Tuesday night’s Tustin City Council meeting left us a little teary eyed as councilmembers Chuck Puckett and Alan Bernstein were bid goodbye in typical Tustin style. Accolades flowed for Chuck and Alan….at least until the glitch in software overcame the technical expertise of staff and the video came to a crashing halt. For those of you that did not get to see the video, you can find it here in it’s entirety. Chuck spent more than 20 years in service to our community. I don’t think he will sit still for very long (Alan either, for that matter).

The final act of a short agenda was the swearing in of three “new” councilmembers: Newbie Ryan Gallagher, veteran Beckie Gomez and, returning lame duck Letitia Clark. Immediately after the obligatory swearing in ceremonies, Clark was named Mayor for the 2021 year. It could have been another first for Tustin, had Gomez accepted the pro tem position but she graciously side-stepped the honor and it was given to Austin Lumbard. Lumbard was elected to the city council in 2018 and deserves the position, ceremonial as it is. Still, it might have been nice to shatter the image of the “good ol’ boys” club with an all-female lead cast.

The makeup of the new council is diverse. Healthcare professional, engineer, public affairs and yes, even a lawyer. That, hopefully, will work in their favor as they have a lot to tackle this coming year. Covid-19, if you haven’t heard, is not going away anytime soon. Just today, Governor Newsom made good on his promise to effectively shutdown California again. Saying that cases have spiked and hospitals throughout the state will be overwhelmed before Christmas, Newsom split the state up into five regions and stated that any region with less than 15% available ICU beds will be shutdown.

Orange County is well below that number with only about 66% of its ICU and 69% of hospital beds in use (as of November 30th). Unfortunately, the Southern California Region that Orange County is lumped in with includes Los Angeles, San Diego and extending up the easter side of the state to Mono County. It’s a sure bet that at least some of those counties are overwhelmed as this is written. Enjoy this weekend (even with a shutdown notice, we have two days). It will likely be your last for awhile.

Back to Tustin….

I noticed most of our city councilmembers place a high priority on public safety. It was the most often cited plank in candidates’ platforms, probably because it resonates well with most people. Tustin, however, is considered a “safe” city ranking 76 on the Safewise blog. Of course, our neighbor to the south is either #1 or #12, depending on which list your use. And, gosh, a total of 11 Orange County cities ranked in the top 50. Add to that, crime is down all over the country (at least until the September riots). And, have you seen our police department? Accredited, well-rounded training, top notch professionals, both civilian and sworn staff. Chief Stu Greenberg inherited one of the best police departments in the state.

All of this is to ask, do we really need a focus on public safety?

What we really need, and this city council has the combined expertise to make happen, is development of the Legacy property. Yes, we’ve been plugging along, improving piece by piece. But, we’ve had that land in our possession for 20 years. And less than half the old base has been developed. Of course, we are lucky that former city manager, Jeff Parker, was astute enough to see that our so-called “master developer” was jerking the city around and took the reins from them oh so many years ago. Since then, the city has seen development occur ever so slowly.

The District was a brilliant idea and might have been a hit save for the fact it opened in 2007, right around the time of the Great Recession. All of a sudden, the housing bubble burst and the last thing people were looking at were overpriced housing on suspect contaminated land in the middle of Orange County. So, there the base sat….and sat……and sat…..

Well, things did finally pick up but it seems the pace has been a bit slack. This city council needs to take the lead and get development rolling again. Housing is at a premium in the state and, especially, in Orange County. The city should be focusing on both housing and business development of the base property and leave Chief Greenberg to do what he does best.