The contract may not be fully baked — or for the man on the right even largely comprehended — but last night Jeff Lalloway and Steven Choi, joined by Christine Shea, voted to approve FivePoint’s Great Park construction deal anyway.
An (unknowing) Orange Juice Blog correspondent (who can claim authorship of the dispatches below for the asking) documented last night’s goings-on. I’ve cleaned up some of the spelling and grammar, because the correspondent was obviously worn out by the end and this, after all, is for posterity:
- Watch the City of Irvine Vote on Great Park now Live http://www.cityofirvine.org/cityhall/citymanager/pio/ictv/live/default.asp
City of Irvine Website – live
www.cityofirvine.org
- 11p.m. hour: The Irvine City Council is grilling (FivePoint head) Emile Haddad on commitment to the plan and who would operate the park
- midnight hour: City Council Meeting – November 26, 2013
4:00 PM – 12:00 AM - Duration: 480 min so far
- midnight hour: Steve Choi is really out of it. This guy unbelievably clueless for the past 480 minutes, yes 480 minutes. Every time he says something a Bush image comes to mind
- midnight hour: After 20 minutes recesses to consult and understand some paperwork, Choi comes back more clueless. Choi is unable to understand the paperwork handed to him. He is asking the Mayor Pro-Tem to read it in plain English in the midst of the laughter from the audience. Disgrace. So Jeff Lalloway, the Pro-Tem, is doing the translation from English. Basically, Choi will copy Lalloway’s vote. SMH
- midnight hour: I will not be surprised if Choi [word missing?] after the past 5 minutes of literally reading the MOU between the City and FivePoint Developer. [Lalloway] is literally reading in plain English and Choi is still no comprehendo.
- midnight hour: Mayor Pro-Tem Lalloway is grilling FivePoint and they do not have answers in a motion. Lalloway is asking for design modification and FivePoint Rep is mumbling to a dissatisfaction of Lalloway.
- midnight hour: Choi looks smart and ok until he start talking and looks as he is in a different meeting
- midnight hour: Choi is complaining why Lalloway is making it complicated. Mr. Mayor when you were elected things [were] supposed to be complicated — it is a quarter million people city. I do not blame you, I blame the people who elected you. Choi is refusing to postponed #BushMoment
- midnight hour: Agran asked Lalloway to make a summary or if the city Clerk Carl summarize the motion. Lalloway replies, Carl does not have a copy I gave the extra copy to FivePoint.#Shameless Lalloway
- midnight hour: City Manger is frustrated with Christina Shea’s ignorance and hastiness to hand it to FivePoint without risk management. The lady wants to go home. She is getting rowdy with the City Manager
- midnight hour: Choi is mad at Lalloway, he is about to spank him over the fact that Lalloway is taking away the 12 months evaluation period from the contract. I think Choi is a night owl, his awareness just kicked in
- 1 a.m. hour: Agran is grilling FivePoint on the agricultural operations in the park.
- 1 a.m. hour: Steve Choi and his gang approved his friends Five Point plan 3-2
Meanwhile, the Voice of OC’s story includes this tale of the waning moments:
The hours-long negotiations seemed at one point to hit an impasse over whether the city or the developer would operate and maintain the park. Lalloway – who was the swing vote — said he would defend Irvine’s control over the park “to the death,” while Shea said that the cost to the city hadn’t been studied enough.
However, Shea relented, and agreed to have FivePoint pay the city $10 million over several years for the operational costs. The developer would also chip in another $10 million to improve Marine Way, a major thoroughfare into the park.
Applause and cheers erupted after the council approved the agreement.
The meeting ultimately ended just before 2 a.m., with dozens of observers still in attendance.
(Note to students at UCI’s Public Policy and Public Administration courses: no, this is not how it’s supposed to be done.)
A final note: I don’t know what happened with that final discussion about “agricultural operations in the park.” I know that Agran has been very proud of the organic farming operation in the park, which (as I recall) he once said would potentially be enough to feed all of Orange County. Will it become corporate industrial farming now? I have no idea — and I don’t know who does know. Who’s the highest bidder?
Defend control of the Great Park to your death? What do you know about real, life-threatening risk?
As a Marine who served there and elsewhere in the mid-60s, on behalf of all military personnel who now get robbed of a veteran’s cemetery, not to mention Los Amigos fantastic idea regarding a VA/Wounded Warriors full-scale hospital, hey Jeff Lalloway? Have YOU no sense of shame for uttering those hallowed, sacred words?
That’s what WE do, what WE volunteer for, what all of your military personnel in a sense do: Offer up our lives. Defend to the death. Death before dishonor.
And you + your cushy, air-conditioned, armchair Irvine City Council over these past 10 years have only defended your own municipal piggy bank, a perpetual motion money machine, YOUR pot of gold. You have no sense of intrinsic, only extrinsic material core values.
A USMC shoutout & BOORAH! to Greg Diamond of OC Juice is intuited. You sir have stones AND brains. Those of us @ Salem-News.com and our “wing support group” salute you.
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely…Just substitute “control” for “power” in that sentence, GOOGLE it and up comes Irvine CA @ page 1 of your search engine.
I watched this fiasco via cable last night and kept throwing up my dinner, both out of anger but also out of laughing hysteria.
Unintentionally or not, these asinine community leaders seemed lost regarding their own Nietzschean mechanizations near the actual Council vote around midnight. It was as if they didn’t understand the package, how is that possible, so much power in the hands of clueless popularity contest winners?
They took 10 years creating this nightmare, and the poor dears just got tired, way past their beddy-bye time, hand over the keys to the Rolls-Royce formerly known as the Great Park residential element. It’s now a Pinto, but one that Emile Haddad will milk dry, market as a Mercedes and speculators will purchase the units as investments.
Irvine might be one of America’s safest cities, but we, the OC voters who handed it over, were NEVER safe from Irvine politicos, scoundrels, scalliwags, intrigue and skullduggery.
If there ever is a criminal investigation, and it reveals that the different Councils & their reps on the Great Park Board were complicit in illicit, irregular and/or illegitimate activities, then maybe Lalloway & Co. will get their wish: Defend themselves to death in court and then in a white collar prison. Of course Irvine will be paying for their legal counsel on the income revenue we helped them acquire, that’s how the system works. Is this a great country (but NOT Great Park) or what?
It would have made a real nifty international airport ……..
Congrats, you managed the rare feat of recommending something worse than what just happened.
I’d argue with the substance of the comment — if I could find it.
Your facility for finding things is as inconsequential as
skal’s refusal to recognize the folly of an airport.
Yeah, I saw your opinion. It looked a lot like skally’s opinion — only smaller.
When nipsey is cryptic, no-one out-cryptics nipsey.
Other than the addition of around 5,000 homes, I don’t see much difference. Other than the naming of a Great Park Poet, I haven’t seen much progress since Sergeant Martinez pulled out in 1997.
Before the “PRO-GP” crowd gets on me, I think Bill Burn’s inspiration from the 36th barracks bathroom was special:
They Paint these walls to block my pen
The SHITHOUSE POET strikes again!
Now that was worth 350 Million dollars if you ask me.
And while you are at it PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE bring up the Solar Competition.
Ok — “and what about the Solar Decathlon”?
(You’re on!)
Sorry, I was absent from this discussion.
What Solar Decathlon? That was a JOKE of a promotion which brought in fewer dollars tan the Ontario Mills Mall did for parking this holiday season.
let’s get real about what is possible.
Here’s and idea, bulldoze, the BIG A, convert it to affordable housing and build the intimate baseball stadium Dan C. and others desire. By the way, I saw Moreno has been dining with the Roski mob and Mie Mie Huff, Greg’s opponent. How;s that for the LA ANGELS?