New Kid on the Dais
UCI Professor and Irvine City Councilmember Kathleen Treseder may be new to civic government but she's not shy about tackling our city's challenges. Photo credit Kathleen Treseder
As the newest Irvine City Councilmember, UCI Professor Kathleen Treseder is diving into her role headfirst. A quick glance at the agenda for the February 14th joint Irvine City Council and Great Park meeting shows Councilmember Treseder spearheading four separate agenda items. While some might tiptoe around new colleagues, Treseder has no patience for anything less than full steam ahead.
“My priority now is to jump start our climate action plan for the city,” said Treseder last week via Zoom. “It has to happen soon because we don’t have too much time to act on climate. Every city council meeting I want to have one item on the agenda that moves climate action forward.”
For the next Irvine City Council meeting, that item is a proposal to jumpstart a Climate Action and Adaption Plan (CAAP) to meet state greenhouse gas emission targets (under State Senate Bill 32) as well as Irvine’s own 2030 zero carbon goal. After unanimously voting to approve the formation of a CAAP in 2021, Irvine City Council paid planning consultancy Ascent Environmental $447,145 to develop a CAAP framework for Irvine.
Ascent Environmental provided Irvine with a set of milestones to be completed by the end of 2022, but no action was taken. Treseder is committed to finally seeing Irvine’s CAAP implemented by December of 2023.
“There are so many things that we need to do to act on climate and there are a lot of different possible actions that the city could take to do that,” said Treseder. “We need to have a plan so that we’re actually strategizing and prioritizing actions that will get us closer to our goal, which is to reduce greenhouse emissions.”
One route to reducing greenhouse emissions, the Orange County Power Authority (OCPA), has not gone according to plan. While Treseder still harbors hope that the OCPA can be rehabilitated, she says its leadership needs to be overhauled. OCPA CEO Brian Probolsky has dominated headlines for his lack of experience, education, and competence running the agency, but Treseder says he has friends in high places who protect his position.
“Right now the general counsel for OCPA is very close to Mr. Probolsky and I am not sure if they will frankly represent OCPA in these discussions or be more interested in protecting Probolsky,” said Treseder. “So the first thing that we’ve got to do is bring in counsel who we can trust and who will advise us on these matters. After we find that person, then I would like to agendize a discussion of replacing Mr. Probolsky and hopefully that special counsel will be able to provide us the support that we need.”
Treseder’s commitments to Irvine’s wellbeing stretch beyond the environmental. When news of Melahat Rafiei’s attempted wire fraud charges and her admission of a bribery scheme with two Irvine City Coucilmembers in 2018 surfaced, Treseder immediately wanted to launch an investigation into corruption. Unfortunately, three of her five fellow city councilmembers voted against taking a deeper look.
“It’s a big ask to have the council investigate themselves,” conceded Treseder, “but I was still hoping there would be a majority that would want to do it. It’s so important. That is one of my priorities coming in is to really try to bring any of these sorts of questionable activities to light so that we can deal with them and make sure they don’t happen going forward.”
While she has not seen blatant bribery, Treseder has witnessed a fuzzier and less straightforward influence strategy amongst community stakeholders. She first came across it during the campaign for her city council seat.
“There is a group of people that are working behind the scenes and swaying elected officials in ways that I think are not legal,” said Treseder. “I wasn’t aware of any of that before I started campaigning. And then when I started talking to people I realized what’s going on. It’s just a terrible thing for governance for Orange County.”
While Treseder declined to name the special interest groups trying to sway opinion, she said they represent issues that are close to Irvine.
“I have been approached by people with deals that I just felt uncomfortable with, so I just said no,” recalled Treseder. “It’s definitely out there.”
Treseder sees elected officials in Orange County as vulnerable to inappropriate influence campaigns due to the nature of their positions. With part-time government roles and small stipends, they may find the offer of a gift or other advantage especially tempting.
One potential solution to the problem of undue influence, according to Treseder, is to change how councilmembers are elected. Irvine currently votes as a city for all members of the City Council. At its last meeting, four out of five Irvine City Councilmembers voted to increase the size of the council and change elections to by-district voting. If by-district voting is approved by the voters in the next election, Irvinites would only vote for one member of the City Council representing their area of Irvine. Tredeser hopes by-district elections will render special interest groups powerless.
“There’s a better chance for voters to actually interact with the candidates,” said Treseder. “Maybe they’ll know them. There’s more accountability that way. And I think it would be harder [to influence representatives]. Say if you have special interest who wants to support a particular candidate that will help them out, it might be hard to find those particular people in each of the districts. You might be able to find that at-large in the city, but each of the districts might make that harder. I’m really hoping that it will make a difference there, but we’ll see.”
Treseder feels by-district elections can also help with some of Irvine’s issues that are confined to small regions of the city. The All American Asphalt plant, for example, has been a thorn in the side of the plant’s nearby neighborhoods for years. Although Treseder cannot delve into specific details due to pending legislation, she feels better representation would help impacted residents.
“It’s hard for us on the City Council who don’t live near it to understand,” Treseder explained. “Some members of the previous Council would go out to the area when they heard there was an odor event, but sometimes the odor event would have passed and they may not have encountered it, so it’s better to have representatives from that area.”
Another area of Irvine facing unique challenges is the Great Park. Discussions on whether to approve the Great Park’s 14,000 seat Live Nation amphitheater or to opt for a smaller 4,000-8,000 seat amphitheater will loom over the February 14th City Council meeting.
Live Nation made significant changes to an already agreed upon contract with Irvine that disadvantaged the city on multiple fronts to make the amphitheater more lucrative for the corporation. Among the contract alterations was eliminating the city’s ability to control the venue’s noise levels with no mention of the impact for nearby residents.
In January, Irvine asked consulting firm Victus Advisors to study the feasibility of a smaller venue. Treseder sees many good reasons to think small when it comes to this particular project.
“To grab the top talent, they’ll have to have very loud sound,” said Treseder. “We’re not sure that they can keep those noises below the required threshold. Also, Live Nation is saying they’re going to contribute $20 million dollars to the project, but the project will cost $150 million dollars. When I look at how much Live Nation is contributing versus the city, it just seems like the city is really subsidizing this whole endeavor and I’m not sure that we will get what we want out of it.”
A smaller venue, on the other hand, might be just what the city needs.
“We could use it year round, we wouldn’t have as much traffic, we wouldn’t have to invest as much in parking spots, the city would save a lot of money in the construction, and the sound would be lower,” said Treseder. “I don’t think we would have the sound issue that we might with a larger theater. Right now I’m leaning towards the smaller community-based amphitheater. It’s clear how that benefits our city.”
As Treseder continues to fight for what benefits our city, there’s no telling which projects she will champion next. But it’s clear that she won’t be sitting on the sidelines.
“A lot of people worked super hard for me to be in this position and I want to live up to that.”
During the February 14th meeting, many agenda items were punted to the next meeting on February 28th, including a vote on the Live Nation Amphitheater. You can watch the City Council meetings in person or online.