady who opened the glass for me, and she told me that somebody put a gun to her head for tied pods. So if this is the safest city in America, I hate to think wherever where else is. Now I don't have a comprehensive solution and I'm sure that our police officers are doing all they can with what they've been given, but I know a problem when I see one. With regards to the Irvine company, I've spoken about incessant repairs before. I recognize they have to do repairs. I will say if they're going to do one that violates the tenants' right to quiet enjoyment of the property. That's a right under California law. They should give a rent abatement. I'd like to criticize the time management of these meetings. Apparently, you guys have been going to 10 p.m. and cutting off. You stayed until midnight, past midnight, to listen to some disreputable people a year ago. So you should stay at least until midnight. And Mr. Mayor, will you respond to my question, you've responded to other comments? Will you condemn the anti-semitism we've seen in this room over the past year? Thank you for your comments. A radia? Mona. Welcome. Oh my God. What an evening. Congratulations, Betty. Very, very proud of you. I hope it all goes well, and I hope you learn from some of the best. I also want to give you a warning. I watched that DJI meeting and I watched how three members who are sitting here, you were attacked by their loyalist. Keep an eye out and don't let anybody beat you down. Keep what you said, your speech was true to, and that's how it should be. And you swore to uphold the Constitution, and that's what we need here, and that's what we're losing. There's at least one member on this dice who wanted to take first, or first member, freedom of speech. And now that person is running around wondering why her first amendments is being taken away. We live in a very tumultuous time. We just listen to some really racist stuff. I can't believe that somebody would assume anything about anybody. We have to remember we have this multitude of different backgrounds and we have to appreciate all of them. And Melinda, keep up the good work. Me and I should be in. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Dean Kirsten's, and if I could also call forward Kalida, J. Bruce, Roger Phillips, Adam Tatoungi, Doug Elliott, and Stanley. Bless you and welcome. Thank you. I cannot tear my mind away from the case of Ramesa Oz Turk. For those of you unfamiliar with her story, she's a Turk student currently getting her doctorate at Tufts University. On March 25th, six masked officers grabbed her and bundled her into an unmarked car. The scene was so chaotic that her friend thought it was a kidnapping. What was Oz Turk's crime? What made her so dangerous that she had to be grabbed off the street cartel style? She wrote an op-ed, critical of the state of Israel's genocide in Gaza. Six weeks later, she emerged into the sun as a free woman since she hadn't broken any laws, but the damage had been done. How many op-eds just died in the cradle because the author feared their immigration status. I've called the war in Gaza genocide publicly before because it is, no amount of terrorism could justify senseless and ceaseless killings of civilian men, women, and children. Am I next? Am I the next person to be grabbed and arrested without even perfunctory charges levied against me? The president had said directly the homegrowns are next. If you think this can't come to Irvine, think again. On May 1st, Homeland Security sent 16 cars full of officers, plus a vehicle that reasonable people could describe as a tank to serve an arrest warrant in Turtle Rock. This is an insane intimidation and a show of force, regardless of the crime. Irvine has a large immigrant population and even more that commute into the city for work and keep us humming along. The city needs to be firm in being a sanctuary. Thank you. Thank you. Felida. Thank you for your comments and welcome. Hi, thank you. My name is Kaleela. I work in Irvine and I just wanted to say that I support immigrants and Palestine. These are all working people, often US citizens targeted because of their race or their name or because they spoke their mind as Dane was saying. No one should live in fear of being taken from their home in one of the safest cities in the state. No one should be afraid to speak their mind in a research paper online or at a city council meeting about their beliefs. As are representatives of the city of Irvine, I call you to action to keep ice out. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Jay Bruce. Welcome again, Mr. Bruce. Hello, say, council members. Now, I just wanted to start off with saying, I don't like to come up here to complain and I think everyone on this dius comes here with good intentions. I kind of felt like I had a like to come up here to complain. And I think everyone on this dius comes here with good intentions. But I kind of felt like I had a duty to come up here after hearing our discussion last meeting about Irvine Connect. We had the word fiscal responsibility being thrown around a lot. And let's look back at all the prices, the expenditures that we've done over the past year, so that wasn't in our budget review. We spent $100 million on indoor gymnasium because some people came up to this podium and said, we are Irvine, we want Batonton. We spent $1 million pulling out of real estate deal because Mayor Khan got cold feet. We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a police cyber truck without any public input. we spent hundreds of thousands dollars on a random fourth of July festival because vice mayor may want it and Honestly, I have no problem with this as long as we are able to continue spending municipal funds on programs Where we actually want the state to be heading. It's not just our deeply You know flawed public transportation system's our libraries, our public protected by ways and trails. It's our street minimum wage, our urban forest. So what does it say about a city if we can spend $100 million on an optional project, but we can't spend even $7 million on a functional transit system? I just want us to look at the big picture when we propose these sorts of things moving forward and approve these sorts of things. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Adam, welcome. What are you up? Okay. I'm usually putting this microphone down because I'm short, but good evening council members and good evening, Betty. My name is Adam Tuturinje and I'm an appointed committee member under Vice Mayor James Meiss team. I just wanted to take a moment first off. I know you've been getting a ton of congratulations, but I wanted to stand up here and just say congratulations. Welcome to the team, welcome to the dius. But I just want to, you obviously know, it's not a small thing stepping up in your position, especially, you know, I know you said you only have a year and a half, but it's very impactful. It's a very impactful year and a half because for the longest time, this council has been on a hard lock in certain, you know, you know, conversations and you're going to be the one that's the vote that decides on certain things. And you know, our city is built on community, families, small businesses, students, seniors and people from all walks of life who call this place home. So, you know, people that count on you to make the right decisions. And... families, small businesses, students, seniors, and people from all walks of life who call this place home. So people that count on you to make the right decisions. And they deserve leaders who listen. I think it's very important this time of day, it's just to use your ears and listen as much as you can to what people have to say. And put service of self. I truly hope you'll find the strength in working with this team and that you bring your own voice, passion, and heart into every conversation. I'm seriously excited to see your work and welcome to the team and it's good to see everybody and all the beautiful faces up here and I just excited to see the future of the city. Thank you. Thank you very much for your comments. Doug Elliott? Welcome Mr. Elliott. Thank you Mayor and a good evening to all seven of you. I'm Doug Elliott, a community services commissioner, and also a member of the OCPA community advisory committee, speaking only for myself. I wanted to talk a little about some of the benefits that OCPA has been providing for Irvine. It's been a major sponsor of many community events just this month. OCPA sponsored Ciclo Irvine for the second year. I spent a couple of hours at their booth interacting with some very interested residents and having productive conversations. The interest level was high. Last month, OCPA was the host agency for the California Community Choice Association's annual conference right here in Irvine. The event brought nearly 900 people to our city generating lots of hotel, tax revenues, and sales for local restaurants and businesses. The event was kicked off by a very well received speech by our vice mayor. And I told that Councilmember Goh let him morning bike ride and run. And they may have more to say about this conference later. I'll leave that up to them. But from all I've heard, it was a great success. Coming up on May 23rd is the deadline. Oh, I'm almost out of time. The Bright Services of Bright Futures grants. Thank you, your time is up. Thank you, Ms. Rathley. Stanley, and if I could also call forward Arty Chopra. Welcome. Good evening ladies and gentlemen, my name is Stan Snake. I'll make the short and sweet. I'm here to leave you a message. Sharia law is not compatible with United States Constitution. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Next. Arty Chopra. Welcome. Thank you. Good evening, respected council members, and many congratulations to new council member Betty Martinez Franco. As a 39-year-long resident of Irvine, I'm extremely proud to stand here at the Diverse City Council that is in front of me today. Month of May is both Mental Health Awareness Month and AAPI Heritage Month and many of you have known that I've been involved in many different initiatives over the years. And during this month I'd like to publicly invite you and our guests who are sitting here today to learn more about raising mental health awareness and along with AAPI Heritage this particular month. This coming Monday, May 19th, from 5.30 to 9.00 pm, I'll be holding such an event in this city of Orange. And I think this is in these are two issues or topics that we can shed more light on because as long as I've lived in this beautiful city, these are issues that still need more education and we can always unite around positive solutions and a time that feels, a time challenging and divisive. So once again, I welcome all of you to attend and anyone can approach me for more information. Once again, congratulations on looking like the representation of one of the most beautifully diverse cities and one of the most beautifully diverse counties in the nation 39 years here. And I welcome you all to help me raise the prize of mental health and AAP, I heard it. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Eric Nishanian. Mr. Nishanian, you may unmute your mic. Thank you very much council members Larry Agram. I wanted to bring it to the council's attention that in addition to Robert Flour, the floor company not being on the wall of recognition, neither are James Irvine or James Irvine Jr. Just the sales is on the wall of recognition twice. And perhaps you should be on the wall of recognition, but having him there two times and not having either of the Irvines there seems a little bit of a miss. With regard to business license, you guys know I heart by this a long time. It's a shame that two of our council members, Mike, who, Carol, who claims to have bill at $800 an hour and Melinda Lou, who got a DBA from the County of Orange in 2022 as the law officer of Melinda Lou and has a website with an urvine address, also on our website, also on our Cal Bar that neither of them have business licensees here in the city of Irvine. There are attorneys. They should be leading by example. They're also council members. It's a privilege to do business in the city of Irvine and it's a shame that we have scot flaws on city council and nobody says the thing about it. No other council member admonishes them for that kind of conduct. With regard to DDI, can we scrap it already? They have now cancelled two of their four meetings this month this year. The only things that have accomplished this year are appointing a chair and advice chair and their calendar. Thank you. Next. Our next speaker is Jeremy. Jeremy, you may unmute your mic. Yeah, excuse me. Bad time to take a bite of my dinner. I'm sorry. Yeah, thank you very much, Council. I just want to congratulate Betty Martinez-Franko. You know, this is a great victory for her and she's well-deserved. She worked very hard to where she is right now. The other issue is I just want to kind of hopefully see the Council agenda, as at some point, a ban on cell phones on the dice. I have a friend who observed a CEA texting a Council member tonight on the dice. And I think the public wants to see the fostering opinions of the Council members, not of staff that's behind the scenes. Potentially telling council members what to say and think. So I just kind of want to bring that to awareness. And hopefully some sort of electronics ban. I think the city of Orange has that. Some other cities have that. I think that would be prudent. And that's it. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is telephone number 347. 347. You may unmute your mic. Yes, this is D-FOT. And I'm just here to talk about the status of the Orange County Power Authority. The Orange County Power Authority continues with their lack of transparency and CEO Joe Motka continues with his false representation to perspective cities considering joining. The city of Stanton recently decided not to join the OCPA as myself and others went to the meeting and pointed out the lies being spewed by Mr. Moscow. The Urban City Council surely did not intend to loan money to a zero integrity agency that misled everyone. And I hope this council has not wavered in its decision to get out from under this organization. Jim Felt stated in a recent voice of OC article that quote, it's time for Irvine City Council to assume its leadership role as caretaker of Irvine Tax Fair Funds and sever ties with the promises made, promises continually broken agency that's incapable of managing its own financial house even with its gaming. Irvine should liquidate its power contracts, claim its proportional share of OCPAs reserve funds, enforce return of its 7.5 million loan and pull the plug on OCPA. End quote. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. And that is all mayor. That concludes our public comments on non-agendized items. We thank all of those who participated in that part of our agenda. With that we can move on now to the next agenda item which is a city manager's report. Mr. City Manager, Mr. Cheedy, you have a report this evening? Yes, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. I have one quick report that I wanted to share related to an exciting capital project that we're about to initiate construction on in the broader great park area. It's been years in the making. If we go to the next slide, this is related to the Marine Way Grade Separation Project. Marineways, it's currently envisioned has to get under railroad tracks in order to connect the broader great park and the great park neighborhoods down into the spectrum area. The go to the next slide. What is being planned right now, the last couple of months are team in the great park development team and our public works and sustainability staff been working over time to get all of the cooperative agreements and contracts finalized. We recently executed the construction contract with firm AIMS engineering. That project will be under construction in June and what will happen is think of the scale of this engineering project. And overall box culvert that's 100 feet wide, 100 feet deep, 45 feet tall will be constructed on site and then it will be jacked into place over the course of four days later this calendar year, likely in December. It's a project that we all should get out and see when it happens, but in advance of that, we wanted to share a quick video of what that project will look like. We bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. you . . you It's just a massive leap of wood. It's just a massively exciting project that will absolutely adjust the way that the Great Park and the Great Park neighborhoods connect to the broader Irvine community and into the spectrum area. When this project is done marine way, while all of a sudden have direct access to the 5405 and it will bisect Alton, Buronka and also bake. We'll just change traffic patterns completely in the park. Super excited about this initiative. Construction of the initial box will start next month and again we're looking to begin jacking the box into place this coming December. We'll keep everyone informed. Four days, right? We'll get four days to put the box into place and push it into place. We've got to in that four day period, take out the tracks, install the box, relay the tracks, reopen, train service. It'll be just a spectacular initiative. We'll make sure we keep everyone informed moving ahead. Thank you. Speaking of the great park also, I just wanted to note, we have gotten a lot of feedback and questions related to the Swift-Wush related system. To that end, I just wanted to notify the council. We are looking to agendize the matter. From the very beginning, all of the mobility-related options that we've been assessing at the staff level, along with the complete accounting of all the work that's been done to date at our May 27th Great Park meeting We're looking forward to having that conversation with the Great Park Board and City Council moving forward Thank you Thank you for your city managers report with that we move on to City Council announcements, committee reports, Council reports. Are there any requests? Council member Go followed by Council member Liu. Council member Go. Yeah, we have a slide as well. There it is. Are we doing this first? No, you haven't. Are we doing this first? I thought it was the other slide. I could do this first. No, what should you want? What should you want? Our presentation slide. This one goes after. Okay. Can we straighten this out? Can we switch to the other slide? We're not quite there yet. So, good evening everyone. Speaking of roads, thank you so much Oliver for the update on that project. Next slide please. Yesterday I was sworn in to my first Orange County Transportation Authority Board meeting. OCTA is currently a $1.7 billion agency and handles some of the most complex transportation issues in the region. I'm looking forward to working with the OCTA Board to deliver improvements for Irvine, including enhancements to the Irvine Transportation Center and efforts to reduce traffic near San Canyon on the 5XZ over there. Next slide please. I'd also like to invite you all to my wildfire preparedness and insurance town hall. This event is in partnership with Mayor Agerin, the Office of California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo L Laro, OCFA and IPD. We will be discussing homeowner insurance, fire preparedness, local emergency response, regional and federal initiatives, and much more. You can ask VP for in-person or virtual attendance by scanning on the QR code. That's displayed in your screen. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Liu. Thank you, Mayor and City Council colleagues. I'm excited to share with you all the work that my Council office has been engaging in. As well as some exciting future events, we will be hosting that everyone should join. As Irvine's representative to OC Sanitation, I want to update residents that were continues at the Main Street Palm Station, Cruisers rehabilitating pipelines, pumps and velleds. runs from 7 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. with occasional lane reductions and increased noise on Westbound Main Street. Next slide, please. I'd like to also recognize OCFA headquarters in District 1 for their leadership in public safety. They recently held a joint hazmat training at UCI with campus police, OC Health, and Newport Beach Fire. Thank you to OCFA and UCI for organizing this valuable exercise. Next slide, please. For teacher appreciation week, I visited CreekSci High School down the street on May 6th to thank teachers and staff with doughnuts. CreekSci staff offers hands-on courses like cooking and woodworking, giving students a unique learning opportunity. Next slide, please. I was proud to volunteer at the 36 Irvine Annual Junior Games. Although it was a long day, my team and I had a great time seeing the committee to see if I can see the group. I'm going to go to the committee to see if I can see the group. I'm going to go to the committee to see if I can see the group to see if I can see the group to see if I can see the group to see if I can see the group to see if I can see the group to see continued success. Next night. On April 31, I attended the Heroes Hall event and met Colonel Norman Marshall of Vietnam veteran with over 200 combat missions and Colonel Alice Marshall who helped with the Vietnamese Refugee Relocation Center. It was an honor to thank them for their service. Next please. And for upcoming events. As summer approaches and while fire season begins, our city remains committed to helping our community prepare. One key step is the adoption of the 2025 fire hazard severity zone map. Recently released by the California Office of the State Fire Marshall. This map uses the latest climate data, fire history, and while fire modeling to classify areas as moderate, high, or very high fire hazard zones. I encourage you to view the map which classifies areas in Irvine as moderate, high and very high risk, then share your input in our public common portal to learn more visit city of Irvine.org slash fire hazard map. I also invite you to join us for a wildfire town hall on Monday, May 19th, from 6 to 8 p.m. at OCFA headquarters. Learn how we are preparing as a city and what you can do to help protect your home and family. While fire preparedness is a shared responsibility, everyone has an important part to play. Please explore the Ready Set Go plan at ocfa.org slash rsg. for critical steps you can take. Now to safeguard your home, protect your family and stay ready in the event of a wildfire. Our office, lastly our office also encourages our families to participate in our kids art contest. Kids from first to 12th grade can submit a piece until Friday, May 23, 2025. And we've been receiving a lot of great works. And next slide, please. So finally, I want to recognize two upcoming observances honoring our military. On forces day on May 17th, recognizes those who have served or are currently serving in our military. In next one, please. Ememorial day. On May 26th, honors those who gave their lives in service to our country. Let us remember and thank the brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. That concludes it. Thank you. Thank you. Unless there are other council members who wish to be a council member, may. Yes, thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to take a moment and may 11th through May 17th is National Police Week. I just wanted to spend a moment to honor it and remember law enforcement officers who have died in the line of duty. Thank you. I have several announcements. In honor of the first of these is in honor of Harvey Milk Day and June Pride Month. The city is hosting its fourth annual Pride and Irvine event. Join us on Thursday, May 22nd, from five to seven PM at the Irvine Civic Center, Piazza right outside of this Council Chamber, as we raise the progress flag in recognition and support of our LGBTQIA plus community. We invite citizens to explore programs provided by local advocacy and support organizations and joy-like music, refreshments,ments and activities while learning about very valuable resources, making connections and celebrating pride at this free event. For more information visit cityofurvine.org slash pride. Next, just to underscore, the city of Irvine is hosting not just one, but two Memorial Day events to honor and remember the sacrifice of fallen American service members. A special candle lighting ceremony will be held at the Northwood gratitude and honor memorial at Northwood Community Park on Sunday, May 25th at 4 p.m. This event will pay special tribute to fallen service members who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, some of those fallen from the city of Irvine. The ceremony is held in partnership with the Northwood Memorial Committee. And guests are encouraged to bring lawn chairs or blankets for seating. The city will also host its annual Memorial Day ceremony in the formal garden at Colonel Bill Barber, Marine Corps Memorial Park, right here at our Civic Center, on Monday, May 26th at 10 a.m. A commanding officer from Irvine's adopted to 11 Marine Battalion will speak in recognition of fallen service members and their sacrifice. Guests will have the opportunity to honor family and friends who died in service to the nation by posting a brief remembrance on a memory board at the event. For those wishing to express gratitude to members of Irvine's adopted 211 Marine Battalion, cards will be available to send a message of appreciation and support. For more information about these Memorial Day events, please visit cityofurvine.org slash special events. Next, e-bike safety awareness. May is national bike month, and as e-bike use continues to surge across Irvine, the city is taking proactive steps to keep riders and the community at large safe. In just the past three years, e-bikes have become a popular mode of transportation for students, families, and commuters. With this growth has come the need for greater awareness around safety and responsible riding. Also, let's become obvious to us that we need to be adopting appropriate ordinances and policies going forward, which will be on future agendas. To support our residents and encourage safe e-bike use on Irvine's roads and trails. The Irvine Police Department is offering a free e-bike safe riding class on Saturday, May 17th, from 11 a.m. to noon right here at the Irvine Civic Center. Again, that's May 17th, from 11 a.m. to noon at the Irvine Civic Center. This informative session is open to all. Let's work together to make Irvine a safer place for everyone. And for more information, please contact the Irvine Police Department at 949-724-7000. And finally, I would like to make a statement or an announcement in response to many, many inquiries we've been receiving at City Hall, and I personally have been receiving, regarding our readiness in the event that there are ice, federal government raids or law enforcement actions of one kind or another here in Irvine. We are preparing for such eventualities and personally I want our emphasis to be on scene two that due process is accorded to all that any law enforcement activity is in accordance with the law and with the Constitution both of the state of California and the US Constitution is a complicated matter. I hope and believe we will have a further comment on this matter and perhaps something that will be in front of all the council members at our May 27th Council meeting. I'm reminded of this tonight is everybody sore our oath to the Constitution. Let's mean it when we do that and see to it that as a community We mean it. Thank you, that concludes announcements. And we... when we do that and see to it that is a community, we mean it. Thank you, that concludes announcements. And with that, we move on to the consent calendar. The consent calendar consists of items that are regarded by the city manager as routine items that can be adopted on a single roll call vote. The consent calendar tonight consists of items 2.1 to 2.7. We do accept public comment on the, excuse me, on these items. And I guess I would turn at this point to our city clerk to inquire as to whether the request for public comment on any of the items. Thank you, Mayor. We have two requests to speak in person. One on item 2.5 and the other on item 2.7. 2.5 and 2.7. All right. So two comments. Very well. One of those individuals come forward. Thank you Mayor if I could call forward Jay Bruce and Higap B And we'll start with Jay and please identify which item you're Commenting on I'm commenting on 2.5 the OCT agreement to widen the freeway the I5 Now I don't think I have to come up here and tell you guys that freeway enemies don't work I love people of people much smarter than me, much more powerful than me have all agreed. Freeway editing, widening is only bringing more cars. So I'm not going to really talk about that, but what I wanted to talk about is that a lot of times I come up here, a lot of public commentators come here and talk about these abstract goals that the city wants to come towards. But this one, it's very grounded for me because I live right next to segment one of the freeway that we're contemplating giving to OCTA. And first of all, I mean, let's ask who this freeway widening benefits, right? It's not Irvine residents that live next to the freeway. I already hear freeway sound when I go to sleep. Imagine that with an extra-ling closer plus the entire noise of the construction. In my opinion, this only benefiting OCTA. The funding for this highway expansion is coming from OCGO, which is a measure that gives, I think, 41 billion or so to OCETA over the next few years. And that agreement essentially limits them to give 43% exclusively to freeway improvements. That number, that percentage, comes from measure M, the predecessor, which was approved in 1991. I don't know about you, but I think our traffic goals have changed since 1991. And yet, we're still being held to the kind of hostage to this percentage from our historical card dependency from the 90s. Now, because that carried over freeway dependency, the even the OCTA planners are being held to these strict deadlines to try and pass for these freeway expansions, even though we've done freeway widenings for the past decades or so, and we still have traffic. Now, even if you don't care about transit, or the OCTA money sounds appealing, they the millions of dollars that they want to give to the city. I mean, this is still actively, I think, harming Irvine residents that live next to the freeway like me. And I think, I mean, there's a reason that OCT is trying to get this through so quickly and is threatening eminent domain in the actual agreement. The reason I bring this up is because if the motion passes the city manager will be given the, you know, right the power to execute any contracts with OCTA moving forward without council approvals. This isn't going to come back to the city council. So I think if we're going to do something, if we want to renegotiate with OCTA, if we want to bring this back to the council sometime in the future, this is the time to do it. This is the time, you know, right now. And I just asked that we've taken consideration who this freeway writing is actually going to benefit. Thanks. Thank you for your comments. Haga Badolian. And that is all mayor. All right. With public comments behind us, is there a motion to? Well, me I asked my colleagues are there requests of my colleagues to withdraw any item from the consent calendar. Let me just withdraw that item 2.5 for just a moment. Meanwhile is there a motion to adopt the balance of the consent calendar? I'll move the balance mayor. I'll second. Council consent been moved. Items 2.1 through 2.7 with 2.5 removed. With the clerk, please call the roll. Councillor Member Carroll. Yes. Councillor Member Martinez Franco. Yes. Councillor Member Goh. Yes. Councillor Member Liu. Yes. Councillor Member Traceeider. Yes. Vice Mayor May. Yes. Mayor Aigren. Yes. Carrey 7-0. Thank you. Let me just ask on item 2.5. If we were not to move ahead on this, I presume there would, if we were to even pause at this point, I presume that would be really problematic, am I correct? That's correct. OCTA's funding sources related to the existing free widening project had certain timelines and deadlines associated with expenditures. The reason that it's a possession and use agreement that's up for consideration this evening is because the city is still in negotiations related to the terms of the acquisition. We haven't finalized those details yet. The possession and use agreement allows OCTA to begin moving forward with their freeway winding projects so they don't lose the funding that they're allocating towards the project and it allows the city and OCTA to concurrently continue to finalize our negotiations to reach ultimately a purchase price that we believe is would be more fair than what's currently been offered. Very well. I would just suggest you know when it comes to these major projects and the trajectory of these things is one thing and the length and conditions under which these projects come to fruition is complicated and I would just suggest to Mr. Bruce as well as to our new appointee to O CTA that that the public be engaged at an earlier stage on these matters in a way that would allow for meaningful public comment. But having reached the point that we have here now, I'll simply move this item. Is there a second? Without a second. I'll second. All right, who is council member lose second to the motion? Would the clerk please call the roll? Oh, I'm sorry, council member go. Yeah, I just want to make a point. You know as a city we have over 200,000 if not 300,000 jobs here. A lot of the people that come to our city don't live in Irvine and we need those people to fill those shops and that's part of the reason as whole, why we need our roads invested upon. It isn't just for us residents. That's really important that we keep that in mind as well. As far as, you know, I support public transportation, I support getting less cars off the road, but the reality of it is we have more jobs here than you know people that live here, which is a great thing. That's what makes us such a great city. So investing in better infrastructure is overall what's going to make this city even better. Thank you. With that we have emotional council member Liu. Yes, so just a quick comment about that. I mean, I agree with Mayor about reaching out to consult the residents around the area and one of the concerns is that I believe that on the other side of the freeway, there's already taller walls to create sound barriers. Would that be a possibility to consider to minimize the impact on nearby residents and have they been consulted in any ways. Hopefully that their input actually count for something and if there's any trees that I realize that there's a whole row of trees along that side, would that be another possibility to move them, relocate them in some ways just to make it easier and less polluted for the people around there. Yeah, that's a terrific question, Council Member Lue. The areas in question are on the north side of the five freeway just to the north and south of Yale. They are adjacent to residential. What we can't, it's not the city's project, it is O CTA's project, but we are aware of is the existing sound wall, which is eight feet tall, will be extended to 16 feet tall, as part of the widening process. In addition, we're aware that the landscaping will remain in place as the project is completed by O CTA. In terms of public notifications, I know our team did have discussions with the OCTA staff. My understanding is notifications. I don't know if they've gone out yet, but there is a full and robust notification plan that OCTA staff is assured us will be deployed as the project is unfolded. Thank you for all the work you've done and I have full faith that will and will be advocating for my resident. So hopefully this will satisfy most people. All right. Without further comment there is a motion before us with the clerk please call the roll. Council member Carroll. Yes. Council member Martinez Franco. Yes. Council member Goh. Yes. Council member Liu. Yes. Council member Traceeater. Yes. Vice Mayor Mai. Yes. Mayor Aigren. Yes. Carry 7-0. Thank you. That concludes the consent calendar. We move now to public hearings. Item 3.1, I'd like to ask the clerk to read this to describe this item by title, please. Thank you Mayor. Designation of the City of Irvine Community Facilities District number 2013-3B, great park, Improvement Area number 15, Improvement Area number 16, Improvement Area number 17, Improvement Area number 18, and Special Elections regarding Levy of Special Taxes. Thank you. Do we have any public comments yet? We do not. All right. This is a matter that is somewhat complicated, but it should be dispatched with fairly quickly if we rely upon the city clerk to move us through it procedurally. But what we'd like to do now at this time is invite staff to introduce themselves and present a staff report. Good evening, Mayor. Members of the council. My name is Dale Bullson, Director of Administrative Services. So tonight I will be presenting on the great park Community Facilities District, Improvement Area's 15 through 18, Approval of the designation and Levy of Special Taxes. So just a bit of background. So the city established a great park, Community Facilities District 3 B to finance public facilities and Infrastructure in and around the great park area per the request of heritage Fields and at the time of the formation improvement areas 12 and 13 We're designated and authorized to incur bonded and deadness as developments are done and coming on board improvement areas are created to allow the issuance of bonds. In September of 2024, we continued with that process for improvement area 14. Back in January and February of 2025, a number of land owners petitioned for the formation of improvement areas 15 through 18 and within that area it included 93 acres of plan 732 4-sale residential units and also 733,000 square feet of commercial development. And as you know, there's a little number of steps that's required in order to put this into effect. Step one, back in March 25th of this year, was presented to Council to adopt resolutions of intentions to form these areas and also to incur indebtedness in the future. At this time, there's no issuance of bonds that are on the table, but just the formation of the areas. Also, public hearing was authorized to call for today. And so step two, that's where we're heard today and At this point we would be conducting a public hearing and also have provide an opportunity for the city clerk to read the ballots as well as Council to approve the number of resolutions That's on the staff report as you probably see's 22 recommendations. They're all consolidated and I'll share you kind of a summary of that later on the presentation, but basically it's to designate the areas 15 through 18. So for the formation to incur bonded indebtedness up to 214 million in aggregate, and also to introduce the ordinance to levy special taxes for that area as well as close it out with a second reading on May 27th. So I just wanted to share the maps for the different areas. Proven area 15 on the map, of course, all these are around the great park area. Prove in area 15 is 32 acres, which is planned for commercial development. Jason to the five freeway and a big parkway to the north. Prove in area 16 on the map. It's also planned for commercial development for six acres, which is adjacent to Alton and also Merlan's boulevard. Improvement area 17 is planned for residential units. This is 32 acres and it borders great park boulevard to the north and Ridge Valley to the west. And then finally improvement area 18, which is planned for 23 acres. and Great Park Boulevard to the North and Ridge Valley to the West. And then finally Improvement Area 18, which is planned for 23 acres, residential, and its borders links on the bottom and area on the left. So the recommended actions kind of summarize number one to conduct a public hearing. Number two, to designate and improvement area 15 to 18, authorize the levied special taxes within these areas. Number three, determine the necessity to incur bonded indebtedness within these areas. Four, call for the special election for the purpose of approving the special taxes and assigning an appropriate limit for each of the areas. And then five, and this is where our city clerk is going to help us with conducting the special election. And then if it's approved by the owners and the voters in the special in this area, then city Clerk will declare the results, cancel the lien on the original area, improvement area 13 and establish the special taxes on the new improvement area 15 through 18, and then if approved by the voters as well, will introduce the reading for the ordinance, authorizing the levy of the special taxes within those areas. I know a lot of steps to go through in order to get to this spot. Again, this is not to issue any bonds. It's just the formation of the areas. Canceled lean on the old area, establish it on the new area. So I think that kind of summarizes all the complications of the process. And with that I'm going to turn it over to our city clerk to read the ballot. To summarize this is all about a landowner vote to levies special taxes that will be part of the improvement of the properties in question. Is that correct? Correct. With that, and before I call for a motion, we will have the city clerk further explain the procedural process. This is, as I say, it all sounds very, very complicated, but you're going to lead us through it quickly, correct? Yes, thank you, Mayor. The first actually will be to close the public hearing. We do not have any public speakers on this item. Good. So with that, is there a motion to close the public hearing? So moved. Second. All right. The clerk, please call the roll. There was a motion by Council Member Carroll seconded by Council Member Goh to close the public hearing. Council Member Carroll, let me just proceed that by saying, I previously, if no one heard it, declared the public hearing open with that. Go ahead. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Carroll. Yes. Council Member Martinez Franco. Yes. Council Member Goh. Yes. Council Member Liu. Yes. Remember to Martinez Franco. Yes. Councillor Member Liu. Yes. Councillor Member Traceter. Yes. Vice Mayor May. Mayor Agrin. Yes. Councillor Cunnery. You're here now closed. Go ahead if you would please. Thank you, Mayor. The next part of the process includes the City Council's consideration of recommended action item numbers 2 through 13, which are resolutions authorizing the levy of said special taxes, determining the necessity to incur bonded indebtedness and submitting a proposition to the qualified electors thereof, and calling a special election for the purpose of approving a special tax from proven area numbers, 15, 16, 17, and 18. Thank you. And do my colleagues have any questions at this point? Comments if not, I'll just offer the motion to approve the resolutions listed as recommended action item Numbers to through 13 in the staff report Is there a second second second did by Councilmember advice may or my With that Absent any further discussion with the clerk please call the roll. Council member Carol. Yes. Council member Martina Franco. Yes. Council member Goll. Yes. Council member Lou. Yes. Council member Traceeider. Yes. Vice Mayor Mai. Yes. Mayor Eagren. Yes. Carrey 7-0. Excellent. Council is working together beautifully. Thank you, Mr. Peterson. On that, let's proceed with the next step in the process. Thank you, Marin. At this time, I'll open the balance. This is so dramatic. This is a landowner vote. And it's kind of like the Oscars isn't it? I should announce the winner. Go right ahead. For improvement area 15, all votes are in the affirmative. All right. We have four more. Oh, it's 16 17 and 18 correct. For improvement area number 16 all votes are in the affirmative. All right. We have two ballots from Provenerian number 18. All votes are in the affirmative. All votes are one in the affirmative. In the affirmative. Very well. We've concluded that part of please take us to the next step. Thank you, Mayor. At this time, it would be appropriate for you to call for a motion to adopt the resolutions declaring the results of the elections, which are listed as recommended action item numbers 15 through 18. I'll offer that motion. Is there a second? Seconded by Council Member Liu. And at this time. Are there any council comments or questions. If not, do you need a motion at this point? We have a motion. I just need a call for a vote. Okay. At this point then we'll just call for a rule call vote. Again, just to be clear on the motion, this is recommended action item numbers 15 through 18. Correct. All right. Council member Carol. Yes. Council member Martinez Franco. Yes. Council member Go. Yes. Council member Liu. Yes. Council member Tracee Er? Yes. Vice Mayor Mai? Yes. Mayor Aigren? Yes. Carrie 7-0. All right. Next step here. We need a first reading. Before I call for a motion to introduce for first reading, the ordinance related improvement area number 15 listed as recommended action item number 19. Let's ask the city clerk, please, to read the ordinance by title. Into the record, thank you. Thank you, Mayor. In ordinance of the City Council of City for Irvine, California, acting as the legislative body of the City of Irvine Community Facilities District number 2013-3B, great park. Leving special taxes with an improvement area number 15 of the City of Irvine Community Facilities District number 2013-3B, great park. Thank you. At this time, I'd like to turn to my council colleagues and additional comments, questions regarding emotion to introduce for first reading. There'd be none. If the clerk would please conduct the roll call vote. Mayor, I do need a first and a second. Oh, you know, I'll offer the motion and we'll just ask for a second. Oh, second. Seconded by council member Liu. Okay. Would the clerk please call the roll. Council member Carol. Yes. Councilmember Martinez Franco. Yes. Councilmember Goh. Yes. Councilmember Liu. Yes. Councilmember Triseter. Yes. Vice Mayor May. Yes. Mayor Agrin. Yes. Carrey 70. And we move on to improvement area 16 listed as recommended action item number 20. So before I call for a motion on this, I'd like to ask the city clerk to read the proposed ordinance by title if you would into the official record. Thank you, Mayor. An ordinance of the City Council of the City of Irvine, California, acting as the legislative body of the City of Irvine community facilities district number 2013-3B, Great Park, living special taxes with an improvement area number 16 of the city of Irvine community facilities district number 2013-3B, Great Park. Thank you, Mr. Peterson. Any questions, comments from my colleagues here? That being the case, at this point I think we can have a roll call vote. I do need a first and a second. Oh, I'm sorry, once again, we need a motion. Oh, move. Move by Council Member Liu, I'll provide the second and with that a roll call please. Council member Carol. Yes. Council member Martinez Franco. Yes. Council member go. Yes. Council member Lou. Yes. Council member treasurer. Yes. Vice mayor Mai. Yes. Mayor Aigren. Yes. Carrie 7-0. All right. Do I turn it back to you at this point? If you would, go ahead. Thank you, Mayor. The next step in the process is to approve the third ordinance for first reading, and I'll read that by title. Is this the last? No, I guess there's one more beyond. Correct. This is the second to last. All right ahead. In ordinance of the City Council of the City of Irvine, California, acting as a legislative body of the City of Irvine Community Facilities District number 2013-3B, Great Park, Leving Special Taxes with an Improvement Area number 17 of the City of Irvine Community Facilities District number 2013-3B, Great Park. Thank you. There being presumably no comments or questions. I'll move adoption. Seconded by Council Member Goh. With that, with the clerk, please call the roll. Council Member Carroll. Yes. Council Member Martinez Franco. Yes. Council Member Goh. Yes. Council Member Lou. Yes, Councilmember Traceeider. Yes, Vice Mayor May yes, Mayor Agrin. Yes, Carrie 7-0 now it's back to you once again, Mr. Peterson. Thank you, Mayor. We have one last ordinance. I'll read it the title into the record and Ordnance of the City Council of the City of Irvine, California acting as the legislative body of of the city of Irvine community facilities district number 2013-3B, great park, living special taxes with an improvement area number 18 of the city of Irvine community facilities district number 2013-3B, great park. Thank you. And with that, again, assuming no comments or questions, I'll move adoption. No second. Seconded by Council Member Liu. Any comments or questions? There being none of the clerk please call the roll. Council member Carroll. Yes. Council member Martinez Franco. Yes. Council member Go. Yes. Council member Liu. Yes. Council member Traceeiter. Yes. Vice Mayor Mai. Yes. Mayor Aigren. Yes. Carrie 7-0. All right. That do it for us. That's it. All right. We transacted a lot of business, a lot of future taxes, not on anybody in this room though. Right? And must you buy the property. Okay. Thank you very much to our staff. Thank you very much, Mr. Peterson. That concludes item 3.1. And with that, I think that was the only public hearing. Am I correct? We have one more public hearing. Item 3.2. 3.2. Oh, there we are. 3.2. Yes, please. Would the clerk please identify this item by subject? Approval of the 2025 to 2029 consolidated plan, 2025 to 2026 action plan, and federal community development block grant, home investment partnerships, and emergency solutions grant entitlement programs. Yes. Let me say a couple of things before introducing staff. First, this is an incredibly important item. Our staff will tell us that a great deal of important work has been done by the Community Services Commission in this regard, as well as our staff. And I'm hoping and believing that we will adopt this very quickly, but that's not to suggest that this is somehow a cursory action or unimportant, quite the contrary, and you'll tell us why. With that, I think I need to declare the public hearing hearing open and we'll turn to staff at this time. Thank you Mayor, Good evening Mayor Aigren and City Council members. My name is Sarah Scobetal and I am the management analyst as part of our Office of Health and Wellness. With me tonight is Frank Perez, the City's Federal Grant Consultant of MDG Associates. I am pleased to present to the city the 2025 through 29 consolidated plan and the 25 through 26 action plan for the allocation of our federal grants. Community Development Block Grant, Home Investment Partnerships and Emergency Solutions grant funds come to the city as entitlement grants from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD. CDBG is the principal federal program providing local governments with grants to improve the physical, economic, and social conditions in their communities for low and moderate income residents. Home is the principal federal program providing local government with grants for the preservation or creation of affordable housing for low and moderate income residents. ESG is one of several HUD programs targeted to addressing homelessness through prevention and rapid rehousing services. To receive these funds, we must comply with all federal regulations and program guidelines. The purpose of tonight's public hearing is to satisfy a heads requirement for public input on our funding allocation plans. And tonight we're asking you to approve two key documents. The five-year consolidated plan which covers program years 2025 through 29 and the Annual Action Plan for the Program Year 25 through 26. These documents must be submitted to HUD by August 15, 2025 to ensure our continued funding. The Consolidated Plan is a comprehensive five-year planning document required by HUD. It serves as a strategic roadmap for how we'll utilize CDBG, home, and ESG funds. In developing these plans, we conducted an extensive analysis of our city's housing and community development needs. This included demographic analysis, housing market studies, significant community outreach through surveys, stakeholder meeting groups, and public meetings. The plan identifies our program priorities and objectives for the next five years, and outlines the strategies we'll employ to address these priorities. The action plan outlines the programs and services recommended by the Community Services Commission to be funded. The Action Plan also outlines the anticipated outcomes for each of these activities. I want to acknowledge that the thorough review process conducted by our Community Services Commission, they held three public meetings to review all funding applications. They heard oral presentation from each of the applicants and they carefully reviewed and evaluated each proposal against our established criteria. The results from that commission provided the funding recommendations before you tonight. The total anticipated funding available through CDBG home and ESG for the upcoming fiscal year is over $4.1 million. This amount includes carry-over CDBG and home funds, which are repaid or unused funds from previously approved projects that are now available for new activities. For CDBG Public Services, the Community Services Commission recommends funding several recipients. One was not recommended for funding. The remaining public services applicants are shown here. For CDBG Capital Projects, the recipients are shown here with one applicant not recommended for funding. For home funds, the Commission recommended funding, the Irvine Community Land Trust. Lastly, nine ESG applications were year. Last year. Last year. Last year. Last year. Last year. Last year. Last year. Last year. Last year. Last year. Last year. Last year. Last year. Last year. ESG funding allocations as presented. This concludes our presentation. Both myself and Frank are available for questions. Thank you very much. Are there questions or comments from the Dias to staff at this time? Yes, Councilmember, vice mayor, may. Thank you so much, Sarah, for that presentation. Thank you for the services you provide to our constituents and residents. Here are good things about it. I do have a question on the, are we leaving anything on the table in regards to the CDBG grant amounts? Thank you for the question. No, there are no unfunded amounts. That's all, thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Liu. Thank you. Thank you for all the hard work. I know how much time you've actually spent on this a lot of reviewing the applications and discussion with community services. I want to take the time to thank you. And part of it is that may I suggest that some of the things that we find very valuable, maybe if we can find a way to budget that into, you know, I would like to suggest to the staff and then maybe my council colleagues who consider putting some of the very important items in our general spending to make sure that these important services continue to be funded so we're not dependent on federal grant in case any of that is no longer available such as child care which is very dear to my heart. Yes, let me just understand what your suggestion is that you're not suggesting not suggesting changes in the future. No, no, no, I'm suggesting changes, but I'm saying in the future, if we could consider including some of these very important services in our general spending in the budget. Very well, I think that's a point you might wish to raise again in connection with our impending hearing on the budget and remind us of that point. Thank you. Are there other questions or comments at this point? Are there requests from citizens to be heard? Mr. Peterson. Thank you, Mayor. We do have one request to speak from Kevin Tressel. Mr. Tressel. Thank you, Commissioner. And we had a chance to chat just a little bit. And I just wanna say at this time, thank you for all your service. And for all the work you and your colleagues do in sorting through these applications and making appropriate recommendations, we really appreciate it. I appreciate you mentioning that. There's a lot of work. Again, I chair the Community Services Commission. I'm appointed by Council Member Carol and our new Council Member. I'm looking forward to meeting and working with your commissioner. Anything I can do in the transition to ease it, please connect me with your appointee. With that said, this is my 15th year of doing CDBG process and I think this is the most work we've ever had. I'm old school so I printed out the information rather than look at it on my computer. A double-sided piece of paper. The stack was that tall. That's a lot of volumes to go through. It's very important, as you mentioned. And staff mentioned all the work. I'm very proud of the work that the commission did and your commissioners. Just so you know every recommendation you're looking at, we voted on and it passed unanimously. There was no dissent. Based on the volume of work and the efforts put forth, I ask you please approve our recommendations as provided. A couple of quick highlights regarding two of the charities, one that was well funded, the Irvine Children's Fund, provides before and after school child care for working needy families in Irvine. We don't want a seven year old walking the school alone nor do we want them to be a latchkey kid. An apparent can't work full time if they don't't have affordable childcare. On the other end of the maturity spectrum, we funded very highly the age-well senior services. These folks provide the meals on wheels program, the lunches at the senior center, transportation, and other senior services. So we're happy to recommend the low recommend the lower million dollars for Irvine's residential rehab program. Finally, we recommended $745,000 to combat affordable housing needs in the Irvine community land trust, which is the Cypress Village Phase 1. Thank you for the time. Our commission will appreciate your approval. I'm available for questions or I can sit on. Well, be at the ready if you would. Are there any questions of Commissioner, Commissioner at this time? No? Are there others who wish to be heard? That is all mayor. Well this is really good. I appreciate your emphasis on basically ratifying your recommendations without tinkering with them. We've done that in the past, and it has been a brain damaging event. Each time, I think we've learned to really trust the Community Services Commission, the commissioners, in doing the hard work of going through these applications, and I can't emphasize enough how much good this money does to improve the lives of people in our community, especially those in over-income categories. Child Care was mentioned. All the other programs, I see human options and all of them really were the outstanding non organizations involved in this grant process and delivering the goods to the city of Irvine. I received, I was going to read it, but I, in the interest of time I won't, I received a wonderful email communication, actually all of us did from Lauren Brooks, who's of course school board member and president of the Irvine Children's Fund and also Sharon Wellickson, who I think was in the audience. As Sharon's there we are, who has been at work as executive director for the Irvine Children's Fund for nearly 40 years, am I correct? And these organizations have become just outstanding institutions in the city of Irvine and this process has been an outstanding process. So with that, I'm going to, I'm going to make a motion to adopt the recommendation. No. We need a motion to close the public hearing. Oh, you're right. Thank you. Thank you for reminding me. We do need a motion to close the public hearing. I'll also move. Is there a second? Seconded by Council Member Carroll. With the clerk, please call the roll. Council Member Carroll. Yes. Franco I may. Seconded by Council Member Carol. With the clerk please call the roll. Council Member Carol. Yes. Council Member Martinez Franco. Yes. Council Member Goll. Yes. Council Member Lou. Yes. Council Member Traceeiter. Yes. Vice Mayor Mai. Yes. Mayor Eagren. Yes. Carrey 7-0. Thank you. With that I'll move adoption of the recommended funding. I'll second. Second by Council Member Liu. Absent any further comments? Would the clerk please call the roll. Council Member Carroll. Yes. Council Member Martinez Franco. Yes. Council Member Goh. Yes. Council Member Liu. Yes. Council Member Traceeater. Yes. Councillor Member Martinez Franco. Yes. Councillor Member Go. Yes. Councillor Member Liu. Yes. Councillor Member Traceeider. Yes. Vice Mayor Mai. Yes. Mayor Eagren. Yes. Carrie 7-0. Thank you again for all the wonderful work. I see a lot of old hands and friends out there. Thank you. All right. That concludes our public hearings allowing us to move on to item number 4.1. Let me just find where I am here one second. We are Council business items. Including new business here. All right. We turn now to item 4.1. Would the, you know what, let me just pause for a second. Typically, typically do a time check at nine o'clock if 905 we're trying to end our council meetings by 10 my hunch is that this one will go to 11 o'clock but I just wanted to alert my colleagues in that regard. And if somebody wishes to adjust the agenda in some way at this time, this would be the time to do it. Otherwise, we're just going to plow right ahead without a recess. All right? well.. Item 4.1. Would the clerk please identify this item by subject? Memorandum of understanding regarding consideration of establishment of a new oak park planning area, including affordable housing and other public benefit matters between the city of Irvine and Irvine company. Thank you. With that, do we have presenters at this time? First we turn to our city manager and presumably with the assistance of our city attorney, Jeff Melchene, to further introduce this item. Mr. Chief. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council related to the consideration of the MOU with the Irvine Company. As it relates to the proposed OAPARC planning area establishment, Jeff and I will be presenting the item this evening for the council's consideration. As we go to the next slide, this is certainly an important initiative for the City Council to contemplate. And it really has its origins in the shifting regulatory structure that we've seen here in California. It's the Council knows over the past decade there's been an increasing series of state required housing mandates for local jurisdictions to accelerate and facilitate the production of housing. The two major elements the city's been engaged in to comport with the new state regulations relate first to the housing element, which was adopted. The most recent housing element was adopted in May of 2022. That housing element really laid out the pathway through which the city would comply with the rena related housing production requirements. Then to finalize that process, the council most recently, in August of 2024, adopted a new comprehensive general plan update, that general plan update identified where 57,656 new units would be facilitated throughout the city. We located those units primarily in three distinct focus areas. Those focus areas included the greater IBC, the great park area, and the focus of our discussion tonight, focus area to the spectrum area. The reason that that's the particular discussion point for this evening is there is a proposal to build now what would be almost certainly the final traditional residential village that the Irvine company will undertake. As the council knows we've been in a discussion the last few years. The city has experienced rapid growth over the last 50 plus years going from 10,000 people to over 320,000 today. And we're running out of the available areas here in town. One area where there's an opportunity to pursue the creation of, again, what will likely be our final residential village is on land located within an adjacent to focus area two owned by the Irvine company. The properties that would be compiled to coordinate the establishment of this new village include the Oak Creek Business Center, the Oak Creek Golf Course and adjacent recreational areas, and the unbuilt portion of the Innovation Office Park project. We go to the next slide. You can see the proposed village location. It's bordered. It's located in the northeast corner of Jeffrey Road in Irvine Center Drive, south of the Phi Freeway. This is the site on which there's initial proposal to establish a 3100 unit residential village. If we go to the next slide. I think what we wanted to emphasize for the city council is there's no decision this evening on the actual project. The city has not at this point been provided with any development application the Irvine company hasn't submitted anything formal. What we have done though is been engaged in a traditional planning process with the Irvine Company. That process really involves the Irvine Company notifying the city that they have intentions to pursue a development project. And what we're looking for guidance and direction this evening from the council is, do you like the framework that's been established through which we would go through an assessment process the next year To identify whether or not this is an appropriate project to entitle and allow to move forward To facilitate that over arching process we've identified a memorandum of understanding with the Irvine Company for the Council's consideration this evening that MOU really outlines an overarching development framework and planning framework that we would engage. The MOU is similar in nature. It's a different type of project, but similar to an agreement that the Council and the Irvine Company agreed to back in March of 2023. At that time the Irvine Company was pursuing six different apartment projects that totaled 4,500 units. We developed a planning framework through an MOU that's the process that we've also engaged as we initiate the assessment of this next proposed village. We go to the next slide. Really the framework that's contemplated in the MOU forward the proposed 3100 unit village involves the creation of this new village. That means the Irvine company would apply to the city to create a new planning area, planning area 52 within the focus area. That would be then the project that's worked through the city's assessment and entitlement process over the next roughly 12 months. It also identifies that a school site would be located as part of the project where the Irvine company would dedicate a 10 to 13 acre site to establish a new school. There'd be a park program developed and embedded into this new village consistent with Irvine's high standard park planning processes and finally given the location of the village contemplates a review process that would integrate a network of parks and trails into and connected with the Jeffrey open space trail and the Walnut trail which border the project location. The other thing the MOU does if we go to the next slide is identify a community benefit framework that would be embedded as one of the entitlement documents that would be developed for consideration through the assessment. That entitlement document references, we're referencing as a future development agreement, DMOU outlines what those community benefits would entail. The benefits we've identified and discussed with the Irvine company include an expansion of our Irvine Cares affordable housing model, adding to permanent open space in the city, establishing new library opportunities, providing the city with an option to adapt, acquire and adaptively reuse the existing Oak Creek Clubhouse, facilitating the establishment of public safety training operation center that we've had ambitions to construct for years, coordinating the and facilitating the creation of our economic development initiative the innovation center and finally the provision of community benefit fees that would be paid to the city. We'll run through what each of those different terms mean in the coming slides. We go to the next slide. First, from a housing perspective, the council recalls, we've been in a discussion the last couple of years as we've established our health and wellness operation on identifying strategies to be able to prevent, to K in the community moving forward. One of those really important elements have been associated with the identification of this fact. We should be massively proud of the fact that Irvine has more affordable housing units than any other community in Orange County over 5,000 units. You know, we also have over 2,500 affordable housing units that are in the production pipeline. We should be massively proud of that fact. One of the shortfalls that we've seen, one of the tools that Irvine is missing, is the fact that we have 60,000 at-risk residents living in Irvine right now, 60,000 residents that get their health insurance through Cal Optima. And we don't have utilizing our traditional affordable housing tools, an ability to locate housing for those individuals. Given the way that affordable housing is financed and developed, what we've identified is Irvine-based at risk residents rarely, if ever, get access to one of these permanent affordable units. In concurrent with that, we've identified there are large at- populations that are currently housing insecure or homeless. We recently launched a new Irvine Cares housing program as a pilot program to initiate the housing of 88 identified homeless families with kids in the Irvine Unified School District. And there's a larger population out there that also needs support. To address that shortcoming in that gap, the proposed affordable housing contribution as part of the MOU involves not a traditional model, the traditional model that would be required, utilizing our inclusionary rules, would be the provision of 15% of the development project set aside as permanent units. That would be 465 total units developed if we didn't do something different. What instead we've come up with is the conveyance of the value of those units, you of those units, Vienna and Luffy, to establish really an overnight, innovative program that's not been tried anywhere. The program that we've contemplated is that the Irvine company would provide the city with no less than 1,000 housing vouchers that we would be able to use to house at-risk individuals with an Irvine connection immediately. Those individuals would be able to get stabilized, via housing, the city's direction, we would wrap full social service support around that particular individual or family. And contractually, the Irvine company would then allow that individual once they have reached stabilization, access, preferred access to the next available affordable unit that permanent unit that exists. It creates a new tool that the city thinks the massively important is part of the overarching Irvine Cares program that's been established. That's the first piece of the program that's been developed as part of the MOU related to affordable housing. What should be noted too is the in-lu fee calculation requires a payment based on our current fee schedule of roughly $52 million. The Irvine company and the city staff have reviewed the proposed program documents provided by the Irvine company identify this program creates $72 million in value, which is a little over $20 million more than what's contemplated as the base requirement. The next term, if we go to the next slide, is related to an issue that's just massively important for our community. The Council knows Irvine currently has the fourth ranked park system in all of the United States of America and the top park system in California. A huge reason for that is because of the permanent open space in town. Luis Estivis are acting public works and sustainability director recently told me, we have more, we have open space in an amount in quantity that's larger than the entire city of Brea, over 9,000 acres here in town. One of the things that we've negotiated through this initial MOU with the Irvine Company is that the Oak Creek Golf Course, which is 164 acres of what we currently are zoned as preservation area. So it's considered open space technically that in exchange for development rights to build on the golf course, the Irvine Company would give the city 315 acres of new open space areas in Orard hills in the Portola Springs area. Those areas actually are not currently protected as permanent open space, their termed agricultural use, their better open space, better quality of open space that staff believes than the Gulf course land. In addition, the MOU also has been negotiated to facilitate the Irvine company transferring control of all of their agricultural orchard, avocado orchard operations to the city. We've looked at the cash flows associated with the existing orchards. They currently generate about a million dollars a year in revenue. And importantly, especially given what we've seen in the fires up in LA the avocado orchards being protected in perpetuity creates A few modification and fire protection area that's really important for north Irvine If we go to the next slide this map this initial map shows the existing orchard operations that the Irvine company would be transferring to the city's control as part of this MOU deal. We go to the next slide. This slide identifies the open space areas that would be provided to the city in the orchard hills area. It also identifies fuel modification overlays that would be provided to the city. If we go to the next slide, in the Portolis Springs area, here's a section of open space that would be dedicated to the city also, including the fuel modification zone. zone. If we go to the next slide, one of the issues that we've also been assessing as relates to the open space consideration is the role of initiative resolution 881. I'm going to ask Jeff to maybe weigh in on implications of that particular initiative resolution as relates to what we're doing here tonight. Certainly thanks thanks, Oliver. For the council's benefit, in 1988, the then City Council placed before the voters, a council-sponsored initiative measure that asked the voters whether the overall City of Irvine Open Space Program ought to be implemented. And it was in that measure that the Oak Creek Golf Course, that 164 acres, was identified as a preservation area. And one of the things that we've heard in the lead up to this city council meeting is the argument that, well, because that went before the voters in 1988, it necessarily as a matter of law must go before the voters if that preservation designation is to be removed. We've had conversations with the Irvine Company and its team of lawyers and looked at this item independently, and we think that there are good arguments, reasonable, correct arguments, why that's not the case. And I'm not going to bore the council with a ton of initiative law, but suffice it to say that it is one thing for the people to say. The general plan is hereby amended. And it is another thing for the people to say the city council should amend the general plan. And in 1988, it's the second thing that happened. The people did not directly legislate an amendment to the city's general plan. The people advised the city council that it should make amendments to the general plan. And because the measure was structured that way, that gives the city council the discretion now to reamend the general plan to remove that preservation designation without going back out to the voters. You have the legal ability to do that. I would say, however, maybe the first point I should have made, I put way too many words on this slide and I apologize for that. The first thing I should have said is, this isn't that night anyway. This is just the MOU. The MOU provides a path forward and it will be another day, a different day when the city council will take up the question whether it wants to amend the general plan and what process it will follow for advising itself about the wisdom of making that decision. And the MOU is explicit that the city council has that discretion. There's nothing in the MOU that binds the city to any process or to actually amend the general plan going forward. So I wanted to get that out there to try and get in front of it and do full disclosure on that. And with that, I'll turn it back to you all over. Thank you, Jeff. Outside the open space related considerations, the MOU includes other provisions that we've been discussing and negotiating with the Irvine Company. One of the additional terms that's important to the Council knows we have been coordinating the built out of the inaugural Irvine public library systems. If we go to the next slide, the MOU that we've negotiated contemplates a couple of objectives to actually accelerate our ability to build out the full library system that we've been envisioning and are studying currently. One, the lease requires the lease. The MOU requires that the Irvine company provide the city with the lease to establish a library at the former Barnes and Noble site in Woodbridge Village Center. In addition, we'll talk about this a little bit later. The agreement provides community benefit funding that we can use to cover library-related costs, including towards the establishment of a central library facility. We'll go to the next slide. There's a quick exhibit that identifies the library site that's been contemplated in Woodbridge Village. We go to the next slide. One of the additional items we've discussed and embedded into the MOU is the provision that the existing Oak Creek Clubhouse, which is a high-quality facility that includes a kitchen, dining facilities, meeting space, that that would be transferred to the city to use as a community facility of some sort. We do think it's an important element of a village where to be created in the area to have community serving facility space for that neighborhood. If we go to the next slide, here's an overview of that Oak Creek Clubhouse. We go to the next slide. The council recalls for a number of years we've been working to to try to effectuate one of the important components of the 2017 agreement, the city struck with OCFA. That was the provision that we would work to establish a joint training public safety facility. We've been looking for sites for a number of years, and now when a couple of years ago there was some thought maybe that facility should be located in the great park. We eventually identified an area north of Portola Springs, north of the 241, which is currently being used as a construction lay down yard, as an appropriate location for that municipal public training operations facility. What we don't have though is the land use authority to be able to locate that use there. Given the supplemental land use restriction that the Irvine company has over that piece of property, the MOU requires the Irvine company to remove the restrictions to facilitate the development of this important public safety effort and the next slide identifies where that particular facility is located. We go to the next slide. It's the council recalls we had a long presentation that Pete and the Irvine Chamber of Commerce that the farmers provided a couple months ago related to one of our economic development efforts to and the Irvine Chamber of Commerce provided a couple months ago related to one of our economic development efforts to really encourage and grow local entrepreneurship and to grow local small businesses. One of the ways we've identified pathway and how to move that forward is to establish a proposed innovation center that we've been working on with local partners including the Greater Irvine Chamber of Commerce, the Small Business Development Corporation, and also the Beale Center for Applied Innovation in the University Lab Partners Group. The MOU requires the Irvine company to facilitate a pathway once we have a plan in place for locating such a facility. If we go to the next slide, one of the last elements related to the MOU terms that's important to share with the council is the provision to the city of $96.2 million in community benefit fees that would be split across two different tranches. one tranche would be $26.2 million that would be paid to the city as part of a park requirement for the apartment complexes that would be established or 1600 apartments proposed in this village. The $26.2 million would be available for the city to use towards community projects. 10 million of that amount would be reserved for the Walnut Trail and for the Jost improvements with the remaining amount available for allocation towards park improvements, community center improvements throughout the city. A second tranche of funding would be general community benefit dollars that would be available for the city council to use towards funding different project priorities. For a lot of feedback about expanding Irvine Connect transit opportunities, that's one of the strategies that we've envisioned is using some of that money to help fund the establishment of a more robust Irvine Connect program that would link to this actual new village. There'd also be funding set aside for instituting enhanced urban forest reactivities, moving forward on our food security and nonprofit support programs. We have mobility and bike center type operations that could be funded utilizing these dollars. Trail and park improvements including the Jostin Walnut Trail would be added vocational youth job training is something we've thought through a lot could be added into the pot of programs that would be funded with these monies and then finally accelerating the establishment of the Irvine Public Library system. That's a major cost item that this would help facilitate as we engage startup operations. The next slide identifies how the payment schedule would be coordinated if this project were to move forward. Of note, the negotiation has resulted in within 60 days of the effective date of the MOU Irvine company would make an initial payment to the city of $3 million. Next year there would be an additional $3.2 million paid. After that, if the project is entitled the additional funding would come to the city, stopping out at $10 million a year in the final year of the agreement, totaling $70 million over roughly 8-year period. We go to the next slide to conclude sort of the overview of what we're contemplating tonight again, understanding that there's a lot of work to do before there's any decision on whether or not this is an appropriate project to move forward whether or not we should look to establish a new residential village. Tonight that's as Jeff indicated that is not the decision before the council. The decision is if we want to engage in a planning process where we've identified the framework for how we would approach that assessment. The overall review of this project would take upwards of a year to complete the MOU that's before the Council tonight establishes that overarching planning framework and community benefit framework that will help guide that assessment moving forward. It's also important just to emphasize again approval of an adoption of the MOU does not grant any development rights. It is not approval of the project. It's again an indication of initiating the overall assessment. We do think that the MOU contains important elements that advances city council identified goals and objectives that would benefit the community moving forward and also engages that robust planning framework that master. city council identified goals and objectives that would benefit the community moving forward and also engages that robust planning framework that master planning framework that Irvine is known for. If we go to the final slide, given all of that as background, the staff recommendation tonight is to authorize the execution of the MOU to consider establishing a new park planning area, including all of the other community benefit programs involved in the document and is outlined in the presentation tonight. And with that, I can close the staff's presentation. Jeff and I are here. If the council has any questions, I do think the Irvine company has representatives that would like to also provide their context when the council's ready as it relates to what they are proposing moving ahead. That will turn it back to you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Chi, Mr. Melchene. At this time, I think what I'd like to do is just inquire of my colleagues if they wish to direct some questions or comments to Mr. Chi. Then I think after that we would call for public comment beginning with Irvine Company representatives. I do have several requests here to be heard. First, Councilmember Traceter. Thank you so much for that presentation. I really appreciate it. I just have a quick question before we move on. You mentioned in your presentation Irvine Connect potentially expanding that but I couldn't find Irvine Connect mentioned in the MOU itself. Did I miss that or? It's absolutely included in the MOU document. I'm going to look to Jeff. He's going to identify the section. It's Jeff, furiously. If you need a little more time perhaps councilmember Traciter can proceed. I have a question she might have. I've found it Mayor sorry. It's actually in there a couple of places but the first time it appears is in recital in. It isn as community benefit payments may be used at the city's discretion for transit and then it goes on to say there have been forestry food security and non-profit entity support by center operations and other city priorities. So it didn't use the words Irvine connect. It just referred to transit operations. Okay. Then you said there was another time to or I'll find that. Okay Okay. Yeah. In the meanwhile, transit, no. Unless this has Irvine Connect, then I'm not going to assume it will go towards Irvine Connect because transit could also include Saigonolis. I want to see Irvine Connect in there, written in there. Thank you. I think when I don't think there's any objection from staff adding Irvine Connect into the specific words and when the Irvine company representatives come up, I assume there won't be any issue with that. All right. Mayor, just to make sure I close out Council Member Traceeader's question, it also appears in section 4.8.5 of the MOU but it again uses the word transit and presumably there will be no problem changing it to Irvine Connect. Very well. We'll move on to Council Member Martina's, Frankl. Thank you so much for the presentation. I just want a couple of clarifications. So in the points where it says no less than 1,000 to your house vouchers that provide a discount of 65% of market rate grants. And then it says participants identified by the city as voucher recipients will be given prior replacement into a permanent affordable housing. So when they get these vouchers, they don't get immediately to a permanent housing. How is that accommodation going to be? If it's for two years, my guess is that by then, they are hopefully in a better position to pay the full rent. So will then this be kind of the permanent housing, or where is it? And the second part is that I just want to make sure that these are going to be distributed among the city, not just concentrated in one area of the city. Two questions there. How would this work? And what would be the distribution? Absolutely. So in terms of how it would work, those are excellent questions. Councilmember Martinez-Franko. In terms of how it would work, the city's existing health and wellness operation is set up an infrastructure where the initial 88 families we've identified are all IUSD. They all have IUSD students off of our McKinney-ilist. That's the piloting program that we're doing. The way that it works would work is that an individual family would be located in an appropriate apartment unit. The city would utilize and is utilizing our HAP-related dollars to provide for overarching arch-in-case management support for each of those families. We've also built out a full city support system that includes childcare and transportation. Those elements are intended to help families over the course of two years. If we need to, four years, you can extend the individual in the unit to the place where they are stabilized and are earning enough money to be able to afford their own unit. The unit will depend on their income level at stabilization. The contractually, the way this would work then, is the Irvine company would give that particular individual at the city's discretion priority access to a permanent affordable unit at the income level they qualify for. And so it creates this throughput transition where you stabilize and then get the individual or family into a permanent unit after you've built enough support to stabilize that particular family and individual. In terms of where it would be located, The MOU identifies that the Irvine company and the city will have to mutually agree on at least 17 locations throughout the city. It won't be concentrated in one-one location. The intention also is that if it is a family with children or if they have a connection to a certain part of Irvine, they'd be able to stay in that general location or stay close to their school. That's why we've identified so many different facilities up to 17 that would be identified in terms of where the family would be placed or the individual would be placed. Anything further? Oh, thank you. Any other questions, comments? Why don't we then turn to how many requests do we have for public comment? We have 79 requests to speak. 79 and I'm very well. Let me suggest there are representatives from the Irvine Company here. There we are. Mr. Davis. Welcome and how many minutes was your presentation? I can do this in less than five I hope. That's fine. I mean, take the five minutes or even a couple more. We want to have your presentation and then we'll turn to the more general public. Thank you, Mayor Agrin. Members of the am Jeff Davis here on behalf of the urban company and I too would like to welcome new council member Martinez Franco It's good to see a full Body in front of us. I'm going to follow on the presentation that the city manager gave from a little bit different perspective the information That all of our in-jet provided it does include the technical nature of all the applications, but I wanted to get back and maybe talk a little bit more about the context and some other things that we've done overall with this program. For over 50 years, the company and the city of work together within a framework on large scale, master planning principles to create vibrant, physically strong, diverse master plan community with a balance of housing, jobs, and open space. This new master plan will be no exception. But while Oliver was talking about the technical aspects of this, and we were mindful of the city's process through the arena application and its adoption of its new general plan and those updates, we were also taking the time over the last three years to meet with the community. While the staff report did address those fundamentals and objectives, I wanted to know a little bit about the feedback that we've received from over 7,000 respondents over that three year period of time. In that time, we utilized surveys, individual one-on-one meetings, small group planning sessions. To better understand resident views on housing, transportation and other elements of importance to Irvine residents. Most recently, and over the last two weeks, the effort has included knocking on a thousand doors in the immediate vicinity of the planning area. We've staffed information booths at the Woodbridge Village Center. We sent a direct mail communication to a good part of Irvine. I've seen a lot of those already out there in the audience this evening. We met with over 150 community members as we continued our planning discussions. Launched a project information website sent over 4,000 emails to the community. I wanted to say all that because it's certainly we're proud of this program and we wanted the community to be aware of what we were doing and wanted the council to be aware. You probably received from me earlier today a packet that's similar to this. This represents over 50 comments from community members and those support groups that are supportive of the applications that we're talking about here this evening. And I believe some of those folks will be speaking with you in a few minutes. As a result of those conversations with the community and the input from those respondents, over 90% of those expressed a strong support for a balanced village planning with a range of home styles, parks, trails, and schools. With sound planning, constructs, city policy, and community insights in mind, the Revined Company is pleased to propose this new village that incorporates the foundational planning principles noted on this slide. This is what we heard from the community that was important to them as opposed to where we all mentioned we did have success with our affordable housing program and our previous MOU. We do get quite a bit of comment that there ought to be more housing types not just apartments but a full range of housing types including a four-cell program which would be part of the applications that would be reviewed by the city. The planning area location as was mentioned is unique and that it provides a sufficient acreage that does allow for this lower density traditional village similar to an eastwood or woodberry while at the same time being responsive to city planning and city policy directions placing housing close to jobs. The location within the spectrum district includes the area of the privately owned Oak Creek Golf Club and to a adjacent commercial office sites. To be clear, no new general plan housing elements are being proposed with any of our applications. Instead units already allocated in the city's general plan will be utilized at this location to meet housing needs. The plan does propose, as was mentioned, exchanging the 160 acres of golf course that's privately held to be utilized for this new village with a dedication to the city, ownership of another 300 acres of land, adjacent to the gateway preserve, for open space and the retention of avocado orchards that was mentioned. And on a more localized level, this opportunity to connect residents with new extension of the Jeffrey open space trail. And then improvements to the walnut trail are also part of the proposed community community. Oliver also mentioned the Woodbridge Village Center, the library where we're in negotiations with the city for a lease and as a part of the MOU the funding does come for operations of that facility as well as other locations throughout the city. One of the things that we did here from our community was that it was important and up to this point in time hasn't been planned for and the spectrum area is the location of a school. It was critical that that our community sessions they focused on the availability of schools being one of the fundamental and most important things for any new community. A new school will be provided with this village at no cost to IUSD and will be designed to serve families from this new village as well as the larger spectrum area. Lastly, as Oliver mentioned, this plan does address matters of community priority and importance, committing to a series of public benefits as a part of this overall program. And I think it's important again to note that why we wanted to engage in this kind of discussion, why we wanted to go through the MOU process, why we would not identify all of these elements, is that as we define the project description that will be part of the analysis that will be reviewed over the next year through the city's review process, it's critical at the beginning to have everything included as part of that package. So for us to have early consultation with the city, early consultation with the school district and other stakeholders we wanted to make sure that we got those elements into our plan as we're able to analyze moving forward. That did include the commentary that was added about the urban forestry, food security, not for profit and entity support, youth and vocational training programs to understand that was something that was important as well. And certainly the Irvine Care's Transitional Housing Program that Oliver talked about, which is a very unique and new construct, and we're in people with an immediate need ordinarily when we're going through this kind of discussions. We're talking about affordable housing units that are gonna come to three years from where we get our entitlement. This is an instant program that allows us to deal with an instant need and does allow for a transition into more permanent housing and longer term housing through our overall programs. In conclusion, I'd like to say that the MOU before the Council tonight is the master plan for the new village, which we begin to be analyzed in a year long city process. After that long process in review for infrastructure planning, we would then anticipate first occupancies to be somewhere 24 to 36 months from now. So it's again a long review process. And we do feel that this plan does represent a strategic convergence or a Ryan's longstanding master planning principles in terms of community benefit and the city's commitment to addressing local housing needs beginning almost immediately with a unique transitional housing concept that is the embodiment of grace, compassion and dignity. We look forward to your comments and any questions you might have our team is here but I know there's a lot of people that want to talk, so unless your questions for me, I will sit down. Why don't you just wait one moment? Are there any questions of Mr. Davis at this time? There being none, just stand at the ready if you would. Yes, sir. And I think we'll turn now to the general public. Let me kind of suggest a course of action here. Although there are some 79 you say altogether. We're up to to 82. You're up to what? 82. Up to 82. My guess is that as many as a third of those have gone home or whatever. But let's assume they're going to be 60 folks or so who want to be heard. We do want to accommodate them. Let me suggest a little flexibility on my part. If you're here as part of two or three people who want to say things and you want to designate one of them as a representative and I'll give you a little additional time. There are ways I think of consolidating the public comment. We want to kind of get to everybody here. I think we probably should have the public comment limited to one minute each. If you're speaking on behalf of two other people also who kind of share your views and want to ask for a little more time, do so. But I think that's the best hope for getting through as much public comment as possible. I'll try to be flexible if the commenters will as well. With that, who's the first? Thank you, Marif. I could call the first five speakers. Zach Halop, Holden Geary, Shady Shabon, Susan Sayer, and Wing Chow. All right. Welcome. Good evening. I respectfully ask for other more time. I'm representing all of the golf head coaches, both boys and girls in Irvine Unified. Well, let me ask you are any of the others on the list? They're not. So you're just asking for extra time for yourself. They sent me here as their representative. OK. Why don't you? I'm going to race through this. I've been living in Irvine for almost 40 years. And I taught as a teacher in Irvine Unified for 33 years. I was a three time teacher of the year at the Elementary High School and District level. I love this community. It's a balanced community with the many to support everybody. Oak Creek Golf Course does more than serve 5,000 residents per week. It also serves as a community hub and most importantly, the students of Urban. Northwood Narbine Schools play their home matches at Oak Creek and without Oak Creek, they will have no place to play because all the other courses are already impacted by multiple high schools. So where would they go? Many families found golf is a way in the pandemic to keep their kids active and safe in a sport that prizes integrity and values character. It's the only sport where you call a penalty on yourself. What a great environment for kids to learn in and there are hundreds of kids at the course daily and the professionals that work there to support them in a way that reflects our community with distinction. I know that the council members have a tough job tonight while I would hope for a 7-0 vote defeating this proposition. I understand more discussion will take place. If a new council member was up, why don't you take another 15 seconds? I appreciate that. You know what scares me the most, the original thing was that that brought me to Irvine was the quality of life and now I fear that we're losing quality for quantity. Please, please don't do this. Thank you for your time. Hold in, Gary. Welcome. Thank you for having me. I feel like the article written in the register was really smearing towards the golf course. We have 1400 members. It's not a private club. Anyone can come play. 80% of the golf course is a public. I'm going to play the golf course. I'm going to play the golf course. I feel like the article written in the register was really smearing towards the golf course. We have 1400 members. It's not a private club anyone can come play. 85% of the play is those members and they all live here. I could give you the list, everyone's address, anything you need. The survey that got passed around to a lot of people in the neighborhood didn't give you an option to say I disagree with the plan. It just said, I support it, or I wanna be involved in these decisions, but there was no place to put no. So the Irvine Company wants skewed results. You're gonna kill all the wildlife in the area. There's six coyotes that live on the range. They feed on rabbits, there's birds, there's turtles, there's fish. Thank you, your time is up. Thank you for your comments. Thank you. Phoebe Shabon. Welcome. Good evening, councils. And thank you for your time and for your service. I just want to talk to Bees, real quick, and all about the congestion that's going to happen to the whole, I live in Woodbury. We added more apartments in San Canyon and Trebuco. The marketplace, more apartments over there. They look horrible. Adding to the traffic and the congestion, trying to go from the 405, you know, so it would be very, it takes about like half an hour. One thing about when the city manager talked about the mandates of the states, The states mandates zoning by 2045, not construction. The other thing is he said 60,000 people are at risk of losing housing. That's 20% of Irvine. 1,000 units is not going to do anything to those 60,000 people. And if they can't afford it right now in two years, they're not going to be able to afford it. Building that is not gonna decrease the price of the houses or make it affordable for anybody. And the last thing is, we're suffering from the whole. Thank you, your time is up. Just finish your thought, go ahead. Just finish your sentence. No? Susan Sayer, and if I also call forward James Huang, Art Brown, Frank, Jenny Bullinger and Blaine. Yeah, I'm just gonna ask the clerk when the one minute is elapsed just tell me and I'll at that point I'll at that point accord them a few more seconds to finish a sentence. We don't want to be cutting people off mid-settings. Go right ahead. Hi, my name is Susan Sayer. I'll make this short. I have two primary issues. As many residents require affordable housing, our seniors and disabled community members, they will require affordability terms or affordable vouchers for much longer than two years. Most seniors and disabled residents live on income from benefit programs, which does not increase as much as the cost of living. That's affordable housing for a two year period. We'll likely never meet their, for a two year period will never meet their needs. Also the continuing rise in the cost of living, two years will not likely provide those needing affordable housing sufficient time to adjust their life situation to the point of being able to afford market rate housing. The other issues is senior and disabled community members suffer from disabling conditions that require ADA adaptable amenities such as wider doorways, walk-in showers, adjustable countertops, and adjustable closet bars. Mr. Miller. Mr. Miller, your time is up. Thank you very much. James Wong. Thank you, sir. Your time is up. Thank you very much. James Wong. Good evening. I'm James from Woodbridge. Irvine is a growing city with many jobs, so it needs housing and what better place to put a new village than a central location close to hospital offices, retail and IVC. No individual housing development is going to solve the affordability crisis, but housing overall does. Just like no one raindrops solves a drought, but raindrops. The Oak Creek Golf Course is an exclusive club that charges $200 to play, not a real public space. It's not nature. It's an artificial landscape, with chemicals that cause Parkinson's disease. This project will replace it with houses, actual parks, and a new school. I fully support the idea of this project. And to address the naysayers concerns, Irvine ought to take this as an opportunity to do things better. Make sure the MOU specifies that this village be designed with walkability, bikeability, and transit access in mind. And a new Irvine connector out funded by the developer fees would be perfect. Please amend the MOU. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Point of order. Point of order. I'm going to just a moment. What is your point of order? I'm having a hard time hearing the speaker with the audience also making noise. Would you be willing to maintain order? I agree. Everyone in the audience would simply listen respectfully to every speaker. I think we'll all get through the evening in a lot better shape. Thank you for your point of order. Go right ahead. Art Brown. Good evening. First I have to. I tell you, cool from the golf course, and my wife says she'd go to this meeting at five o'clock. And I've never met no one on these before, so I had to get her at five. Well, I could have got dressed up for you, but anyway. Real quick, he lives in Woodbridge. I live in Woodbridge. I've lived in Woodbridge since 1992. My wife opened up the Nautilus School, and then she... up for you, but anyway, real quick. He lives in Woodbridge. I live in Woodbridge. I've lived in Woodbridge since 1992. My wife opened up Venato School and then she opened up Lakeside. So the point is I've been in Irvine for a long time and I've seen a lot of changes and I love Irvine, but the point is it's just getting so crowded. Like I leave Woodbridge and go up Yale and I get to Ettinger and I might wait four minutes to make the light. Then when I make the light I turn towards Culver and then there's three red lights awaiting me before I can cross Culver. If you add this place is going to be at Ettinger or Irvine Center, Irvine Center, Jeffrey and Irvine Valley or whatever that is and That's all they're gonna dump on to Edinger or Irvine Center in terms of the the street, you know Your time is up. Okay. If you need another five seconds You finish your thought. Thank you very much for your comments Frank Welcome good Welcome. Good evening, or good morning. My name is Frank Southerner. My wife and myself have lived here in Irvine for almost 50 years. I'll make this short. I'm sort of cutting my speech down. You're proposing more than four times the number of homes that are in our track, the ranch development. And looking at a generation rate of 3,000 homes, you can have about 6,000 cars. The infrastructure, there's no way the infrastructure could support that. Let alone sustain it for years to come. Try getting out of our development track or village at certain times, you can't. You can't turn on Jeffrey. It's impacted now. The Irvine Center Drive, we refer it as the alternate five freeway. Because at certain times of the day, you can't move on Irvine Center Drive. It's so backed up your time as a lapse. Oh that was yeah thank you thank you for your comments. Jenny Bullinger. Brian and if I could also call forward Melissa Gallow, Debra Miller, Ossorio, Eric Wang, Scott Carpenter, and Heather Manchester. Welcome. Hello. My name is Brian Akameene. I live in the ranch also. It was mentioned already about the quality of life. That's why we came to Irvine. And that's what we're told, the that we have quality of life. But it doesn't feel like that when there's so much traffic. You know, I had taught in Santa Ana for 34 years. And it was described to me as a city that, you know, it's like a bomb. It starts in the center and then it moves out. And that's how progress is. It starts in the middle and it moves out. But it leaves disintegration as you go along. It's like the inner part starts to rot. And that's what I think that the Irvine, OK, I've talked too much. No, not too much. Your time has you're okay. I've talked too much. No not too much your time is a lapse Thank you for your comments Melissa Gallow Hi, my name's Deborah Miller, Osorio and What I was going to say is I'm against the Elimination of the Oak Creek golf course to create another village, more high density housing. And I support the green space which adds to our quality of life as well as being a habitat for many animals. And the thing that I wanted to add is what prevents the new proposed preserved open space from being changed again because I didn't realize that the golf course was a preserved open space. It looks like they found a loophole to change it. I'm a little concerned with that. Thank you for your comments. You actually posed a question that I'm going to pose later on here. Thank you. Got Carpenter? Mr. Mayor, if I could, I'll have a quick ask for an additional 30 seconds. Sure. On the, I'm on the Cricket Club Homeowners Association. We spent some time over the last couple of days pulling all of our homeowners and the one thing that has come ring true is as Irvine deciding to go in this direction because if they do we're moving down the path of a city of broken promises. Those of us who bought at the Oak Creek community specifically Cricket Club approximately 20 or 25 years ago, we bought with the knowledge that that was open space, that was preserved open space, that was going to be dedicated for our recreation, that was going to be dedicated for the whole city to enjoy the outdoors. The concept of trading off the golf course for 315 acres 10 miles away from us, benefits, us who live in that district benefits us almost zero you've taken away something that we invested in you're taking away something that we purchased second thing broken promises the city was supposed to have a school built down at Los Alibos they didn't they put They put a school, they took all those kids down at the spectrum, moved them to the Oak Creek Elementary School. Two weeks ago, we had kids come out of the classroom running around, punching other kids because they have developmental problems and there's no room for other schools for them. The problem is, their broken promises of school should have been built built at Las Elivas. What we have is a history of the Irvine company breaking promises, especially to those people who are already in the Oak Creek Village. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your comments and welcome. Heather Manchester, and if I could also call forward Jeff Glass, Mike Ellison, Paula Miller and Christina Shea. Thank you for your time this evening. I'm speaking in favor of housing. I know we need it desperately and speaking in favor of affordable housing, which I also think we need desperately. I'm also speaking in favor of the golf course. I have two sons from my older son. It was the place where he, starting at age 10, where he fit in and belonged. He took lessons every summer, every day. Morning to night, he spent at the golf course, and he was able to play golf with Woodbridge High School. He played golf with the Division I College, and he's now pursuing the dream of being a pro golfer. So I know that this golf course is expensive, but it has been such an meaningful, impactful community space for our family. So I worry about it being lost if somehow it has to be gone, if we could maybe compromise and have just nine holes in the driving range for future children to enjoy and grow up in. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments. Jeff Glass. Good evening, everybody. First thing, Irvine companies spent a lot of money on this brochure. We got it for the last couple of days. So is this a fate of companies, my question? If it's not, then stop the old Creek development. While progress is necessary, this is not the place for it to be. Surely there's not a location that we'd be out or used for this. We don't want or need more congestion, traffic on Long Irvine Center Drive because I live in the ranch that surrounds Irvine Valley College Oak Tree or in Tree the Ranch Woodbridge. We don't need the added density to eliminate a great golf course recreation location would dwindle them as few this is wrong and misguided. As Joni Mitchell said, you don't pay paradise to put up a parking lot. Thank you for your comments. Mike Ellison, welcome. Hi, Mike Ellison. I've been in Irvine for over 30 years. In short, Irvine company is asking you to breach an agreement it made with the city and the city council more than 30 years ago. And it's doing it because it knows most of you don't remember that agreement. Your city attorney glossed over and misrepresented what happened 30 years ago. The Irvine Company wanted to develop Oak Creek the neighborhood. There were a lot of objections, primarily about traffic and congestion, the way they responded to it. As I said, don't worry. We're going to give you this great open space, permanent open space. That'll be a golf course that we're giving up our rights to develop. That's how they got the Citizens' Arrine and this council to agree to the Oak Creek development. 30 years go by. You guys don't remember that perhaps, Mira Egren does. And what's happened now, they want to take it back. This is not about affordable housing. We need affordable housing, not at Oak Creek. What we need to do is build affordable housing down in the actual spectrum. This is about them getting $9 billion. They build Oak Creek, the development. They defrauded us by saying, okay, you have this as permanent open space, and now they want to take it back. And the reason is exactly so they can make a profit on it. If they're renegating on that agreement agreement allowing them to do it is breaching your obligations to the residents who will only read to this 30 years ago because of that. Your time is all absent. Thank you. 60 seconds. 60 seconds is not enough. Welcome. Hi, my name is Paula Miller and I live in the ranch and I'm the current president of the Ranch homeowners association I've lived in Irvine for over 50 are almost 50 years and we moved here because it was a plan community lots of open space and Variety housing abundant, you know excellent education and wonderful recreation for everyone I've received numerous calls calls, letters, and messages that are concerned about upset residents concerned about what's going to happen when you lose Oak Creek golf course. It's a beautiful area. It's in our central Irvine. We don't care that there's an avocado grove in Northern Irvine. That doesn't help us have our space, our recreation. We just feel that this is just really, really bad plan. Please, we beg you not to let this happen. Please listen to the people who have asked you to take care of the city and not fall to the promises of the big money. The urban company owns lots of land. Please help them to consider another option and not take away, not pave over a golf course and beautiful habitat that is already there. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Christina Shea and if I could also call forward Joseph Stanley, Jay Sato, Cheryl Long, Derek Shirk and Laura Kormack. Welcome. Good evening again, Christina Shea. I'm actually going to be reading a letter that I was given from former vice president of the Irvine Company, Michael Blanc. By way of introduction, I am Michael Blanc. He couldn't be here tonight. A former employee of the Irvine Company having retired in 2017 after 36 years of rewarding service to Irvine Noun Company rightfully praised for the master planning and land stewardship During that time I had the privilege of working on historic open space MOU Between the city and the company referenced in initiative resolution 88-1 I'm writing to express my profound Disappointment in the Irvine City Council and the Irvine company in what appears to be a total disregard of initiative resolution 881 and Mayor Agrin I have to Complement you this was something you spent a lot of time supporting in this city I Approved by the Irvine company electorate in June. As referenced on the city's website and open space preservation, this initiative enacted a strategy to ensure that land set aside for the preservation of would never be used for development. Now I heard from our attorney this was maybe a suggested idea from the voters, it was not. It was a permanent declaration by the voters in 1988. Thank you, your time is elapsed. I'm sorry, Yacht, I have more to read, but anywhere, I thank you. Well, I'll tell you what, I'll give you another 10 seconds here to wrap up the game. I don't know if I have a different 10 seconds, okay. As the Open Space MOU was being negotiated in the late 1980s, there were citizen advocates who desired open space preservation between the 1-5 and the or five freeways referred to by some as the flat land proportion of the city or the central part of the city and not just the southern or northern parts of the city where there was more hillside conditions. So basically the voters voted for this. They did not just suggest it. This was, and as I said, Mayor Avery, you understood exactly how this was put together and that. That portion of Oak Creek was defined and to be determined as long term forever open space. And I'm very distrusting hearing all these stories of different designs and ideas. I just don't think that's what the voters wanted. But thank you very much for your time. Thank you. This is former Mayor Sally and she heard it. Were you here earlier when I was introducing mayors? No sir I was not. Oh okay I'm glad I just passed you by. Mayor Aguilio, City Council. Welcome. Welcome. My memory has come back to me and I remembered being on the City Council with you when there was a discussion by and actually about by both the Community Services Commission and the Planning Commission that the middle of Irvine needed to be preserved with some open space. And at that point in time, we had a resolution and an ordinance that we passed, and you've voted for it as well as I did, to make the Oak Creek area permanent open space. And that was part of the open space plan. Now I understand from the city attorney that you can change that, but you're going to have to admit that we did not amend the general plan but we had a promise and we had also a vote from the community that this was going to be an open space element. It is the Oak Creek golf course serves many many hundreds of people and it is probably one of the best public golf courses in all of Orange County. Thousands of people go there. I think if you want to build around that or do whatever it is you want to do, but saving the Oak Creek golf courses is a very, very important thing. And besides, we promised this community that it would be a golf course and or open space and we chose golf courses. If you want to change it, I think we should put it back on the ballot and let people vote for it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Jay Sato. Thank you and welcome. Hi. My name is Jay Sato. I'm married, have three kids. 11, 12, 14 years. My family and I have lived in Irvine for 26 years. We love open spaces and my family is very active outdoors. The new Spectrum Village plan is poised to be a key component in improving the bike ability of the city of Irvine. The plans to connect the Jeffrey open space trail to the path further south along Jeffrey Road via dedicated bike paths will significantly improve the safety and experience for those commuting to Irvine Valley College and even to the beach via San Canyon, Barmer Canyon for those of us who are adventurous enough. The additional bike paths within the Spectrum District Village will also improve the connectivity to businesses, retail shops along San Canyon. Some people are concerned about the possibility of increased car traffic in the new village. We'll bring clearly by continuing to invest in infrastructure in a progressive and strategic manner. And by including viable and robust non-car options in the new village, increases in car traffic can be minimized. In the larger picture, the spectrum district village fixes the missing link of connectivity in that area, which could lower car traffic. Your time is up. Not kidding. Thank you very much. Derek Shirk. Hello, my name's Derek Shirk. I'm a homeowner in Orange Tree, which is right across the street from the golf course. This deal was just revealed to the public last week, and now literally within days, this $zillion memorandum of understanding is on the agenda and in front of the city council for consideration. Like the community, most of the community does not even know about this yet. Like this is just a total blitzkrieg attack on the neighborhood. the people here tonight, these are just the tip of the iceberg. Most of the community is totally unaware that this is going on. This development is going to cause all kinds of problems. There's already tons of congestion. It will not solve the affordability issue. The city manager himself said, this voucher has never been tried anywhere. It's experimental. Never worked before. But the city of Irvine is going to commit zillions of dollars to this. This is just a crazy idea. It does not make sense. It needs to go to a vote so the people can vote. That is what I'm in support of. Put it to a vote. Let the people be heard. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. We welcome. If I, I'm sorry, Mayor. My name's Laura Farmac. Wait, wait, hold on. Oh. Our city clerk wants to be here. I'm sorry, I was going to call five more speakers if I could. If I could call forward Mosa, Emily Low, Soojin Sun, Guy Lee, and Gianly Feng, and Gianly Fing. Sorry, go ahead. Thank you, you have 60 seconds. Thank you, good day and congratulations, Betty. This will not pass a traffic study, it just won't. Housing dominates the land, There is no room left. Very little for construction. They try to take boomers and the Irvine lanes with a miniature golf. And you voted with the people who did not want the high density housing there along the 405. Please support us to defend our golf course from developers who try to destroy our local recreational establishments. It's just to make room for more traffic congestion, pollution, and social dystopia. Replacing the new recreational areas Irvine has with more high density housing limits that choices families have for fun, exercise, and entertainment. I got extra. Vouchers don't work. It won't pass it. And this whole Portola trading land way up in Orchard and Portola, that's just, it's not right. Thank you for your comments. Thank you. Maasad. Welcome. Hi, thank you. I'm a con-gadginian, right on Airvine Centre Drive across from the Gulf course. After the builders built Cypress village, the traffic increased significantly in San Canion, area and Airvine Centre Drive. When I leave work around 4.35 p.m. I have to wait through three cycle at the red light in traffic just to make a left turn and go to home. Yes, I saw in the plan that the new road is being opened behind that area close to freeway five, but I don't think that will be enough to handle the traffic for 3,100 new homes or more realistically around 6,400 additional cars, assuming at least took two per household. In the agenda item 1.2, the one about urban forestry master plan, the presenter said we need to add 67,500 more trees in Irvine estimated spending budget of $2 million. My question now is why we are destroying our open space to build more houses and then later we have to spend maybe twice more than that to bring green space back to air wide. If we even can bring them back or if there is any open space left in the future. Thank you for your comments. Thank you. So please don't do it. Don't say yes. No, just want to say, don't say yes on behalf of us. Like, like said, we want to vote for that. Thank you for your comments. Sujansson. Welcome. My name is Shujun Sun, a resident of the Tree community and a student in Urban Valley College. I'm proud to live in this beautiful neighborhood. You can also surround it by academic in situation and recreational green space, like the Oak rig golf course. I am writing to express my strong obsession to the proposal plan to replace this golf course. We are present at 3,100 housing units. and the handrails housing units. My concern and I I appreciate 3,100 housing units. My concern and online flow went like of other core data, nationally and the time of community feedback. I received the proposal only about a week ago and probably meld my response just yesterday. I understand her hearing is already lacking place today, which is far too rushed for change of this magnitude. Many residents included in the message of likely. Thank you. Thank you. Excuse me. Thank you for your comments. Your time is a lap. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. No, don't be sorry. I'm not. Don't be sorry, but thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. If I could call forward Gloria, he Nadari, David Hackett, Greg, and Jay Bruce. And we'll start with Gloria. Welcome. Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. My name is Gloria and I live in the ranch. And although I've only been alive for 12 years, half of which was here in Irvine, it is clear that Oak Creek golf course is a place where I feel welcome and where myself and hundreds of others young golfers alike spend their afternoons in the heat, hitting bucket after bucket, trying to achieve their dreams. And all these dreams will be dashed because the urban company wants to put profit over people. Where will we go when the course is bowed to the expense of courses in the hills that care more about their member only clubs, rather than fostering youth interest into the sport? Is profit worth more than a place where friendships are made, where people first broke 100, and where I washed my dad hit four balls in a row right into the trees? So I'm asking the council to reject a new residential village and preserve a golf course that I and so many others call our second home. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. May I make a point of order? I think that speaker said that she was 12 years old. I'd like everyone to give her another round of applause. And we'll see her running for City Council in six years. There we are. Welcome. Good evening. I'm Dave Hackett. I'm a 30-year resident of Woodbridge and a golfer. Oak Creek Golf Club is more than just a place to play golf. It's a sanctuary where friendships or forages, family spend, quality time, and individuals find solace in the beauty of the game. By cherishing the memories of playing those holes with my kids, grandkids, and friends. Ever since COVID, ever since COVID, golf courses have filled up with people enjoying the game. Closing it will push Oak Creek golfers to other courses that are already at capacity. This will reduce the enjoyment and raise the cost, likely hurting folks on a budget like seniors and kids just starting out. Let me just say that I heard Brea mentioned. Brea has two public courses and according to Google 48,000 people. Ribbon has three public courses, golf courses, three and 20,000 people. Arguably we need more golf courses. For example, what happened to the very nice little golf course at El Altaro? It's not here anymore. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. We appreciate that. If I could call forward Moxam E. Greg, Costigan, Bill Schultz, Nassiba M. and Ruben Franco. And before we hear from our next speaker, let's do a little time check here again. It might be useful sometime before we get to our discussion here to take a brief recess. Also, I'm going to suggest that the balance of the agenda, items 4.2, 3, 4.4 and 4.5, that they all be continued to a different council meeting, just kind of looking at these items, some of which have appeared on the agenda several times. I think it probably warrants calling some kind of special meeting to dispose of this backlogged items. But I want to just kind of check in with my colleagues. I do think we probably can get this item wrapped up by 1130 or midnight, but I think this item alone. Does everybody in agreement that just deferring 4.234 and 5 at this time is a good idea? Good moving all of it. I see Okay. Let's do that. Let's take a little more public comment. I am going to call for a recess because there's only so much punishment human kidneys can take. And we'll hear from the public now. Please. We need to preserve this open space. Think about future, 40 years from now. Continuous city population growth driven by new residents will increase housing demand even more than it is today. Where? Where will we be? What we need to do going forward to accommodate housing shortage? We will be forced to tear down private single-family homes and build all high-density buildings. The city is special for a reason. We need to plan for a long run and keep our mind special. Another thought. Look at our city map. Houses are very close to each other. We did talk about fires today. And we all remember fires in a lay and paradise. Building more houses will make this situation even worse. We also need stronger fire presentation measures. Right now it seems we're just waiting for the disaster to come and time is ticking. Don't allow development in the oak and the gold course. Let's preserve our open space, create natural fire breaks and keep a divine safe and livable city for everyone now in the future. Thank you for your comments. Thank you. Greg Hossigan. Welcome. Thank you. To everyone here, I do want to say that golf is awesome. I love golf. I've never broken 100 at all. Oh, creep. But you know what else I can say is awesome? Is housing? I'm a homeowner. I am also a resident. I also pay taxes. I also have a vote. My vote is yes. And I think the council should consider this. I have two kids. Think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I have two kids that go to Woodbury. Not a single one of their teachers can afford to live in Irvine. I feel that that should be a priority over golf. I do understand that golf and open space are important. I do want to say that potentially compromises can be had. I'm not on council, I'm not part of the Irvine company. I do think that there should be a discussion and compromise could be had, but I do think that something should be considered because we have a crippling state housing shortage and it's impacting the lives of people, including myself. Thank you for your comments. Bill Schultz. Welcome. Good evening. I have some prepared remarks and I'm just going to ignore. I was a former high school athlete, college athlete, I coached high school and college. I understand a golf course being a place for aspiring youth and a place to keep youth off the street and the benefits of athletics and endeavor. I've been a resident, I've been an owner of property in Irvine for nine years. My son attended IVC and UCI. Now, gainfully employed and living in an Irvine company in a apartment in San Diego. But I've lived in Irvine three years. And I've traveled to five continents and 48 of the 50 states Irvine is the most beautiful progressive Loving community that I have ever been in I Appreciate it. I'm not afraid to change what I see here and I'm out of time. But what I see here and I think you take another one. Why don't you take another 30 seconds to wrap it up if you would. All right. Thank you for that time certainly. What I see here is not that we're faced with a decision is faced we're faced with an opportunity and that is to explore over the next 12 the 14 to 18 months, the viability of this effort. And I think we should focus on supporting the memorandum of understanding in order to go through the due diligence that it will take to make a meaningful decision and appease as many of the residents of this great city as we can. Thank you for your comments. Ruben Franco. Welcome. Thank you, thank you, Honorable Mayor, thank you, City Council members, for the opportunity to speak today. Ruben Franco, I'm the president and CEO of the Orange County Hispanic Chamber. We're proudly located on the campus of UCI at the Beale Innovation Center. You know, as president, we're writing to show our strong support for this measure. We really think we need the housing, we need the development, we need the economic vibrancy that this development will bring to the region. The integration of an innovation center in public school library, 300 acres of open space reflects a rare commitment to both economic and human capital. This development creates even more than housing, but it builds capacity. It welcomes working professionals, entrepreneurs, educators, families into community that can intentionally design to grow with them. We're excited about this opportunity to support it and we look forward to working with you and want to say thank you all for your leadership. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. It's been suggested to me now by the city clerk that this might be a useful time to take a recess. That's up to you Mayor. That puts us. All right. I'm going to suggest we take a 10 minute recess. I would ask everybody to observe just 10 minutes of recess and then we'll take the balance of by the way how many are left. That was about the halfway point. We were at speaker number 42 and word E.D. 3. All right then we will proceed. So by the way, how many are left? That was about the halfway point. We were at speaker number 42 and we're at EV3. All right, then we will proceed with the balance of the public comments. And then of course council members will weigh in after that. Thank you. 10 minute recess. this. All right, having been in recess, the time is now 1048 and we will continue taking public comment on this item. Would the clerk please tell us, do we have people in the queue? We do, Mayor. All right, go right ahead. Thank you. If I could call forward Mary Marr, Laura Borta, Clark Colby, Eunice Chow, and Maria D. And let's start with Mary. Welcome. Hello, everyone. Welcome. Thank you. My name is Mary Mar. I have lived in Oak Creek for 25 years and served on the board of my HOA. I am speaking on behalf of my niece, Deanna Wu, who has resided for over 20 years in the orange tree petting homes, across from the current Oak Creek golf course. She asked me to speak as she had an accident over the weekend and cannot appear, but I thought it was still important that you hear from her voice. She asked me to share her strong support for this project as a homeowner who sees the value of the thoughtful development this will bring to our community. She is very excited about the opportunities ahead. This new village will bring long overdue energy and investment into the area. It will lift up the neighborhoods around it with the improved infrastructure, walkable design, beautiful public spaces, and upgraded amenities. It will also enhance the quality of life for those of us that live nearby. Thank you. This is your time as a lapse. Do you want to wrap it up in another 10 seconds or so? Yes. I'm happy that the city is working with Irvine company to mitigate and address the possible traffic issues, especially for the residents of Orange Tree. Thank you. Thank you. Park Colby and if I could also call forward Austin T Joseph El Joseph, Sahar Naderi, Laura Sinanian and Geraldine Lauren. Please come down and welcome. Thank you so much. Good evening, Mayor, Council. Thank you for your patience and staying awake and giving us a chance to talk tonight. I wanted to give you maybe a slightly different perspective. My name is Clark Colby and my wife and I are the proud owners of Spectrum e-commerce solutions and brand marketing solutions. It's our family on business, technology and marketing business located in the Irvine Spectrum area very close to the proposed Spectrum district village site. We're currently 15 employees. Company has been around for quite a while, supplying high value, high technology jobs, and we all work in the office every single day, no remote workers. Commuting and affordability are topics that are really important to our team, as you can imagine. Two of our employees, in fact, live in the great park area and really enjoy working so close to home. The rest of the team live 20, 45, 60 minutes away from the office, mostly due to the cost of housing or rent near the office. And as business owners, we're very much interested in the Irvine companies plans to offer more options in the spectrum area, especially ones that fit within their budget. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. You need another 10 seconds. 10 seconds, thank you. Anyway, our current and future plans include retaining and attracting skilled and talented employees that want to put down roots and start or raise families in Irvine. Your plans are very much aligned with what we're looking to do and we really appreciate you listening to what we're interested in and taking the opportunity to consider this MOU. Thank you for your comments tonight. Absolutely. Welcome. Thank you. My name is Austin Tire Bullis. I'm a lifelong resident of Irvine and a product of Irvine Unified School District. I currently give back to my community as a special education teacher at Irvine High School as well spaces, efficiency, safety, and privacy, all while focusing on affordability at a time when it is deeply needed. Very encouraged by the Jeffrey Open Space Trail, the numerous community parks, the essentially located school, the libraries. As an educator, I'm particularly excited about the Irvine CARES program. I work directly with students who are currently living in unstable housing conditions and cars and motels. And the Irvine Cares program would provide essential support to those families. As a young professional, I'm also heartened to learn about the plans for affordable single family homes. Like many others in my generation, I hope to continue living and contributing to this community. But home ownership is becoming increasingly out of reach. The potential for affordable housing offers hope. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments. Joseph. Welcome. Honorable Mayor Agrim and City Council members. My name is Joseph Al-Joseph. Joseph and I'm the Executive Director for the Philippine America Chamber of Commerce of Orange County and we do most of our program in Irvine. The Spectrum District Village represents a rare opportunity to invest in the economic ecosystem that supports everyone including small minority-owned businesses. The Innovation Center will serve as a launch pad and accelerate for entrepreneurs especially for young people and people of all ages including those from underserved communities including many in the Filipino-American small business community. Many of our chamber members are multi-generational business owners, parents, children, and even grandchildren's working side by side. The Filipino-American community has a deep and growing presence in our vine, from businesses to education to healthcare. The project honors the presses by creating spaces where community can continue to contribute to connect and prosper. At a time where small businesses are still recovering and adapting. The spectrum district village is a bold signal of hope. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments. So hard. Who? The hard Geraldine? There we are, welcome. Good evening, Mayor Egan, Council members, and congratulations, Council member Martinez Franco. So my name is Geraldine Larson. I'm the president of the Filipino-American Chamber of Orange County. And I'm also a business owner, and I have an insurance, local insurance agency. I work very closely with small business owners and nonprofit leaders as well as chambers across the Orange County. And I can tell you with certainty that there's a need for the spectrum district village. This project isn't just about housing or buildings, it's about creating an ecosystem for small businesses, families and neighborhoods where we can all grow together. The Innovation Center is I'm particularly excited about, because I see that as a hub that will allow small business owners to get together, work together, and collaborate on different projects and really increase what we do for the city of Irvine and the community at large and for each other. So I am excited about that. Thank you. Your time has elapsed. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. Laura Sonanian. Welcome. Good evening. How are you? Good evening, Mayor Agran and all the council member. Thank you for this opportunity for me to share share and I support this project because I see it as an economic growth which is very much needed. People will have more jobs. Now there's a lot of companies closing. This will open them opportunity and with people having jobs it's actually going to help them grow and have the family enjoy the community and become together wherever there is a development there's always an economic growth it helps the city it helps the people it goes back around it's like a cycle when there's businesses and people have jobs then the businesses is contributing to the city. The people will have the jobs and there's a very good harmony. This is very important to have, especially their building with a lot of recreational places as well. So I feel like this is a great opportunity. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your comments. If I could call forward Claire Nga, Mary Ann Went, Neil Estrada, Jerry Chang, and Ryan Dunkel. And we'll start with Claire. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening our city over the years. I was in the third grade when I moved here in 1979 and thought, where are we? It's all orange grows here. A lot has changed. I can appreciate the care being taken in planning this new community and I'm especially excited about the affordable housing options and for empty nesters, one story floor plans, which are hard to find in Irvine. I support the MOU. It reflects smart, community-based, focused growth, continues legacy of making Irvine a beautiful place to live. Thank you. Thank you. Claire Nala. Welcome. Hi. My name is Claire Nona. I'm a proud, all of my, all of my, all of my residents and a long time real estate professional and the vice president of Korean American Chamber of Commerce. All of my, has always been known for tofu and well planned community and the spectrum these three buildings continues that legacy. With 300 acre of open space, a state of the art library and new school, these projects more than development is community building. So as a realtor, I see first and the challenges family and young professional face trying to stay in Irvine. These projects have addressed our housing show this responsible balanced way, providing a range of options while preserving open space and workability. So as Vice President of the Korean American Chamber, I especially excited about the Innovation Center. It has the potential to nurture local entrepreneurs, small businesses, and talent, including those from all-vine vibrant Korean and AAPI communities. So it's the kind of legacy we want to leave for our children of vibrant and balanced and inclusive all-vine. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Ryan Dungle, and if I could call forward, Edwin B. Maurice Pasley. Ryan Bates. Neeta Merchant and Martin Schim. Welcome. Hi thanks. I'm a financial advisor, a planner locally here. Not originally from California, but I moved down here about four or five years ago. I work with a lot of young people in general trying to help them save towards home ownership. I want to just use a simple example of a million dollar. We'll just say condo because that's pretty much any new bill does it going to be a million or more. And I'm really in favor of affordable housing because if we look at a million dollar condo with current rates of about 6.92% for 30 years using just 5% down. I mean we're looking at a mortgage payment of $6,500 or more dollars not including taxes taxes, HOA fees, and insurances. So we need more affordable housing. The average 35-year-old is making about $78,000 according to Google in order to afford that $6,500 without the taxes, HOA, et cetera. You need to make over $280,000 a year. So my question to everyone that's against the affordable housing aspect and against this bill is obviously Irvine Company is a profitable company and if you're willing to give up some of your equity, I don't think you would do that obviously, but I mean Irvine they're making profit but so are you. So if this wasn't such a desirable area to live, then people would obviously want to live here. So keep that in mind. But I'm in for this bill obviously. Thank you for your comments Edwin. Welcome. Good evening Irvine City Council, Mayor Aigren, Councilman William Go. My name is Edwin Balloy. I'm a real estate agent with with real brokerage. I have a high-density niche and I wanted to give a little perspective to this long evening if I could. This is my fourth hearing that I've attended. I've attended hearings in Anaheim, your blend, and some other cities. Yeah, I have a weird hobby. But there's always two themes that always come out of these. Number one, everyone wants affordable housing. Number two, almost none of them want it in their own backyard. So I checked on chat GBT and looked like the American government created 60 million housing units at the end of World War II. There's talk that it will take something like that to get us just back to the regular supply. So what it's gonna take, it's not gonna solve it overnight in any one city, but what it's gonna take is every city doing their part. Thank you for your comments. Ryan Beats, and if I can call forward Sandra Crouch, Tom Bikoski, Jim Went, Vin Kenny, and Nina Housenny. Welcome. American. I want to begin by saying I'm not asking for five minutes, but I am speaking on behalf of several people who have had to leave for the evening as you can imagine. My Oak Creek neighbors and friends. The long short of it is that Irvine needs more schools, homes, libraries, and actually publicly accessible open spaces. They're not nice to have, so these are required. It's our duty as parents and parents to plan for the future of our children. And the Simo U allows the city and Irvine company to explore the best way to ensure their safety and prosperity. On a more personal note, without the measure that was voted for 40 years ago, my children wouldn't have access to Oak Creek Elementary where they're thriving. I really genuinely hope that you'll give another generation the opportunity at that for the in the new development. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Tom Bikoski. Welcome. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Agerin, City Council members, and Carl. Real quick, back in 1985, I camped out for about a week just so my family can get a house here in Irvine. There's lots of enthusiasm, excitement about this new area and back then I didn't realize really what Irvine would grow and develop into but it is a community for families. And, you know, I support this, MOU, I support the first step going forward and hopefully getting more housing. Housing is needed. And what a wonderful place to raise a family. And I think this would provide young families, any families, just a great opportunity. I mean, the other speaker mentioned that we need housing, we do, and that's one reason why I support this. So thanks for your consideration and have a good night. Thank you for your comments tonight. Sandra, welcome. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Sandra Kroge. I'm a 35-year resident and an executive at the Chamber of Commerce. This project will help alleviate the current trend of exponential growth in housing costs by providing more housing options for families, young professionals, and the workforce our local businesses rely upon. The only way to have more housing is to build more housing. plan plan thoughtfully mitigates the issues of development by including additional dedicated green space and a long list of enhanced community benefits. In addition, for Irvine to remain a leader in economic growth, we must lower the barriers of entry for businesses. The Innovation Center will reduce these obstacles by offering mentorship and access to resources which will empower people to innovate, create viable businesses, and support their families. Lowering these obstructions to housing and business isn't just about helping individuals. It's about ensuring that Irvine continues to attract and house the next generation of job creators and workers. It's a strategic step toward a more inclusive dynamic and prosperous city in the future. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Jim went. Welcome. Hi everyone, I'm Jim Went. No relation to George. Yeah, I'll be quick. I do support this MOU. I am actually in the process of creating and launching a new business. I've been a resident of Irvine for over 20 years. I'm very interested in the Innovation Hub, a business incubator program. I think not only for myself, but for other entrepreneurs trying to launch a new business in Irvine, I think that'd be really exciting. Thank you all. Thank you. If I could call forward Lynn Kenny, Nina H, Neeta Merchant, Lisa Thomas and Gerald Balgos. And we'll start with Lynn. Lynn Kenny. Nina. Welcome. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Nina Hussaini. I've been a happy resident for the last 30 years. I'm here to voice my strong support for the Airborne Spectrum Village District. This development will not only provide affordable housing and job proximity, but also foster a vibrant local economy, a very innovation and culture thrive. It's a smart, inclusive investment in the people of Irvine. Thank you for your leadership in supporting thoughtful growth and that benefit all. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Lisa Thomas. And if I could call Gerald Balgo's Mike Nicestrom, Jamie Morgan, Ray and Roger Phillips. Welcome. Thank you. Good evening, Mary Agrin and members of the City Council. My name is Lisa Thomas and I'm head the honours serving as the chair of the Irvine Chamber of Commerce. Our members represent a diverse community of business leaders and owners who really value the quality of life in Irvine. It's a model city where people want to live and raise their family and work. But one thing I hear as I travel and I speak to our members is the desperate need for more housing. The state is mandated and business owners are begging for it. But one thing we all agree on is the need to develop wisely and with careful planning and to preserve the quality of life here in Irvine. We believe the MOU before you does just that. Is a plan for smart growth. Combining housing, open space, walking trails, libraries, and innovation for business. We ask that you thoughtfully and carefully consider this. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments. Mike Nistrom. Welcome. Hello, Mr. Mayor and Council Council thank you for hearing us tonight. As an original owner I bought into the community I wanted my home to be the last one built. No one wants change no one wants development. I loved speeding down Culver on my way to Northwood Point. But what makes the city so dynamic and livable is the smart thoughtful development of the city. Our villages are unique. The thought that goes into this plan, whether it's connecting the trails, school space, I work with the schools, and it's addresses and need in a really smart way, and including funding for Irvine Connect and expansion of that. I fully support the MOU and hope that you guys do as well. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you for your comments. Right. Welcome. Good evening. My name is Ray Perallo. I've been a resident of Irvine since 1982. First as a renter and then as a homeowner and still a homeowner. I was a junior girl golfer. I taught 30 years. I also coached junior girls the in high school. I think this plan is great for the MOU but can we compromise? Can we keep the course? Okay, affordable housing, I'm all for it. Maybe some existing apartments we have currently. Maybe manage the food and beverage better at the, because I know there's loss of money there. The course is wonderful. It's hard to get T-times there. I just think that there's a better solution than taking a perfectly maintained course and recreation for an open space of Irvine that we love here and to continue to keep it and still have affordable housing. Find a solution, make it work for everybody. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Roger Phillips. Welcome. Good evening, Council and Mayor Roger Phillips. I'm vice president of the Orange Tree patio homes, homeowner association. So Orange Tree, you know, we're the most impacted by this. Orange Tree is right across the street from the golf course. We woke up a couple of days ago to find out that there was going to be over 3,000 new dwellings right across the street from us and it's a shock. You guys have figured out a lot of ways to benefit the city but it's going to be at our expense. It's like you're mugging Orangeging orange tree and the local neighborhoods right around us. You know some previous speakers said you everybody wants housing but not where they are and so that's where we are too. You already talked heard tonight about areas in the city that can be developed in the housing. You have a three or four of them in the great park. You have a bunch of them up north, don't trash the golf course. I mean, an amenity, it raises our property values, we love it there, we like to walk over and have a coffee there. It's not the right decision and it betrays the voters of 88. Thank you for your comments. Mayor, we have six more speakers via Zoom. All right. Our next speaker is from Kennedy Commission. You may unmute your mic. Hello, can you hear us? Our next speaker is Jeremy. Jeremy, you may unmute your mic. Yes, I'm Jeremy Fickrola. I'm a Cypress Village HWA resident. I'm also on the HWA board as board president. And I'm in strong support of this project of the MOU. I really like the component of funding, a portion of I connect. I really wanna see that fall through. And there's a housing crisis, and I understand that we'd be losing a golf course, but I think there's greater needs for the city, and I've been strong support. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Thank you. Our next speaker is Ken. Ken, you may unmute your mic. Hello, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak. We'll click. There are a number of things that MOU certainly so address. Specifically, we're talking about the affordable housing that's just the water. We're talking about what a wind tunnel impact is not assessed. So my point to the council is to not sign the MOU do further due diligence. We can do independent traffic studies, we can engage the community, we can have legal reviews, air-baptaning experts. And all of the time, there's time, there's no rush. Let's take our time and really assess what's right for the city. Thank you so much for your consideration. Thank you for your comments. Next, our next speaker is Sylvia Walker. Ms. Walker you may unmute your mic. Hi, I'm Sylvia Walker, Irvide Residence. I support this and I know many of the people who spoke against this, they are probably very nice people in many ways, but basically what some of them were saying is I have mine now now just close the door or this project would be okay, but not here someplace else That's a common refrain and you know, there's just aren't that many someplace else to put something like this And quality of life what about the Quality of life of people who work in Irvine but cannot afford to live here. Let's also think about their quality of life. As far as open space, there are few environmentalists that would call most golf course valid open space because of the water use, the pesticide use, the lack of diversity. So hopefully this new project will actually have some open space that is actually really is a valid open space. And let's put emphasis on getting more transit such as expanding the eye connect so we can solve the transit problem. Thank you for your. And I will leave it at that. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is Eric Nishanian. Mr. Nishanian, you may unmute your mic. Thank you. Council members, Mayor Aigren. You get the housing you can afford. You'll never have affordable housing without rent control ordinances. Perhaps that you should address that before you address affordable housing. Google News, Irvine billionaire, you'll see the Irvine company controls 75% of the rental units in Irvine. They also created the master plan. And what they're telling you is you can have the master plan and affordable housing. It's one or the other. And Irvine, the city of Irvine should hold up the master plan and protect the quality of life in Irvine. Because what's gonna happen is that housing is going to be built. Most of it's going to be bought by investors. And they're not gonna care about affordable housing. And you're gonna be stuck in the same situation and you're only gonna go down the slippery slope. Next it's going to be parks and then it's going to be open spaces and then you'll have blight to go along with the homelessness and the hunger that apparently we have in the city. Really think it through guys because the Irvine company they're the only show in town and then don't care about the master plan. They sold the city on the master plan. They'll sell it on the master plan. They'll sell it. They'll sell it. They'll sell it away on affordable housing. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is telephone number 462. 462 you may unmute your mic. Hello. We can hear you. This is John Peterson. I've been resident of Woolbridge my whole life since 1977. I just want to say look at their T-sheet, it's booked pretty much solid every day of the week, so it gets plenty of use. My comments are just kind of, you know, Irvine keeps seeming to take away a lot of public kind of amenities and stuff. Took away Irvine Meadows, Wild Rivers, Luckily Wild Rivers came back. Irvine Irvine Meadows kind of came back for a little bit, but now it's gone again. It just seems to be a city that's focused on building housing instead of amenities and recreation that draws people here. We're becoming a city, I think, of residents and high density residency where everyone's going to drive to Anaheim or LA or San Diego to go get boards and entertainment instead of stuff that draws people to the city. And I just I know urban company is offering a lot of stuff that seems to entice the city to like this proposal. A lot of money for- Thank you. Thank you. Thanks it and all that kind of stuff, but they have other developments they can build and still offer all that money for the city. Thank you for your comments. 60 seconds. Thank you. Next. How many do we have left? We have three more. We have two on Zoom and we do have one individual in person. This is it. Okay. Nobody standing up. The queue is not open. Not open for business anymore. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. If I could try Kennedy Commission again, you may unmute your mic. Good evening. My name is Tessetic Waterview. I'm the executive director of the candy commission. We want to ensure that this development addresses the clinical need of affordable housing that proposed a method of addressing affordable housing. Not producing new housing options that would be available long term. We think that the City Council just reconsider this approach and maybe look at alternatives to address affordable housing long term through the 15% requirement that is required at this point or inappropriate and the public calculation for the value of the affordable housing should be calculated at the cost of building the 425 units of affordable housing which is what the city will not receive if they move forward with this proposal and not having affordable housing for the five years only temporary affordable housing. That will serve a proper purpose, but it doesn't help the city long term. So we would ask the city to not approve this. I'm going to you with this affordable housing provision. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is telephone number three four seven three four seven. and unmute your mic. Yeah, this is D-Fox. I live in Woodbridge and I'm totally against this. It's traffic it would be it would just be chaos and like Christina Shea said there was an agreement that that land would always be a golf course including be changed. So I don't see how the city manager or the city attorney can sit there and find a loophole now. That just sounds very sneaky to me. And the Irvine company, the way they went about this whole thing, is very sneaky. I didn't get anything on this, and I live real close to Oak Creek. So I just don't even see how you can even do it legally. And I think Larry, you pretty much know that because you were one of the ones that made it to where it couldn't be touched. So the other people, the real estate people and other people that are for it, they don't live around. They have no idea. You wanna talk about quality of life, you would ruin our quality of life. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. My speakers Harris. Harris you have 60 seconds. Welcome. Thank you. I'm not here to talk about the golfing or the nesting waterfowl at Oak Creek Golf Course or the amount of congestion that will add but I do do want to speak for the fisherman and Irvine. We've lost almost all of our water due to the Irvine company. I can't even take my son to Woodbridge Lake without getting her asked by the Woodbridge Association. Irvine Regional, your fish is shoulder to shoulder while people drive geese pallow boats over your line. Irvine Lake, my son can't even make the walk because he'll get heat-exashtant. Oak Creek's the last place I can take my son fishing and not get harassed by anyone. It's an amazing piece of nature that hundreds of fishermen, hundreds of high schoolers go to. After school, it's one of the only places that kept me out of trouble in high school to stop me from doing drugs like other kids overdosing I was there efficient until the street lights came on. Thank you Thank you for your comments and that is all mayor That concludes the public comment Are there any questions that Council members have? Otherwise we'll take comments from Council members one at a time. I did want to raise a question with staff. I don't see anybody else who wants to ask a question with staff. I don't see anybody else who wants to ask a question of staff. Oh, there we go. But let me start it off here just for a moment. I want you to describe maybe with the assistance of the city attorney kind of where we are in this process. What is an MOU and what is it not to get some real clarity as to what we're actually voting on tonight if indeed we vote at all? Certainly. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for the question. The MOU really is the starting point of the conversation to discuss whether or not the project makes sense moving forward. Internally, we've characterized the MOU as an agreement to agree. It doesn't bind the city council. Agreement to agree or an agreement to try to reach an agreement. Agreement to agree to try to reach an agreement. OK. Ultimately, what the MOU lays out is a process that will outline how we assess the proposed project over the course of the next year. At this point, I think it's important to emphasize there's no development proposal that's been submitted. We have a development concept that's been discussed with the city that the Irvine companies proposed and in terms of thinking through how you would assess that project. The MOU outlines the guidelines and the process we would engage, the planning principles that would be used, and the benefits that would ignore to the city, if a project were to be approved in the future. I don't know, Jeff, if there's anything I might wanna add to that. No, I think you pretty much nailed it all over. It is a road map. It helps all of the parties that are about to engage in the entitlement process, see how that entitlement process ideally would lay out while preserving for the City Council the ability to decide whether to ultimately approve the project after all of the environmental analysis is done, the planning analysis is done and the matter is separately considered by the planning commission all of your support and bodies and the city council. So the developer, in this case the Irvine company, it doesn't confer entitlement. It's not an approval of the project. It is kind of a next step toward that. Let me ask, presuming that company representatives were here and elsewhere taking notes, hearing the resident objections and so forth. Presumably they will try to address those concerns by making what are in effect changes in the MOU or changes that they might have in mind for the proposed project. So just to be clear, an agreement to try to reach an ultimate agreement, entitlement on a project and so forth, it is not something that guarantees project approval down the road. Correct. That is correct. If anything, the MOU is intended. I thought we had a terrific display of community engagement tonight in the chambers. I heard a variety of opinions, a variety of issues were raised. folks that had concerns, folks that had that supported the effort. All of that feedback is initiated because we've announced we're considering a project. I think it's just important to reemphasize we don't have a project proposal yet. We know of a concept of repurposing the identified project site, having four sale units, having some apartment units. That's all we know at this point. None of the applications have been submitted. We haven't done any reviews yet. It's really, the MOU is intended to announce there's a conversation happening. Let's understand what the inputs are as relates to the concerns related to the project and over the course of the next year. If the Council decides, we want to have this conversation publicly. Approval of the MOU initiates a year-long process where an entitlement application will have to be prepared, environmental analysis, traffic analysis, impact analysis will all be coordinated and assessed and presented and discussed. And over the course of the next year, the Council and to Jeff's point, all of the Council's subordinate bodies will weigh in on their opinions related to what's being proposed. And one last part of that, presumably, in this case, the Irvine company, the developer, will be including reaching out to the community to try to address their concerns. At least if they know what's good for them, right? Okay, our expectation and our experience with the Irvine company. Okay. Let me just clarify one thing on the affordable housing matter. To those who might have a concern that, oh my goodness, is this mean just gonna be a tremendous concentration of affordable housing in conjunction with this project? The answer to that is no, not at all, quite the contrary. I think in your description, you talked about this new instant affordability system that would be taking advantage of apartment units available all around town. At 17 locations, 17 locations all around town, not concentrated in the Oak Creek area. Correct. That is correct. Okay. Mayor, if I could. Yes, go ahead. I just want to build on that point just a little bit. It's actually just the opposite. It's not just that it would be 17 available units around town. But the agreement contemplates a later agreement, a voucher agreement that would get put together in the next 60 days. And in the discussions with the Irvine Company, the idea is to actually cap the total number of placements that could be at any one of those 17 units to force dispersal, well, at the same time, balancing the need to try and keep families close to schools where children go to school or they're otherwise anchored to the community. Right. All right. Thank you. Let me turn to my colleagues. Council member Martinez Franco? Yes. Tell me, I understand one thing. I'm just curious about the open preserve issue. When I hear open preserve, I hear free to the public, but this is not the case with the golf course. That's right, right? that's correct. And one of the points that Jeff made earlier, the 88 open space initiative, it contemplated wide swaths of contiguous high quality open space that would be publicly accessible, but pursuant to that agreement, one portion of open space that was identified, the golf course property is actually the only piece of property that in the open space agreement that hasn't been transferred to public ownership. It's still owned privately. It's a golf course that has an easement on it, but it's not publicly owned, it's privately operated currently. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Martinez, Frank, and next we'll turn to Council Member Liu. Well, I think, well, Mayor had already asked the question that I was going to ask about what we're actually voting for today. I think that's very important, so residents actually know what we voted for. But I would like to also touch up on the community benefit of it that in aggregate, it looks like we are going to have a benefit of over 70 million in value rather than the in Luffy. I think it will be beneficial for City Manager to explain the difference between having a value versus having in Luffy paid for community benefit. So there's a couple of different community benefit components to the MOU. One is related to community benefit payment amount that would be discretionary for the council to allocate towards a grouping of projects. That money total $70 million that can be utilized for a variety of council priorities. The biggest ticket items that we've contemplated include accelerating our build out of the Irvine Public Library system that we're taking over will be opening actually our city run branches this August. The other is expanding Irvine Connect. Our public works and transportation team is working right now to build out what an accelerated expansion of Irvine Connect could look like additional resources could be allocated through this agreement and to council member procedures point earlier we can certainly I think look to make adjustments to the agreement to specifically specify Irvine Connect is the reference when we say transit in the MOU. In addition to that there's 26.2 million dollars contemplated for community facility park improvements. That's another segment of the community benefit payment. 10 million of that amount would be allocated to partner with the Irvine Company on making improvements to the Jost and Walnut Trail. Remaining 16.2 million would be discretionary for Council's use on other community project priorities. There's additional elements that the Council would get access to through the agreement that's contemplated including additional open space including the clubhouse including a six acre piece of land for a future community facility. All of that's incorporated in contemplation of there will be impacts from a development. How do we try to offset some of those impacts moving ahead? So without overbelievering the same point, can you give us a general idea of what the value, the aggregate value of that will be and what say instead of having these community benefits offer, what would the Irvine company be obligated to pay in a move fee instead? So Councillor Member Liu, the Irvine Company, the City of Irvine currently charges $16,993 per market rate unit. As an in-lu fee, in circumstance, where affordable housing is not built on site. So in exchange for not building the affordable housing-site, the charge is $16,993 per market rate unit. At $3,100 units, which is the scoped-out size of this project, that calculation is $52.6 million. The value of the just the afforded, just the voucher program is set at about $72 million. So the delta there between $52 and $72, just short of $20 million. In more value in the voucher program, then would be assigned through the in lieu fee program. And with the voucher program that we're talking about, we're talking about, well, I don't wanna keep repeating the same thing, but 17 locations all throughout the city. And these are units already built that are readily available for how families need. The agreement? Yes, correct. As to the 17 locations, correct as to spread throughout the city and the agreement contemplates that the placement window should be about 14 days. Right. Between identifying a suitable candidate and getting them placed into a unit. You know, I understand from the MOU there is a timeline on how many vouchers are available so I understand that there is a progression as the project moves on along or negotiation moves on along. So thank you for answering all the questions. Thank you. Let's see Council Member Traceter. Thank you. I appreciate all the discussion here and all the public speakers for staying late to voice their opinions. I am in a bit of a bind here because I very much favor more housing. Housing is a human right. I also feel that it's important for us to provide it here within our city to make sure that our teachers and first responders and other caretakers can live within our borders. So I would like to support this because, again, favor more housing. I am a little bit concerned about this voucher program. And from what I understand Irving Company, they negotiated with our team from this, was on the negotiating team for the city? There were a number of individuals at the staff level engaged, Jeff, myself, members of our community development team. Pete's been involved in the discussions. Yeah, okay, that's, thank you. So it sounds like the Irvine company negotiated with our negotiating team in good faith. And we're operating on the understanding that this is what the council wanted, the voucher program. And I do have some pretty major concerns with it, however, the speaker from the Kennedy Commission outlined several of those. For me, it has to do with a contrast between what's being contemplated in this MOU versus our inclusionary housing ordinance. Our inclusionary housing ordinance requires 15% of new housing units to be allocated to affordable housing. I myself think that is too low. I much prefer the recent MOUs of about 21% or up to 30%. But even with 15%, I think we're not getting a very good deal here. So the ordinance requires 5% of the units to be extremely low or very low, 5% being low and 5% moderate. So just to compare what the ordinance would require versus this MOU, for the very low category, the ordinance would require 155 units. The MOU would require 200. So I don't have a problem with that. The low, the ordinance to require 155, the MOU requires none. For moderate, the ordinance requires 155, the MOU requires none. For a total of the ordinance would require 465 units, the MOU would require 200. Now, I know that there has been messaging to the effect that this is a thousand instant affordable units but in reality if you read the MOU it says very clearly there are only be 200 vouchers 200 units allocated to this program and in given time and in fact each of the vouchers expires two years. So this means that the program will end in 10 years or less after that, there will be no affordable housing units as a result of this MOU. In addition, the recipients who get a voucher, I'm so glad they would get a discount down to 35% of market rates. However, after those two years are up, the recipients would then effectively be seeing their rents almost triple between one day to the next. And I think that there are very few people in Irvine who could afford having their rents triple one day to the next So I am I am concerned about this and I would like to ask Mr. Davis Thanks so much for being here if he has anything that he could say to maybe a swage my concerns I could certainly certainly try Councilmember. First of all, I think this is new territory and I think in a good way. For many, many years, the affordable housing paradigm was 15% affordable and we waited until it was built and it was 5% very low, 5% low, very low, low and then moderate and it was not programmatically addressed. Here's an opportunity where as another opportunity in that big bag of tricks, if you will, we have the affordable units that Oliver talked about that were currently delivering from our last MOU about 2,000 units in the marketplace that would do just that, have the low, the very low, and the moderate income categories covered. The notion for this program is to have a specialized look at dealing with a very specific need immediately. And I think what the code does allow for is this in lieu fee payment. And I think what we were trying to, as we were going through this, if we were going to meet our full 15% requirement with an in lieu fee, we would write a check for $50 million. That's what the current code reads. That would be a compliance with our total 15% requirement. The program is valued and the way we get to the value is the amount of money that we're subsidizing over a period of time. So instead of writing that check for $50 million, it's dispersed over time. The 200 unit or the 200 voucher category is one of logistics. We're probably 97% occupied in the city of Irvine right now, and the 3% that are vacant are being refurbished to be back onto the market. The idea for the city staff and for our teams to be able to manage those programs is why we capped it at a 200 voucher program. Over time it will certainly expire and in your correct at the end of the program it would expire as would our in-loufies if we were paying with that program. So I think altogether the idea of this is another element to deal with a very specific need which by the way we've committed to immediately, even prior to entitlement, even though what we're talking about here tonight is an MOU that starts to set forth this program that's going to be a year away from now. We have basically because we think it's a good program, have decided to go ahead and go as quickly as we can, so within 60 days this program would be available for according to the city staff as well as having conversations with IUSD We know that there is a need that's available. So that's the context overall with that. It is a new program And I think between now and that year but we're back with the our entitlement applications should we be allowed to proceed? We're gonna have a lot of conversations with the staff as we're gonna be able to know what's worked well What didn't work so well, and how we were able to accommodate things. Maybe you can make adjustments over time, and certainly we'd be amenable to that. But the idea behind the program is to really meet this one specific need, just like we're providing our affordable housing programs, Parar MOU, the housing trust is providing affordable housing and it's program. Other builders are doing affordable housing, and this program, again, is just one more element. So hopefully, that's the context of where we got to. And the idea of the negotiation on the deal was literally to deal with that program. We could have very well come back and said, let's do the same thing we did for MOU1, I like to call it. But that wouldn't have addressed the need for this immediate population that's early on based and has a challenge and an opportunity for them to hopefully be able to get out of that. The idea of expiring the program in two years, the notion was it was a transitional program. The MOU contemplates as we would take someone who is in that position to to be able to utilize those today and basically they could be a hundred percent subsidized. The city's program is going to also include what our contribution is as well as the city program. Then get them on a waiting list for a below market rate unit to be able to then back into that program but then be able to adjust into a market rate. So it's a progressive program. I don't know all the details of the city's support services, but that would be the idea of the program to go from immediate need to more longer term below market, subsidized affordable housing in our traditional sense, and then hopefully be able to return to market as you go over that time. So there wouldn't be that waterfall that says, hey, you're below 65% below, and then you're going to go to full rent that next year. The idea is to capture that to the program. All of it unless I missed anything. That was our understanding. that says hey you're below 65% below and then you're going to go to full rent that next year the idea is to capture that to the program. All of it unless I missed anything. That was our understanding of where I think the city wants to go. Okay, thank you so much. I appreciate that. So the extent that you could bring instead of the cap at 200 to 465. Yeah, I'd be I'd be thrilled with that. Not sure. I mean in any one time would be for it be a higher number. Yeah, 465. That would be what would be the units required under the inclusionary housing ordinance. Well, we have a thousand of the vouchers. So that's more than the four to start with. So it's a higher number to start with. But logistically for us to be able to get folks into those 17 communities, not go over those caps, be able to coordinate that. That's a difficult, I think we can certainly have that conversation. Again, if the plan's not working, we have more folks than we can have vouchers to use for. We can have that conversation with the city team and look for that. But for right now, based on all the input that we have from our, and I have a whole group that works that me, I don't know, it's getting late. There's a whole group of the Irvine company who does work with our not for our under or below market housing programs and they've given us pretty good conservative direction on where we need to go. So that's really kind of how we landed in that kind of sweet spot. But we can certainly have those conversations between now and the time of entitlement. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Trisider. I think Council Member Mai was next. You haven't spoken yet, have you? No, I have. Why don't we turn to Councilmember Mai and then Councilmember Martina's Franco? Thank you, Mayor. So this is a beginning of a discussion. This isn't the conclusion of discussion. City manager Oliver Chi, I wanted to just address something I heard here that you guys were negotiating, your city staff was negotiating. And this is kind of the first that we've heard of this. I think that we as the elected officials should be in these negotiations as well. So I would appreciate if we were included on these conversations with any developer in the future. You know, I'm not a fan of traffic. I've heard a lot of people here over the past five hours. I hate traffic. I'm not a stranger to the area either. It's not my district, but I live on the board of the district. I know the shop owners there. I call them my friends. My kid went to the Taekwondo place when it was under Master Doe, if you guys remember that. I know when I need to get to the spectrum, I need to leave a half an hour earlier during traffic hours. So I'm no stranger to the area. My wife went to IVC. I own a storage unit right behind Oak Creek there as well. But I also understand that Irvine company owns the property. What I want clarification also from the city is that this 881, I mean we're just opening the discussion here but these are things that are going to come up. Can you clarify also if we're opening the discussions of this MOU, you talk about the entitlement process. What's, we're not We're not going to be talking about this, we're going to be talking about this in one to two years. Is that a correct time frame? It's going to have enough time for the public to talk about this, we're going to be able to talk about this. Yeah. Good. Good. Good. Good. agreement contemplates sets us a goal one year. But also recognizes that in the end it takes what it takes. It won't be sooner than one year. Okay. Another item here is that people aren't talking about the reiner requirements, the state housing mandates that are on here. I mean, we're mandated 23,000, a little over 23,000 years. And I don't see the, I don't see people up in arms. I mean, this is 3,100. We have seven times the amount that are going to have to come into this city. And people are not having the same amount of energy, you know, fighting this. I mean, we have to write to fight this. I mean the public has, has a right fight this and we should, but we can't because our hands are tied. And that's something that a lot of people, it's not addressed enough here. I really believe that Sacramento is out of touch with Irvine. Sacramento doesn't care if we're Irvine or LA or San Diego or anyone anywhere else. I mean, they're forcing us to do this. So I would hope that people have the same energy going after Sacramento about this as well. You guys haven't talked about if we don't follow this and if we fight it and we fight the state which other cities have done, what happens. I don't think, I can't think of a city that won fighting the state. Can you talk a little bit about local control and a little bit toward that? What happens if we do try to fight this? It's a relates to the state housing requirements in general. locally in Orange County, the one city that is attempted to assert their right as a charter city to not have to comport with state-related housing requirements, the city of Huntington Beach. The legal argument there at 30,000 feet has been that because they are at charter city, the state doesn't have the regulatory authority to mandate local development protocols. The state's argument has been that housing is a matter of statewide concern, that whether you're a charter city, a general law city, your subdivision of the state, and if the state determines an issue to be a matter of statewide concern, then cities have to comport with those requirements. To this point, Huntington Beach has never won in court utilizing that argument. The state continues to have that if they determine an issue to be of statewide concern, and the state has identified that housing is, there's a legal requirement for cities to comply with that regulation. Jeff can probably add more detail to that. Yeah, I just wanted to try it a slightly different way. The state is taking away local authority over the decision weather and where to grant housing. That's a reality. So do we have tools available to us today that given this specific Oak Park proposal, we could make difficult in the near term? Yeah, absolutely. But in the long term, the reality is coming to us. A whole bunch more of units are going to come to the city. And you can choose whether you're going to master plan as the city has historically done proactively or not. And if you choose not, then it will probably be forced upon you in a different way. Got it. And you know that leads me to the other point is that we don't want to lose that local control. And it's no big secret that Irvine Company is not a big fan of me and other companies aren't a big fan of me because when it comes to corporations, I kind of stand with the people and get in trouble a little bit for that. But I feel that Irvine Company is best equipped and has the most interest into building something that is, you know, meets a standard of Irvine and they do have a vested interest in it. So thank you Jeff for your presentation here. I hope that you'll take in consideration to all the comments from the public here tonight's online and what you'll get in the future. I look forward to more community engagement instead of just at a last minute, hey, hey you guys, we got this coming. I would, I know it's just the beginning of the conversations, but I would hope that you guys would take in consideration the neighborhoods and the community. If I, if I might Councilmember Mai, we've exchanged cards with some of the folks that were here earlier this evening. And that's part of this program. We fully anticipated and expect that that dialogue is going to have to happen. And we actually welcome it. That's why we wanted to make sure that there was notification out there to the communities that folks we have been talking with and certainly the idea of and it's always made projects better as we have conversations with with our neighbors and we find areas of common ground hopefully and we're able to move ahead and we're going to have about a year to do all that. Great and since you're standing there as well I just wanted to hopefully you can do something about the traffic, because that's gonna be a major, major concern for everyone around the area. I mean, it's impactful to everyone in all directions of the city as well. We have some thoughts in that regard. And because of, we don't have that level of application before you didn't wanna get into all that, but it certainly is part of this program with roadway extensions as well as the contributions to the transit program, we're fully aware of where the city's going and our support of those. is part of this program with roadway extensions as well as the contributions to the transit program. We're fully aware of where the city is going and our support of those efforts and hopefully we'll be able to include those and incorporate them into this project as well. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Rice Mayor May. Next Council Member Martinez Franco. Then Council Member Martinez, Frankl, then council member, tresider, then council member, Lou, and maybe I'll have a few words to say and will actually be in a position to perhaps take a vote. Council member, tresider, we brought out a very good point about the vouchers expiring and I wasn't thinking about that before So are these vouchers in perpetuity? Meaning like when these people graduate from the program it would be given to another family Forever or they're just gonna to expire just these vouchers and that's it. The vouchers will expire. The component that doesn't though is each individual that gets put into the voucher program. Once they're stabilized, they go to the front of the list for a permanent affordable unit that doesn't expire. So it's an entry point and tool for us to use to address a local at risk population. That's how we thought it all through. Folks that need immediate housing stabilization and then permanent housing. How do we address that issue? We absolutely need more permanent affordable housing. But what we've been talking about and thinking about with the Council of the last year and a half, two years is how do we support a local at risk population to help that population initially stabilize into housing and then move into a permanent unit. And that's what this program has been designed to do. That the individuals would get a voucher initially. A voucher would be good for an initial two-year period if they needed. And that's what this program has been designed to do. That the individuals would get a voucher initially. Vouchers would be good for an initial two-year period. If they need additional time, you can use an additional voucher to stay longer. Once income levels are to a point where they can afford very low, low, moderate unit, they would transition to the front of the line for the next available unit. That's part of the reason why also there's the development of 200 units at a time that was in response to the program and the wrap around support that each family will need. It's hard work to work through those issues. The case management needed to help somebody stabilize doesn't happen overnight. And so we want to make sure each family, each life, whether it's a family or a senior, that we do help that individual stabilize, get to self-sustaining lifestyle into a permanent affordable unit. So that's the pathway the MOU lays out. No, and that's fantastic. And I, I feel support that. My worry is that that is not going to be enough because once that program finishes there's going to be need for more and then we're not going to have any leverage to ask for more low income housing in, in the city. So what are we going to do then? So we need to plan for the future and just for the next two years. Agreed. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Traceter, then Councilmember Blue. Thank you. Yeah, the council member, Martinez Franco's question got me curious and how many extremely low or very low housing units do we currently have in the city? I don't know off the top my head. It's several hundred. I don't know exactly how many, but we'll find out what the council know. Okay. So in the order of hundreds, and we're not building anymore with this MOU, and we'll need to transition to 100 people to them after two years and then two years later another 200 people and yet we're not building more. And so I'm a little bit worried about how the math is gonna work out there. So that being said, I do want to consider this. It is a new type of policy. I know that the mayor campaigned on this quite a bit and spoke on it at length in his state of this city address. And so I can see why the REN company would be trying to accommodate that. But there are just so many questions because this is a new potential policy that we could use. And I need to see how this would work compared to even just using the inclusionary housing ordinance, what that would mean, have a side-by-side comparison there, not just with the number of units that I mentioned, but the larger picture, you know, all the benefits mentioned in the MOU. I haven't had much of a chance to really go over all of this with the relevant stakeholders. And I am concerned that we might back ourselves into a corner that we're not intending to because we have made this arrangement. So I'll just say that I do have concerns about this. If it were up to me, I'd rather just have the inclusionary housing ordinance used with some workarounds to make sure that the folks who really need it can get into housing in priority. But for now, I'll just say I'm hoping that we can go over this some more, maybe with more chance for me to talk with the Irvine company and see what they're thinking of. And make sure that they're aware is not the whole council that is in necessarily asking for this. It's the requests are varied among the council members. So thank you. Thank you, council member Liu, then council member Go. Thank you. We do have a housing crisis. This is not deniable. All throughout California, especially in Orange County. And it's very painfully obvious that we can, the only way out of this is to build more housing and let the market take care of it or we can use some policy changes to keep some of those units affordable and we're not going to be able to solve all of it tonight. I understand that this is a transitional housing affordable housing voucher program, not for permanent housing. In fact, in Irvine, we do like City Manager Head already mentioned, we built the most out of any Orange County cities for affordable units and we do have other options. housing for one that has managing affordable units for people who are low income, extreme low income, and that's been done for decades. And also we also have other charitable profits that are looking for housing for other families. And that is not the only thing that is taking care of people facing homelessness. We are talking about a 20 year policy from the federal government down that we do housing first to take the temperature down. And then we rehabilitate and help these folks get back on their feet. I am trying to say that today we're voting on an MOU to have this immediate need met that we have 88 families identified by IUSD that are homeless. They need a place to go. And with something like this, that is readily available for them, which getting me to a point that the first initial voucher issuance was at 75 vouchers, which was a little baffling when we have 88 families. But if we maybe get to there's 75 there's excuse me there's 75 with this program but we have another 50 with another program that we've already started to work on so we'll have a total of 125 within 60 days to cover that so there's a little bit of a cushion as part of that program. So I understand that this is just transitional. So for people who are a little upset about what's going to happen at the end. I mean, we're trying to find them the permanent. As we still keep on building, hopefully. And I understand that we are getting, it's getting late. And I understand that we are getting a lot of the community benefits instead of having you just cut a check today, which will probably be easier for you rather than to have to offer all this other benefits to the community. And I just don't know how, I mean, I would like to see more housing. I would like to maintain my quality of life. And I just don't see how we can not manage it and pretend it's not happening. I mean, our arena number is 23,610, which we will need to build by 2045 to meet the housing needs. And there are only going to be more people. And where are we going to put them? My kids high school teachers who grew up and graduated from Northwood High School live in Riverside. Drive an hour to come back to their hometown to teach the high school they graduated from. That is not right. The city staff who work here, a lot of them can't afford to live in Irvine or Orange County. My own office, we have members who are not living in Irvine and that is not right. So I feel like we need to instead of talking about how this is an open space, no, this open space is exclusive expensive golf club. It is not accessible to the rest of us. I understand you have to go a little farther for open space now, but that golf club, the only argument that I can hear that is to preserve that is so the kids who, high school kids, who don't have another place to practice, will have a place to practice. But honestly, in the aggregate of things, I would rather have more housing. So the businesses can have employees who can live nearby. The teachers, the first responders, the city staff who make the city great can actually afford to reap the benefit of their labor and live in the city. They help make so great. So with all That said, I would like to actually point out what we're getting from this MOU. We are getting the open space reserve. That is accessible to everybody. We are getting more trails and that's connecting the rest of the trails, the open space. We are getting a joint training facility that fulfills the six-year delay for IPD and OCFA to finally have that joint training facility. We're going to have a new library space in Woodbridge Village Center. We're going to have a significant cash contribution in a permanent open space in exchange for that private club. We are going to have more housing opportunities, which hopefully will bring down the cost and help people afford to live here. We're going to have more housing for IVC students. We're going to have this voucher program to help transition housing for Irvine residents with an Irvine focus. And so, and we're not having a plan today. We're not voting on, we're not voting on what's gonna happen. There's gonna be traffic study There's going to be seaquod. I'm guessing there's going to be community input period. To me, this is not going to be too hard to decide. We are voting to decide on whether we are going to have a plan. Nothing's carving stone and I say I will support this and let's just put it to a vote if nobody else has any. Well thank you for your comments. Council member Go wants to be heard and then I'm just going to offer a few words as well and if my colleagues are talked out. Go ahead. I'll be quick. It's past midnight and I just want people to speak, say that I spoke past midnight. It's part of that. No, you know, I used to live in this area actually. I actually was at renter at Oakland apartments. It's a great site. It's so central to everything. It's just going to be such a good addition to the villages here in Irvine. I just want to make sure, and I point out that we get support from city staff as well as the Irvine company. The Wallnut Trail ends right there on San Canyon. And I know we've already got plans to get that over to the bridge, but I do know the Irvine company owns quite a bit of the land alongside that route. And if you guys could give us some of the alleyways to get us over into the transportation corridor. I think to relieve traffic and make it viable for people to not, more cars to the street as much as possible. That's an important route and really putting a focus on that will be well appreciated. As well as I'm working alongside OCTA, obviously we want infrastructure working on the freeways white and 405's already being white and for the most part and then the five Next to it we just spoke about today any support You know that could be given all around to get our Transportation infrastructure beefed up before this project goes into place St. Canyon's a bit of a mess right now. So I'm trying to clear a lot of that up. I know we've worked well together through the years. We could definitely do quite a bit more in doing a lot more of these project base and with the cooperation of the Irvine company and the 3000 new residents, we hope that there's a happy balance. I mean traffic is going to get worse. that's just the sheer numbers game, but we can definitely surely mitigate it. And that's my ask. Just let's focus on that ahead of time before people start moving in. Thank you so much. Thank you, Council member Go. Maybe I'll just offer a couple of comments at this point and I think we can move to a vote. I've been taking notes, you know, it has taken 50 years to get to 5,100 affordable housing units relative to, affordable housing. 50 years. In my state of the city remarks, I said we should double that number, and we need to do it in the next five years. And with stuff that's in the pipeline, and with this MOU or something like it that is enhanced, including this instant affordability program, we can get to 10,000 households, affordable households, affordable housing units. In my state of the city remarks, I also said that no school child in Irvine should be homeless. It's just ridiculous in a community. This blessed, this wealthy, to have school children who are homeless. So in addition to the IUSD, I'm interested in TUSD, but this is something we can take care of by the end of this year, by the end of this calendar year. I think we ought to be able to declare no Irvine school child is homeless. In addition, as Councilmember Blue pointed out, and others have pointed out as well, these urgent benefits, urgently needed benefits, come right up front, right up front. We frontload it if we really have an affordable housing crisis and homelessness crisis, well let's address it with an urgent program and that's what we can do. You know and my thinking about all this and maybe this program does require some further thought, modification, adjustment, because it is a novel approach. My thought going into all of this was my goodness. This community is fortunate enough to have the principal land developer, namely the Irvine company, own and operate, manage as well, 35,000, soon to be 40,000 apartment units. So we actually have a chance entering into a deal with the company to access those units on an immediate basis. I've been through all these inclusionary housing programs and everything getting nonprofits involved and finding some land separate from the market rate development, all that takes so long. It takes years and years before those units become available to people who urgently need them. This is a way we can, with a yes vote, tonight on this, at once address the most immediate urgent problems with respect to affordability and homelessness and keep people from slipping into homelessness. We can address these issues right away and then move on to affordability and building new units and and so forth. I think other issues that we all recognize, the whole traffic issue, the connection between traffic and the remedy to worsening traffic is the eye-connect system, the Irine connect system and immediate expansion of the system or something close to immediate concentrating particularly on the center city. That would, I think, provide so much relief for people throughout the center city. That would I think provide so much relief for people throughout Irvine as well as those impacted by this particular project proposal as it emerges. Also open space, I think Councilmember Martinez Franco touched on a very important point. The Oak Creek Golf Course is beautiful as it is and as valuable as it is as Center City open space. It is not publicly owned. It is open space that is not free for people to use as compared with what is outlined in the MOU. the open space that we would be getting far exceeds the size of the Oak Creek golf course. It's about double the size of the Oak Creek golf course or more, and it would be free and of course if we're smart about it we be free. And of course, if we're smart about it, we will provide easy access by all people in the city to be able to access it. And as to those people who are desperate for open space as we are in the center of the city, the MOU for example provided enhancement and I think it's up front, enhancement of the walnut trail which is, if memory serves me correctly, about three miles of east-west trail in what we used to call the Edison easement. And I think if we could move quickly on that, we could make what is an unattractive area now into just a highly desirable center city, east-west trail system that will benefit people in the ranch and green tree and people down toward the great park as well. And the sooner we can start on that, the better. So I view this whole MOU as a good start toward what I hope will be a good project that we can all be proud of. Trying to reconcile our various competing interests, concerns that we all have and so forth. I'm glad we have a full council with an opportunity for all of us to be in kind of on the ground floor on seeing where this project goes if indeed the MOU is approved tonight. So with that, unless there are others who want to be heard, I will move staff recommendation, which would be to authorize the city manager or his designee or designees to execute the memorandum of understanding regarding consideration of establishment of a new oak park planning area including affordable housing and other public benefit matters between the city of Irvine and the Irvine company Is there a second? a second Was that councilmember my yes council member my seconds the motion I'll second. Was that council member Mai? Yes. Council member Mai seconds the motion. Any further discussion? There be none. Would the clerk please call the roll. Council member Carroll. Yes. Council member Marchimus Franco. Yes. Council member Go. Yes. Council member Lou. Yes.. Councilmember Goh. Yes. Councilmember Lou. Yes. Councilmember Traceeider. Yes. Vice Mayor Maye. Yes. Mayor Eagman. Yes. Carrie 7-0. Thank you. That concludes our agenda. All the other items will be put off. I want to thank my colleagues. Thank everybody who participated in what was a very long evening, but I think we got some good work done. With that, the meeting is adjourned. I guess we technically need a motion. Is that correct? I'll move that we adjourn. Is there a second? I'll second that. Seconded by Council Member Carol. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed, median adjourned.