Call Johnson’s Bluff on Tustin Base Land
Re “Meddling With the Base,” Orange County Commentary, July 22: State Sen. Ross Johnson (R-Irvine) is threatening that unless Gov. Gray Davis vetoes AB 212, “the city of Tustin will be left with no choice but to go to court. Once that happens everyone loses. The base will sit idle.”
The bill by Assemblyman Lou Correa (D-Anaheim) will set aside 100 clean acres out of 1,600 acres of the vacated Tustin Marine Corps Air Facility for Santa Ana Unified School District’s overcrowded schools.
Johnson wrote that the $78-million package of 37 acres and cash offered by Tustin officials is a lot of money. If that’s such a big deal for Santa Ana Unified to lose, how big a deal is it for Tustin to lose the value of a massive 1,563 acres of prime real estate that it can keep and develop for the benefit of its residents?
Santa Ana Unified should not budge. Johnson’s threat is a lot of political hot air. The salivating, greedy developers already lined up by Tustin officials won’t allow this infantile blackmail to happen. There’s just far too much money to divvy up.
However, if it happens and the base remains idle, the losses for Santa Ana Unified and Tustin will be a tremendous gain for the Sierra Club, environmentalists and Orange County residents. They would welcome with open arms the 1,600 acres of pristine land for agricultural uses that double as open space in a county being paved over.
Sam Castelo
Irvine
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