Inside City Council: Mayor Farrah Khan
Mayor Farrah Khan was elected in November of 2020. Photo credit Tony Kawashima
In this series, we will get to know some members of Irvine’s City Council. And we are starting at the top! When we interviewed Mayor Farrah Khan earlier this year, she was still Mayor-Elect. In the intervening months she has set about an aggressive agenda to address Irvine’s many challenges. The Vine caught up with our busy Mayor to find out more about how she spends her days and what plans she has for our city.
“There is no typical day,” Mayor Khan says about her jam-packed schedule running Irvine. “It changes day by day, but I'll try to give you an idea.”
Mayor Khan picks a random Monday from her calendar and proceeds to detail a grueling twelve hour day bouncing from meetings to press conferences to a Great Park tour to answering residents’ questions on social media live streams to recording a video for a Chapman University program. Mayor Khan gets zero downtime and she likes it that way.
“For me it's all about leading,” explains Khan. “There's so much going on right now, not only with the pandemic and the economic crisis. We're talking about broadband in the city, we're talking about new developments, we've got housing requirements that we are provided by the state that we have to meet. And right now, for our new cycle, we've been given 23,000 units. So we have to start talking to developers and figuring out where they're going to go and where more affordable housing is going to go and building out the Great Park and building out the areas around the Great Park and talking about transportation. All of these are important for our city and so of course they all take a lot of meetings and a lot of time, but I I really do enjoy it.”
Originally from the San Francisco Bay area, Khan settled in Irvine in 2004 for business opportunities. As her first foray into city government, Khan served on the Community Services Commission in 2014 before getting elected to City Council in 2018. Since serving as Mayor for the past five months, she has hit the ground running.
“One of my proudest moments was when the council voted to initiate a climate action plan for our city,” says Khan. “This is a long-term plan that's going to look at so many different things and ways to improve them, and set goals for ourselves.”
Another key accomplishment for Khan is initiating the Orange County Power Authority. This Community Choice Energy program, or CCE, will allow residents and businesses to choose how much of their energy they want from renewable sources.
“I'm just so, so excited about that,” says Khan. “It’s going to be launched in 2022. It will help reduce the rates because we are a city run agency. We're not beholden to our shareholders so there's no profit that we have to make. The only revenue that comes in gets returned back to the community in programming and services.”
Not everything is rosy in our fair city, of course. Khan is concerned with the economic toll the pandemic has taken. Although the state and federal stimulus to local governments has helped, Khan says it’s not enough.
“Making sure that residents and businesses are back and stable, it's a huge undertaking,” says Khan. “I know that getting funds from the state and federal levels help us get there. But from what I'm hearing from the community, there's still a need. The amount of money coming in isn’t enough to cover the needs of the entire community. We're going to be reaching out again to the state and federal governments and making sure we fill those gaps because we can't recover until everyone's back to where they were. Back to where they feel that they're not over burdened with debt that they've carried for the past year.”
Of course everyone needs a break. When Mayor Khan takes a breather from the work managing our city, she can often be found enjoying drinks at Irvine’s Tomo Coffee.
“They have some amazing stuff there,” Khan says. “They have red bean tea and they have rice tea. I'm always in there trying different things out. I love it.”
Our Mayor also unwinds by hiking with her sons and three-year-old German Shepherd, Kublai.
“Recently my kids and I have been trying to hit the trails in Irvine,” says Khan. “Kublai is loving the trails. We did the Quail Hill Loop this past weekend. We did the Jeffrey Open Space Trail, the Bee and Bosque. We’re finding out that he likes to explore along with us. He's having a lot of fun.”
As a dog owner, Mayor Khan is acutely aware of the continuing issue of unleashed dogs in our area. And she’s doing something about it.
“We've heard so many complaints from people about dogs being off leash in parks,” says Khan. “I reached out to IPD (Irvine Police Department), and they did a great job rolling out some videos and educational points to let people know that there's a law in this city: you’ve got to keep your dog on a leash. There's a lot of responsibility when you're a dog owner.”
If there's one thing Mayor Khan is familiar with, it’s responsibility. She’s aware that our city is in her hands, and she has plans to keep Irvine thriving before her current mayoral term is up.
“One of my biggest goals is to finally have a plan for the Great Park, especially the Cultural Terrace portion of it,” says Khan. “At the same time, I have a plan for our housing needs and our transportation and broadband. I think these are going to be critical as we move forward.”
Find out what Mayor Khan is up to! You can follow her on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
To see more in our Inside City Council series, check out these stories:
