ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : So Many Issues Rolled Into One

Irvine’s upcoming referendum over a large housing development already approved by the City Council is a fresh signal of public worries about overdevelopment in Southern California. It showed up in the Los Angeles municipal election this week, and it has been an issue in Laguna Beach’s purchase of open space and in the volumes of comment on toll roads that are planned for Orange County.

Though Irvine has a full seven months before it goes to the polls, the campaign rhetoric is already in mid-season form, with the two opposing pitchers throwing smoke on opening day. It started when the City Council decided this week to clear the way for a Nov. 5 ballot measure on the fate of the development. The Irvine Co. badly wants to build the 3,800-unit Westpark II project and has come out portraying the opposition as extremists, not to mention liberals. The opposing Irvine Tomorrow group is talking about “a crossroads,” as if the city’s very fate hangs in the balance.

Both sides are correct that this vote will be important, but it is so because of the forced opportunity it affords Irvine, which has been one of the fastest-growing cities in the state, to take stock of important questions related to suburban growth and development--and in a place that has prided itself on being a model for planned communities across the nation. Indeed, it’s hard to identify a single issue of major import to the orderly growth of new cities that isn’t somewhere on the table in this particular debate.

For example, the right to develop land is at issue, as is the goal of providing housing to cut freeway congestion and commuting time to local jobs. So is whether a city ought to stick to its General Plan years down the road, once the real flow of traffic begins to flesh out--and some suggest, crowd out--a blueprint.

Affordable housing, an issue that almost everybody thinks is a good idea but that can divide interested parties on means and methods, is crucial to the debate. And some interesting environmental questions are front and center here: concern about and response to electromagnetic radiation from power lines, and a disagreement about noise standards because of helicopters from the adjacent Tustin Marine Corps Helicopter Air Station.

It wasn’t too long ago that Irvine voters “threw the rascals out” when they were unhappy about what was going on at City Hall. Now, the city appears headed for a full-scale debate that centers in part on the trusteeship of the current city fathers and on how well they are managing growth. Through the predictable season of politicking just ahead, Irvine will best be served by reasoned debate.