Voice of OC (https://voiceofoc.org/tag/bill-cook/)
The Irvine City Council picked a planned golf course within the Great Park as the future home of the state-run veterans cemetery, but a state bill looking to name another site conflicts with Irvine’s decision.
Bill Cook, Chairman of the Orange County Veterans Memorial Park Foundation writes that it’s time to move the Southern California Veterans Cemetery forward.
Orange County’s first veterans cemetery could be built next to the 91 freeway and 241 toll road in Anaheim Hills, after county supervisors, in a public meeting Tuesday, directed staff to begin studying the roughly 290 acres of county land.
Irvine voters will decide June 5 whether Orange County’s first veterans cemetery will be near the heart of the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro or on the edge of the onetime base near the interchange of the 5 and 405 freeways.
Orange County’s long-anticipated veterans cemetery took a big step forward in 2017 with a developer’s land swap that moved it from the heart of the former El Toro Marine Air Corps Station to strawberry fields near the junction of the 5 and 405 freeways. But enough voters signed a petition to move it back to the main base that the city council will have to decide Jan. 9 whether to reverse itself or put the issue on the ballot.
The location of Orange County’s first veterans cemetery may be decided in Superior Court as the result of a lawsuit filed by former Irvine Mayor Larry Agran.
Although Irvine council members approved a land swap to move the veterans cemetery from near the Great Park to the 5 and 405 interchange, a petition started Oct. 13 could change that.
The Irvine City Council is rumored to have scheduled a closed session discussion of the veterans cemetery during its Sept. 26 meeting. The discussion reportedly will include using 100 acres of the veterans cemetery land for hotels, homes or other commercial purposes until the land is needed to bury veterans.