Careful Planning
Larry has always put Irvine residents first! He’s working to protect our local neighborhoods and prevent gridlocked traffic and overcrowded schools.
He has a proven record of supporting careful planning and placing strong restrictions on warehouses and overdevelopment. Larry’s leadership led to our beautiful parks system (ranked the best in California!) and lots of green space for families to enjoy today and for generations to come.
Larry does not take money from land developers and corporate special interest groups that want to control our City. Unlike his opponent in this race, Larry opposes the latest developer scheme to jam 57,000 additional housing units in Irvine that would dump another 100,000 cars onto our City streets every day, resulting in more traffic, more potholes, more pollution … and a diminished quality of life for everyone.
Protect Taxpayers
While Larry is a proven environmental leader, he also believes strongly in protecting Irvine taxpayers and electricity ratepayers. That’s why Larry is the only candidate running for Mayor who has spoken out against the forced enrollment of all Irvine businesses and households in the disastrous Orange County Power Authority (OCPA).
Larry has been raising red flags about OCPA since rejoining the Council in late 2020. In the meantime, a scathing Orange County Grand Jury report has been released along with a County and State audit. All three investigations revealed gross mismanagement, deception, and financial instability at OCPA.
OCPA has already been fined millions of dollars by California State regulators for not purchasing enough electricity to prevent blackouts. And, there is no proof that OCPA has actually been delivering cleaner electricity to its Irvine customers.
So far, $7.7 million of Irvine taxpayer dollars have been advanced to OCPA without any oversight by the City. The City of Irvine also backed OCPA’s $35 million line of credit with Union Bank. (Larry was the only member of the City Council to vote NO!)
In 2022, every Irvine-based business and every Irvine household was transferred from their previous provider of electricity — Southern California Edison — and enrolled in the new OCPA plan at a significantly higher monthly rate.
As Larry stated: “Forcing every Irvine resident and business into a new, more expensive electricity plan without a vote of the people is flat-out wrong!”
For nearly two years, his Council colleagues blocked Larry’s efforts to place an item regarding OCPA on the Council agenda. But, that didn’t stop him. Larry began using his 3-minutes of “Announcements” during each Council meeting to publicly express his concerns and educate the public on the fiasco at OCPA.
As Irvine’s Mayor, Larry will get our City back on track. He will implement policies that ensure we meet the City’s ambitious goal of carbon-neutrality by 2030 — without gouging Irvine residents and business owners.
Build Our Great Park
While other large metropolitan parks have taken as long as 50 years to build, our 1,300-acre Great Park — which is nearly double the size of New York’s Central Park — has been progressing very quickly!
As Vice Chair of the Great Park Board, Larry has spent the past four years working to bring a number of resident-requested amenities to our Great Park.
As a result of Larry’s collaborative work with the Chair of the Great Park Board and thousands of Irvine residents, the City is currently building museums, restaurants, and retail shops as well as a manageable outdoor amphitheater, two lakes, walking paths and botanical gardens. And, Larry was the driving force in returning the Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum to its home here in Irvine.
Also under construction right now is our big, beautiful, voter-endorsed Veterans Memorial Park honoring Irvine’s nearly six-decade military history. Our long-promised Veterans Memorial Park will include trees, trails, and memorial gardens . . . with installations and exhibits that honor the history of service and sacrifice of our veterans and their families.
The Veterans Memorial Park will also include botanical gardens and a 35-acre memorial forest with thousands of trees that will cool and clean the air in North Irvine. This, in turn, will help us with yet one more big thing: Working together with the community, Larry will organize our resources and adopt a bold Climate Action Plan that will put Irvine in the forefront of fighting climate change and the threat it poses to people everywhere.
Environmental Stewardship
Good leadership and citizen activism make a difference! As Irvine’s Mayor years ago, Larry worked alongside our City’s residents to pass an historic ballot initiative that preserved more than 10,000 acres of Open Space for families to enjoy, forever free from development … at no cost to Irvine taxpayers.
Since re-joining the City Council in late 2020, Larry has once again joined forces with Irvine residents. Through their tireless work, the City has now shut down a dangerous asphalt plant in north Irvine and is restoring the land to its natural form.
For years, the asphalt plant was the City’s largest industrial polluter, spewing noxious and toxic chemicals in the air every day, including two known human carcinogens (formaldehyde and benzene).
The asphalt plant’s continued operation in Irvine was simply incompatible with good air quality and our Irvine quality of life.
Now, the land will be home to the “Gateway Preserve,” which will provide new recreational and environmental opportunities to connect Irvine residents to tens of thousands of acres of open space.
As Irvine’s Mayor, Larry will make sure that our City continues to be a beacon of environmental stewardship through thoughtful planning and citizen involvement.