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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
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Backyard Politics

Backyard Politics

NEXT WEEK, ORANGE COUNTY VOTERS ARE SET TO GIVE THE CITY OF IRVINE.

Commentary by Michael Lyster

a great gift by passing the Great Park initiative. What will people in the rest of the county get in return? Not much.

It’s doubtful the money can be raised to build such a grandiose park in our lifetime. A more plausible scenario: the base will be fenced up and left empty for years.

But even if the great park called for in Measure W actually happens, it will benefit a minority of the county that already enjoys vast amounts of parks and open space. Call it the triumph of backyard politics, at the expense of the county as a whole.

Four out of five OCers, including myself, live in North County. And despite South County’s rapid percentage growth, Census figures show that North County cities added twice as many people, nearly 300,000, as all of South County did in the past decade.

I, for one, don’t see myself driving with my family to Irvine on the weekend to visit a great park,after all, I make that trek every weekday, like thousands of other North County commuters. I and others are more likely to visit parks closer to home.

We’d travel to El Toro a lot more, though, if it were utilized for its current designated use as an airport. Many other North County residents might become daily commuters, too, going to those airport jobs that some airport critics cavalierly dismiss as “low-wage.”

But for people who moved next door to a big former Marine base, Measure W gets them a great park, or a 4,700-acre fenced-off lot at the least.

,Michael Lyster

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