Irvine Wants State Taxpayers to Fund Big Park

Maybe it was the words “no new taxes” that that made many voters think Irvine officials were promising to convert the closed El Toro Marine base into one of the largest urban parks in the nation without costing taxpayers a dime.

Irvine officials would like to clarify: When they said “no new taxes” in the ballot measure that approved the park, they merely meant no local taxes. They actually want taxpayers statewide to pick up the tab.

Buried deep in the text of Proposition 51--the Traffic Congestion Relief and Safe School Buses Act--among alternative transportation projects, school bus funding and freeway expansion work, is $110 million in state funding for the so-called Great Park.

Irvine officials say they need that state money to fulfill their vision of transforming more than 80% of the base’s 4,700 acres of airfields and dilapidated buildings into lush meadows, playing fields and museums. That would make it nearly the size of Griffith Park and four times the size of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

“We never said that to create the Great Park will cost no money,” said Irvine Mayor Larry Agran. “It’s only some of the more sinister people in Newport Beach who are asserting we said that.”

It’s money that state officials on their own would have no intention of directing Irvine’s way, given California’s budget crisis. So Irvine is making an end run around Sacramento with the November initiative.

Should the measure pass, the park will become a priority project in the state budget.

That has some crying foul. The California Budget Project, the California League of Women Voters and other groups warn that making “luxury” projects such as the Great Park a priority during a budget crunch will force cuts in essential state programs and services.

Others suggest that Irvine is using a ballot measure full of unrelated infrastructure spending to manipulate voters into approving the wealthy suburb’s pet project.

“It’s presented as, ‘Isn’t all this stuff really cool?’ ” said V. John White, an environmental lobbyist in Sacramento. “But this initiative pushes projects to the front of the line that don’t belong there.... You are taking funding away form other programs that matter, particularly those that help low-income people.”

Should the initiative pass, Irvine’s good fortune wouldn’t end with Great Park funds. Also tucked into the measure is $50 million for a “remote” airport terminal for the city. No planes would fly out of there; it would be a place to check in luggage and catch a shuttle van to a real airport.

Even as the initiative has come under fire from state lawmakers who say several of the projects in it will help developers in exchange for millions of dollars worth of campaign donations, endorsements from many of the state’s major environmental and alternative-transportation groups give it a strong chance of passing.

So how did Irvine get so much for itself written into Proposition 51?

It didn’t hurt that Agran sits on the board of the Planning and Conservation League, the nonprofit environmental coalition sponsoring the measure.

Officials with the league say that when they were shopping the measure around to cities and agencies, looking for projects that could be included, Irvine was one of the few that showed interest.

“A lot of them didn’t take us seriously,” said Jerry Meral, executive director of the league. “They didn’t believe it would get on the ballot.... We did not get that kind of reception in south Orange County.”

Meral said that the initiative does not call for new taxes. It merely guarantees that 30% of state motor vehicle sales taxes would be set aside for its nearly $1 billion worth of projects.

As for those projects displacing other priorities in the state budget, Meral counters that “this is a democracy, and all we are doing is giving the public an opportunity to decide” which projects should come first.