Once again the City of Irvine has trumped my City of Santa Ana – by passing an ordinance prohibiting the taking of private property via eminent domain in order to pass it on to another private party.

Of course we are familiar with this as it happened in Santa Ana when land that featured a notorious “gentleman’s club ” was seized and handed over to a car dealership – even though the land, which was next to the 55 Fwy. – was worth a lot and the owner of the land was not allowed to profit from it. At the time the city argued that they were cleaning up the town by getting rid of a bad business – but what will be the next business they go after? And why not allow the market to settle the issue? And why hand the land over to a millionaire car dealer who ought to pay for it like everyone else?

It should be noted that the City of Santa Ana also seized property that housed an OC Health Department building and handed that over to another car dealer. That was also an egregious action! Our council is utterly shameless – including Councilman Carlos Bustamante who now wants to be an OC Supervisor. Might want to apologize to the folks in the OC Health Department Carlos!

Here’s the OC Register’s article about the Irvine ordinance:

Irvine eminent domain rule passes

Irvine measure keeping private property owners’ land from being seized for use by another private party wins first approval.

IRVINE