IRVINE : Limestone Canyon Vote Is Challenged

A “routine” City Council resolution that will allow the county to receive a large tract of Limestone Canyon was approved last month without sufficient public and council discussion, a council member charged Tuesday.

The June 11 vote will allow the county to receive a huge section of Limestone Canyon from the Irvine Co. if the council at its meeting next Tuesday approves the company’s plan to build a 2,885-home project.

Councilwoman Paula Werner said at a news conference Tuesday that the council passed the resolution last Thursday allowing the county to receive 961 acres of land without discussing its effect on an open-space agreement signed with the Irvine Co. in 1988. Werner also complained that the resolution should not have been placed on a section of the agenda reserved for routine matters.

Deciding that the county should receive 961 acres of open space “does not qualify in my book as a routine and administrative matter,” Werner said.

The 961-acre tract is one of eight chunks of land that eventually would make up a proposed 5,360-acre county regional park. The Irvine Co. has agreed to give away each of the eight chunks to the county as various city government agencies approve its development projects.

Under the city’s open-space agreement, the Irvine Co. would give the 961 acres in Limestone Canyon to “a public agency acceptable to the city (of Irvine) and the County of Orange in order that the land shall eventually be integrated into and become a functional part of Limestone Regional Park. . . .”

Under its June 11 resolution, the city has agreed that the public agency will be the county.

The county had asked the Irvine council to approve the resolution because, under a 1990 state law, the proposed Eastern and Foothill toll roads cannot receive state and federal funds until the Irvine Co.’s open-space agreement is recorded with the county. The City Council needed to approve the resolution before the County Board of Supervisors’ meeting Thursday or risk losing funds for the toll roads, City Manager Paul O. Brady Jr. said.

The resolution helps lock in the 1988 open-space agreement signed by the city and Irvine Co., Brady said. The open-space promises made by the Irvine Co. are now recorded with the county and cannot be canceled, he said.

At the press conference Tuesday, Werner asked that the resolution and the process for placing resolutions on the agenda be publicly discussed at next week’s council meeting.

Brady said Tuesday that he added the item to the agenda a day after the bound agenda was sent to council members’ homes. He sent a copy of the resolution and a memo explaining the item to council members the next day, four days before the June 11 meeting, he said.

Mayor Sally Anne Sheridan accused Werner of calling the press conference without knowing her facts and for issuing veiled accusations that Brady schemed to slip the item by the council.

Werner denied that she is accusing anyone of impropriety, but she said that the decision to give the land to the county should not have been made without public discussion.