So! Yesterday me, Donna and Mark drove up to Gypsum Canyon in the Anaheim Hills to enjoy the dedication and groundbreaking of the long-awaited Orange County Veterans Cemetery. All the pictures in this story are from Mark and Donna unless otherwise noted.
It sure has been a long wait, and a lot of work, for a lot of people to finally get this site for this long-needed cemetery, a site that 99% of Orange County agrees on. (We’ll talk to those other 1% at the end of the story.)
My dad, a Navy vet, died this year, hoping to be buried in an Orange County Veterans Cemetery. He died a couple years too early for that dream, while Irvine took nearly a decade bickering and dithering over competing locations. And of course he’s only one of thousands of OC veterans who died before this could happen. But as soon as everyone agreed on the beautiful (but desolate) Gypsum Canyon location, the process has been going at warp speed.
Most deserving of celebrating this day were:
- Our good friend Cynthia Ward, of the OC Cemetery District, who’d suggested this site a decade ago;
- The veterans who never stopped fighting for a cemetery, anywhere in OC, led by stubborn Marines Nick “We’re gonna take this hill” Berardino and the feisty Bill Cook;
- Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva who put years of legislative work into making this happen until Irvine finally let her down;
- and (I have to admit) Todd Spitzer, who, as Supervisor in 2018, was the first politician to suggest the site.
It’s not like Anaheim is any less corrupt than Irvine – don’t make me laugh! But fortunately no developers are interested in this distant slice of northeast Anaheim wilderness that’s barely still in this County. So once the politicians of Irvine (who seem to be divided not so much into D vs R but rather a FivePoint Party versus an Irvine Company Party) threw up their hands, it fell into Anaheim’s lap. And we’ve been running with it!
Apparently it’s a big deal that all 34 incorporated cities of this County signed on to this location, and this also resulted in photo ops for, literally, a shitload of OC politicians yesterday. Your shallow correspondent enjoyed, most, observing and talking to many of these creatures outside of their natural habitats.
As I beheld these majestic but arid hills, I had a concern and idea that many others no doubt share: Keeping this place green with lush rolling lawns as pictured is gonna take a hell of a lot of water! Has any thought been put into covering much or most of it with lovely native plants instead? Cynthia answered me today (as a private citizen, not on behalf of the district)
“We have learned from our three cemeteries how to minimize water usage with a variety of tools, especially getting the grass to grow deep roots which is a specialty irrigation we’ve become very good at. We employ an irrigation specialist on our staff full time. We are very aware of this critical natural resource and work hard to preserve it.
“Also the site will be developed in stages over decades so we won’t see acres of open lawn for a long time. There will be well maintained ‘natural landscape’ around developed sections, if that makes sense…”
It really was a spectacular day up there in the Hills. And we had to travel by shuttle from the parking lot to the location of the ceremony. I parked in the media area next to the Voice of OC guys, and politicians and civilians were forced willy-nilly onto buses together – us with Garden Grove’s Kim Nguyen (she and I having criticized each other a lot.) She stayed in the back of the bus as far from me and Donna as she could, and we did the same, sticking to the front where Donna took pictures of the scenery through the windows.
I sat next to a blond lady I first feared could be Kris Murray, but turned out to be La Palma Mayor Michele Steggell. We talked about her colleague Marshall Goodman, whom I’d been intending for years to write about as the only OC Mayor who played drums with Sublime. As we negotiated the winding hilly dirt road, the radio played Stevie Nicks’ masterpiece “Landslide.” We all agreed that that was a somewhat inauspicious choice.
But there were no landslides that day.
Don Wagner’s Day in the Sun
Don Wagner, the Supervisor for the district, played emcee and did a real good job, being nonpolitical, gracious, good-humored and keeping things moving along quick. He’s come a long way from when I heard him at a 2010 Tea Party berating Mexicans for their “encrosion of our borders,” a word I had to look up and does not exist but which I assumed was an improvised portmanteau for “encroachment” and “erosion,” and which Gus Ayer assured me was probably “Teabonics.”
Don emphasized how quickly this process has been going since this location had finally been agreed upon, and sure enough when he asked the media for questions, all we could think of was, in unison, “What’s the timeline now?” A bill will need to be amended in Sacramento (and apparently Senator Umberg was doing that as we spoke) then it goes to Anaheim planning etc. for all the necessary permits and approvals (Mayor Sidhu shouted out “We’ll get that done in 90 days!”) Then comes all the grading, infrastructure, everything that makes our heads spin and eyes cross. But it is on a fast track.
I was pleasantly surprised that Spitzer, who could have, did not make this a big political deal. But then, he wasn’t given a microphone. There were only four speakers (including veteran leaders Berardino and Cook) and ONLY ONE POLITICIAN who’s facing re-election this year was allowed to speak, Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu.
And I said unto Donna, “How many seconds do you think we have before Harry does his arms-outstretched ‘Open for business’ pose?” but it was already too late, he was doing it before I finished my sentence, and did it again three more times:
And Mayor Sidhu’s speech was blessedly short, but he SHRIEKED as though he didn’t know he had a microphone. (I have never heard a Sikh shriek like that, but then, the other Sikhs I know don’t shriek at all, bless their hearts.) He was right about one thing – it was an exceedingly beautiful day we were blest with. And amazingly, EVERY SINGLE PERSON THERE had the good grace not to mention how Harry had impersonated a veteran in a July 4 parade while he was first running for Mayor three years ago – or at least nobody mentioned it very loudly.
The Good, Bad & Ugly are given Shovels.
There are two types of people in the world, my friend – those with shovels that are only used for show, and the rest of us. And a gargantuan effort was made to let as many OC politicians as possible shovel a spoonful of dirt in symbolic commencement of all the work ahead. When I told Cynthia later that she shoulda been up there, she said, “Oh, they never would have let me near all those politicians with a shovel in my hand.”
Here is a brief assortment of Shovel Shots from yesterday, the first one stolen from the Voice of OC, the rest by Mark Daniels:
After a bit of dirt was displaced by this small army of pols, and then everyone did something weird with a football-field-sized US flag, we milled about, and I made…
Additional Observations.
Funny, almost nobody was wearing masks besides me and Donna – not even the Democrats. You’d think the pandemic was over! But I looked over as I heard Anaheim spokesman Mike Lyster‘s unmistakable high-pitched voice rising in anger and distress – the poor gentleman was being harassed mercilessly by two shorter, fully-masked men. Hey! It was Nick Gerda and Norberto Santana, reporter and editor from the Voice of OC!
I’d never seen Lyster so upset and defensive with reporters, and I realized I haven’t been doing MY job. Norberto was all, “What do you mean, you have a limit of twenty questions?” “I didn’t say that!” “Yes, you did, I heard you say ‘I already answered twenty of your questions and that’s enough!” Nick: “You gave me some numbers but you never told me what method you used to calculate those numbers, so they don’t mean anything!” Mike: “That’s all I can tell you!” (I think they were talking about the finances surrounding the bond Anaheim took out to expand the Convention Center in 2014.)
Norberto: “Do you know you are the MOST UNRESPONSIVE city spokesperson in all of Orange County?” And on it went, until Lyster shambled away defeated. A little later we saw him striding away, lockstep through that barren wasteland with Mayor Sidhu, probably both bitching about what unfair meanies “The Noise of OC” is. Good job, guys!
And as I wandered along, lonely as a cloud, a familiar voice called out: “Well, if it isn’t my GADFLY FRIEND! Welcome to District 6, Vern!”
It was Anaheim Councilman Trevor O’Neil – I hadn’t noticed him because he looks so much like a politician that you kind of don’t see him in a crowd of politicians. I told him, “Yeah, I’m glad you call me a gadfly – I looked it up and I think it’s a good thing.” “Ah, it’s just an adjective,” replied Trevor.
I paused politely, not knowing what to say. This was TWICE wrong. “Gadfly” is very much a noun. But not only that, what he was trying to say was “It’s just a word that doesn’t mean anything,” when actually he intended it as a dismissive insult while I chose to embrace it as a compliment and standard to live up to – which in turn is a distinguished old jujitsu technique in this public life.
We had to say hi to Irvine Mayor Pro-Tem Tammy Kim (pictured above) because as I said to her, if Dan Chmielewski hates somebody else as much as he hates me, they must be doing SOMETHING right. And she laughed and said she doesn’t understand, “he USED to like me.” She may or may not be running for assembly against Steven Choi, it depends on how the district lines are drawn. I told her that if she does, please let me know where she stands on various issues (I assume she cares about more than just anti-Asian racism. I hope.) Then I started to gloat about how Anaheim had won the Veterans Cemetery prize from loser Irvine, before remembering that’s where she’s from, so we excused ourselves.
One worrisome episode was when we saw our old friend and former Anaheim Council candidate Brian Chuchua sitting behind the wheel of a jeep full of veterans including Nick Berardino. It made sense – Brian is a veteran, and was a jeep salesman for decades, and is indeed known as “Mr. Jeep,” …. but jeez, he’s got to be close to a hundred years old by now. As we thought of him negotiating those winding hilly dirt roads back to the parking lot, and thinking about all those old veterans tumbling down a hillside with a jeep tumbling after them… in short we fretted. But everyone made it back okay, because that’s what kind of day it was!
We took the shuttle back with a real old friend of mine, Supervisor Katrina Foley. She tried to explain what her situation is now after the new district lines approved by her colleagues – she DOES live in the new south-coastal District 5, and will be running there against crooked Diane Harkey and Newport’s Diane Dixon who’s being managed by the wicked Dave Ellis… BUT for the next year she’s supposed to be “representing” Central County 2, the bulk of which is Santa Ana. This creates the strange situation that she’s running as an incumbent, but can’t really do anything for the district in which she’s running and in which she lives.
Basically, all four of the other Supervisors hate her. Including her supposed fellow Democrat Doug Chaffee.
We reminisced about fighting against the Great Fairgrounds Swindle over a decade ago, and she explained that historic and successful struggle to her companion Costa Mesa Councilman Manuel Chavez, who’s too young to remember such things. This led to reminiscences of one of this county’s first musical Council comments, my 2009 rendition of “Tainted Sale” at Costa Mesa Council (Gus Ayer’s idea.)
So I had to mention that I have a NEW musical comment for the next Board of Supervisors meeting, something called “Meet Your Board of Supervisors,” and I assured her that she is the only Supervisor not insulted in this song. She said “I wish people would stop doing that, coming to the meetings and saying I’m the only good one. It makes them hate me even more.” It was too late, I had started singing, “Do, a dick, a thin-skinned prick…” until Donna stopped me.
And on the way out, there were PROTESTERS!
Five or six of them! It was a little bit of a surprise, returning from something it seemed like EVERYBODY was behind, but of course with something THIS big there would have to be SOME dissenters. I figured if I didn’t tell their story nobody else would, so I got the number of the guy who seemed to be their leader, an old guy named Cyrus. (I noticed too that Cynthia was talking things over with them.)
And I called Cyrus that afternoon – he and the others are homeowners from nearby Yorba Linda, on the other side of the freeway. They’re VERY CAREFUL to emphasize that they love, respect and appreciate our veterans, and want there to be a veterans cemetery SOMEWHERE, but this location is just WRONG, they say.
They have two main complaints. The TRAFFIC on the 91 where they live is ALREADY hellish – it USED to just be really bad during weekdays, now it’s seven days a week. Once they start burying people, it’s gonna be one burial a day at least, and traffic is guaranteed to get even worse. Where is the EIR? Where is the traffic study? (I began to wonder, are the planners considering an alternative entrance from the 241? Cyrus is right about the traffic on the 91.)
Also the protesters (Cyrus claims there’s many, many, MANY discontents who just didn’t show up yesterday) are angry at their Yorba Linda Mayor and Council (and Supervisor Don Wagner) who rushed this through without talking to their residents or giving them any notice. Yeah, I know how that kinda thing feels. I have no sympathy for kleptocrat Yorba Linda Mayor Peggy Huang, who is also a TCA troll who wanted to destroy San Clemente.
Adding insult to injury, or vice-versa or whatever, these protesters were not allowed to enter the event but had to stand at the gate outside. And even after that, the police were called on them! (I wonder if they were “Harry’s police” as our Anaheim mayor calls them?).
Like many of us who hate and don’t understand what their government is doing, Cyrus and his friends suspect “money is changing hands, something is going on behind the scenes!” I don’t think these Yorba Linders have any chance of stopping this juggernaut that 99% of the county wants, but… maybe push for a 241 entrance? And maybe recall Peggy Huang?
This story is so damn long now, I gotta run. Good luck, Yorba Linda! And congratulations OC veterans!
Just a Thought!
In the Early 60’s Anaheim Stadium was Originally going to be built, in a ‘partnership’ between the City of Anaheim and The County of Orange.
Then the Board of Supervisors backed out, leaving the Anaheim City Council ‘to go at it alone’, which they did, by selling bonds,to build the Stadium.
I wonder how long before, the the ‘present day’ Anaheim City Council, try’s to sell the Cemetery Property for a fraction ….of what it’s worth.!
The City doesn’t own it. It’s part of the Irvine Ranch offload that the County sucked up like a bunch of dummies.
Lots to say about this, but I’ll limit this to one note: I’ve long wondered what the proper collective noun — like pack of dogs, pride of lions, pod of whales, and murder of crows” — was for “OC politicians.” Now, thanks to the phase you put in boldface between the fifth and sixth photos, I finally know!
Great job, Juice-brother! What a long strange trip it’s been!
P.S. Brian is still quite a good driver! And he’s only about 5/6 of the way to 100! And he seriously belongs on the honor roll of people who got this done.
The site is terrible. This is just the result of political grandstanding and Irvine failure.
More importantly, who is the actual agency that is responsible for developing and maintaining this site? The 34 cities may be happy clams, but who is going to raise the $100,000,000 to make this into a cemetery, and what are the environmental effects.
When the cheering is over and the hangover wears off, who is on the hook for this concept?
The logical choice would be the Cemetery Commission; Cynthia seems to think that the site will work and that the money can be raised; I don’t recall her thinking that it will cost $100MM. I trust her judgment; do you disagree? I presume that Umberg’s bill will address this, and that the state is ultimately on the hook.
They will be trying for a waiver, and have good reason to think they’ll get it, for it to be a Federal Cemetery.
Haha. I’ll be driving this vehicle off the lot and you can believe I’ll be able to finance it later. My friends just gave me a big party with a flag n’ everything so you just know I’m good for it.
You are absolutely right.
The site is terrible, indeed. In every aspect, it is considerably worse than the site in Irvine.
Except for one aspect. The Irvine site (El Toro MCAS) is not scenic at all.
But then, again, why would one want to convert some of the most scenic parts of OC that should be used for hiking, nature enjoyment, and such, onto huge cemeteries visible for miles away that will become permanent reminders of the sadness of death and dying?
Wealthy communities will have a permanent reminder of death and dying? This just gets better and better!
I will hazard a guess that no city in OC had a greater level of support for the wars in Korea, Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan than effusively-patriotic-and-jingoistic-when-someone-else-pays-the-ultimate-price Yorba Linda. (I omit the Vietnam War due to Little Saigon.) Honestly,! the community having a permanent reminder of sadness and death could not be more appropriate! Our troops are coming home, Yorba Linda — reckon with them!
The Klepto Small Fry® like this O’Neil creep and Jerbal use “gadfly” as a term of opprobrium – like “ankle biters” because it reaffirms their shaky self-worth as affiliated with the big guys, the monied interests, the Masters of the Universe, the Easy Winners.
Gadflies are annoying, that’s for sure, because the Kleptos hate transparency and criticism, but in good government they are indispensable. The term is a compliment.
Yeah, Lyster and Sidhu sure think of the Voice of OC guys as gadflies – better gadflies than me!
The residents of Yorba Linda and Anaheim Hills will have to build another road which means higher property taxes for them. Prices of their homes will go down By at least 100,000 as their views will become a cemetery view. Veterans will ride their motorcycles to celebrate and that means more noise in the neighborhood. There would be more wild fires as they build on a fire hazard area.
Residents in Irvine got united, fought the Veterans and won, while residents of Yorba Linda and Anaheim Hills are too lazy to get involved. They deserve the noise, traffic, fires and higher taxes. They will live right next to the Largest Cemetery in California, and enjoy the smell of it while they try to barbecue on the weekends.
Get a grip.
The final time you discredited yourself in this comment is when you raised the issue of the “smell” of the cemetery. What do you have in mind, rotting flesh? Do you even know how a cemetery works? But let’s take the rest from the top down.
(1) Do you think that public roads are generally built through property taxes?
(2) If their home prices go down because they look upon an undeveloped green space or even a native-plants space, it will allow people who aren’t loony to buy them. But prices there won’t go down.
(3) Of course wild fires are a concern, but dry brush will presumably be removed from the site. Gravestone marble doesn’t burn easily. It’s probably going to be no more likely to burn up from a fire around its surrounding than the nearby Savi Ranch Costco.
(4) Irvine residents didn’t unite and “fight the veterans”; they just couldn’t agree on where to put it because Larry Agran was more intent on using it as a way to ram a stick into the eye of Five Point than he was in actually serving the veterans, and he still had enough credibility among voters to get them to pass anything they wanted. (Not enough to do more than squeak by for re-election, though.)
(5) I don’t know how many people are projected to visit the cemetery — most likely during mid-day and weekends rather than rush hours — but it does not seem likely enough to affect off-peak traffic on the 91.
(6) It’s nice that you blame the residents for not opposing it, though. I hope that you’re one of them.
You are wrong on so many points that it seems pointless to argue with you.
Just one fact that may help you to be more realistic.
A modern cemetery typically has a crematorium, and those tend to produce smell that is difficult to ignore. Here is a link to an article that describe miserable experiences of the residents living in proximity of crematorium:
https://buffalonews.com/news/local/neighbors-take-legal-action-over-smell-of-human-flesh-burning-at-tonawanda-crematory/article_99a09545-8971-5280-9585-0eae8903f0aa.html
Does the plan for this cemetery include a crematorium? I would think that it needs to have one on-site, ashes fron off-site cremation being portable in urns, and all that.
If it is indeed going to suffuse Yorba Linda and Anaheim Hills with cremation smell — which I doubt because it would have been a major talking point in Irvine — then it will at least serve as a memento mori to both communities to help them keep it real.
Irvine resident defeated it because certain group of them are culturally against having cemetery in their neighborhood and when they joined with for profit real state developers made the winning lot easier.
No, that’s not why it was defeated. It was defeated because one powerful politician in that city wanted to put it in a space where it would be a constant problem (including a likely legal problem) to the developer that had toppled his control over the city (and the Great Park) — and was able to shoot down any alternatives that would not cause that sort of problem.
The mostly Chinese residents who had bought houses near where the cemetery was originally planned would not have been able to stop it on their own. That site had some legitimately serious problems, but the most serious problem was that the developers was able to buy a City Council that would block its construction there, while said politician was able to block it anywhere *but* there. That, and a lot of lack of courage, was why the structure was not built on the MCAS-El Toro base.
You are correct.
Local residents are being railroaded and their communities are going to pay steep price for “generosity” of politicians and those “do-gooders” who will not have to cope with detrimental effects of the cemeteries on their backyards.
Does it bother you that Katrina called you lazy?
The people in Orange Park Acres suffer immensely from the cemetery across the street. Forced to live in multi million dollar mansions they must be depressed every day thinking that soon, even though they live in million dollar mansions, they will be buried across the street.
Just the curse of the wealthy living in the hills near a cemetery I guess.
The smell of green grass and blooming flowers is the stink to high heaven, a place they want to go.
True the traffic is atrocious too there must be dozens of people a day going to visit their dearly departed love ones. We must stop that at all costs!
Check it out, drive down Katella to Santiago Canyon Road by the cemetery and take a smell, enjoy the views and note the terrific traffic. Drive through the mansions in neighborhoods across the street.
Do you want a house like that across from a cemetery?
The horror. The horror.
I’m pleased to have the initials GAD and to carry the gadfly banner.
“Gad” is related to “goad,” and god knows that that’s necessary.
Not only that, when I looked it up on Wikipedia yesterday (link in story) it turns out SOCRATES was the first to be called a gadfly. How cool is that??
I’m sure they would love for us to drink the hemlock.
Thank you for the coverage of residents’ opposition to the Gypsum Canyon cemeteries project. As you know, it is never easy to stand up against big political machine. The public is being deceived into believing that virtually no one objects this project, while the vast majority of local residents are against it. We who protested last Wednesday feel good about what we have been doing.
Inside we know for sure that if those who supported this project were in our shoes and somebody shoved the same type of project down their throats and right in their backyards, without asking them about their opinion in that matter, their support would drop, in a blink of eye, to insignificant level.
Yes we are fighting for our community and quality of life, and we have every right to doing so. Politicians come and go, but communities are here to stay. And so are the cemeteries, once populated, with all the detrimental impact they may have on the local life and environment.
NIMBYism at its most resplendent. Tell you what: how about if, instead of a veterans cemetery, Yorba Linda accepted a small-housing community for 2500 homeless people? Better?
Frankly, Yorba Linda’s steadfast opposition to even affordable housing, let alone homeless housing, makes it hard for me to squeeze out a tear about this.
You are just trying hard sell your pet project.
There is nothing wrong with not wanting to have a cemetery in one’s backyard.
If you are such a non-NIMBY then what wouldn’t you host a cemetery in your backyard?
It isn’t my pet project. My pet project was getting it built in Irvine’s strawberry fields, back when that was a live option before Agran squashed it.
If you take the word “backyard” seriously, is literally true that you wouldn’t want a cemetery there. But of course you are using it figuratively: it’s not in your backyard, it’s along a freeway exist that it not likely that close to your home at all. Would you like to give me an estimate in yards? Or would it be in miles?
Yes, there is something wrong in your not wanting to have a prestigious veterans cemetery near you if you take an expansive enough view of the word “near.” I’m starting to wonder whether you’re raising “feng shui” sorts of concerns, along the lines of those raised early on in Irvine, about not having a cemetery anywhere nearby. If so, I think that such superstitious beliefs — which, to some extent my wife accepts, but she also has some perspective about their role in the grand scheme of things — don’t trump public policy. And yeah, it is pure NIMBYism.
My literal backyard isn’t big enough for a Veteran’s cemetery. If there were a way to build one into the unincorporated area of Brea’s portion of the Puente Hills without creating issues of carving out a part of a hillside (potentially causing massive erosion), making it cost-prohibitive — Tonner Canyon is the only exit, off of a freeway more minor than a major artery like the 90, that would have anything close to that sort of space — then I’d happily accept the honor.
Frankly, Yorba Linda should be proud of the honor as well. What it should be ashamed of is housing the Nixon Library, but that’s not entirely its fault.
“Prestigious veterans cemetery” imposed on existing established and well-populated community against the will of the majority of its residents.
Where such a right to impose originates from?
If you are so eager to honor deceased veterans by letting the gov’t officials impose on you the direct view of the cemetery right through the window of your bedroom then you should volunteer to host a coffin with remains of a fallen soldier in your bedroom.
Then yo will be 100% honored and pay due respect to the veterans.
Anyway, there is a huge difference between building a Veterans’ Cemetery that is respectful for them and imposing exhibition-type cemetery (situated on a dominant hill) on the residents who don’t want to be exposed on daily sad remainders of death and dying.
If you cannot comprehend this then you must be different than the majority of Americans.
There are several reasons to object to this project, but proximity to houses isn’t one of them.
Thousands of local residents disagree.
Boohoo. You’re gonna lose with that foolish, selfish tack.
Building homeless shelter in yorba linda has nothing to do with this issue, homelessness is all over this country , NY, LA, SF,… it is our politicians fault who refuse to deal with this, by building shelter for 2500 homeless in YL it would be like a drop in a bucket, we need to look at the big picture. As far as the low income housing without giving any credit to our crook politicians yorba linda relative to its size has done a good job to achieve that , they’ve built housing in savi ranch, yorba linda blvd by fairway Ford,… and few others which are in plan.
That comment regarded Yorba Linda being Ground Zero for NIMBYism. (And no, building a community for 2500 homeless would not be “a drop in the bucket.” Where did you get that idea?) I recall the Council having conniption fits over the threat of being required to build even a small number of low-income units — was it something like 50? — but if they’re really making great strides on housing the homeless and low income residents, you’re welcome to elaborate on your claim, with more specifics. I’d be happy to be pleasantly surprised and impressed.
Yes, majority of Americans don’t want graves and funerals to be seen from their backyards. You can call it whatever you want but it will not change the fact that they have every right to object. And it is their governemtns’ basic duty to respect their will.
Orange Park Acres
Go down Katella to E Santiago Canyon road and enjoy the cemetery there. Note the multi million dollar mansions across the street, note the smell of flowers, and note the lack of the traffic crush.
Reality is for the living and a cemetery is for us, you included, in a few years – just a tiny moment in time in the scheme of the universe.
You know what that cemetery is missing? A huge stinking crematorium the size of the Angels Stadium parking lot. (Hey, a fella can dream, right?)
That one is small and the graves are not visible from the streets and homes.
The one at Gypsum Canyon is going to be “the busiest cemetery in the nation” according to an official statement made by a respected veterans’ organization at Irvine City Council meeting last month.
Here is a link to a video:
https://gypsum91.com/video.mp4
Yorba Linda is across the freeway and the Santa Ana River. Seriously?
You conveniently “forgot” that the planned cemetery would be conspicuously situated on the hill and forever dominate the neighborhood.
The view homes there were highly desirable because of the canyon and mountain views although the view was over the Santa Ana river and 91 Fwy, but you claim that replacing part of that view with large cemetery in plain view from those homes should not bother anyone because it’s over the Santa Ana river and 91 Fwy.
That’s nonsense.
I for one am not sympathetic to homeowners who feel a beautiful cemetery with flags and trees a few miles away would spoil their view.
People who live near Arlington don’t seem to complain about it much.
I live about a mile from a cemetery and memorial home, and I never hear people complaining about it. And Brea certainly has its NIMBY element.
Oh, boohoo. There are several reasons to object to this site and yours aren’t any of them.
Wow. You, Mark and Donna were quite busy. You even had time to stop by the post office too last week!
One thing is clear here.
Those who support this misguided and controversial Gypsum Canyon cemeteries project on this forum are detached from reality, sarcastic, and generally unwilling to engage in rational discussion.
Those who are opposed to it are rational and rise valid objections. They have their rights that the supporters of that project are willing to disrespect.
Let’s hope that rationality and respect for the rights of local residents prevail. Such an outcome will be consistent with what America is about.
Cory Allen of Melahat’s progressive solutions consulting wiped most of his social media of any mention that he is Team Farrah. Muhahahhahahahaha!!! Chickenshit!
*Yeah, what a great site! They can start building the Homeless Tent Shelters next door to the Crematorium and it will only be just a short punt to get rid of the Homeless too!
The Orange County Sheriff’s can build another Honor Farm next door maybe? What a hoot!
When you have to take a Half-Track or Bus to get there…you know that your tickets to San Simian are a little out of date.
Can’t believe we agree with DZ and others on this one! Thank you City of Irvine for being the example to all other cities in Orange County on how to be Ridiculous! We
still want the Agran plan!
And how would you effectuate the “Agran Plan”? FivePoint is willing to let the cemetery-zoned sit there forever. And a current majority of the Council — pretty much everyone but Agran — is happy to let them do it.
*Dr. Dr.,
OK…….you want it ….you get it. The first thing is for our Board of Supervisors and our Congressperson for that district and the Governor to get the money to clean up the Superfund Site. Once that $10 Billion dollars has been expended, then we can review the Cemetery Plan. Can’t believe that the Strawberry Fields plan NOW looks so attractive? The story is simple, the reality not so much!
As I recall, Agran’s plan was to have the military (Navy?) do that cleanup.
You should have believed that the Strawberry Fields site looked attractive back when it was offered. But ok.
Marines. And they are supposed to pay for much of the cleanup. How could you not know this?
The name of the base would suggest that it would be the Marines, but my recollection is that it is nevertheless not the Marines. Something about their not handling their own affairs in this area.
My recollection, again, is that the Armed Forces have disavowed the responsibility for paying for it because Irvine, I believe under Agran, bought it from them “as is.” Go ahead and ask them — as opposed to asking Irvine’s City Government.
Now I may be wrong in those recollections, but I’m sure not going to accept a correction from someone who may have misspelled the name of (Green Beret, neither navy nor Marine) Barry Sadler.
*This is what they called Behind the Orange Curtain Politics. They offer you a unworkable option and if you don’t like it, they give you a far worse idea…..