Orange’s proposed smoking ban has sparked debate over public health and enforcement. While some worry the ordinance could be used to target people experiencing homelessness, its purpose should remain protecting community health through cleaner, safer, and smoke-free public spaces.
Tag: City of Orange
Posted inCommunity Opinion
Grindle and Galasso: The Rink on the Brink of Destruction
The Holiday Skate Center in Orange has been operating over 50 years under a lease with the landowners who now want to achieve the “highest and best use” by seeking a rezoning from Commercial to Residential. To grant this request, the Orange City Council would be violating the City’s Vision for Orange 2030 goals and policies, including preserving successful commercial businesses and protecting recreational opportunities.
Posted inCommunity Opinion
Mundekis: Good Thing Orange City Council Majority Aren’t Public Safety Responders
Orange City Council majority is unable to do what they need to do in order to keep their city financially solvent. While praising public safety responders, they refuse to actually do anything financially necessary to keep those same public safety responders.
Posted inCommunity Opinion
Mundekis: Orange Becoming a Charter City Distracts from Fixing Financial Problems
Orange City Council must fix the City’s finances but is creating distractions from financial survival with discussions to become a charter city to take on the State in court. Legal battles will drain money from an already cash strapped city.
Posted inCommunity Opinion
Resnick: Is Santiago Canyon College in the Same Financial Peril as the City of Orange?
A dire warning from Santiago Canyon College President Jeannie Kim echoes the recent fiscal alarm sounded by the consultant hired by the city of Orange. Like the city it serves, the east Orange community college now finds itself grappling with a staggering $3 million structural budget deficit.
Posted inCountywide
OC’s Libraries Celebrate Día de Los Muertos
Some public libraries across Orange County set up community altars in celebration of Día de Los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, a Latino tradition memorializing the deceased.
Posted inEconomy
City of Orange Eyes a Sales Tax Increase While Facing Massive Budget Deficit
While council members all said they needed to cut spending, no cuts were approved during their discussion on Tuesday night. Instead, many focused on a sales tax increase proposal and fees on local institutions.
Posted inCommunity Opinion
Underwood: Mary’s Kitchen Postscript
Mary’s Kitchen, the last walk-up sanctuary for the homeless of Orange County, had by 2021 become “an attractive nuisance” to the City of Orange, and a thorn in the side of the county’s shelter first policies they call Continuum of Care. But to its homeless patrons it was sanctuary and a place to start again. Why did it have to go? And what will take its place?
Posted inCommunity Opinion
Underwood: The Last Christmas at Mary’s Kitchen?
The homeless of Orange brave the weather, the traffic, and the police to enter Mary’s Kitchen gates daily. But on Christmas day 2021 above all others the rewards are worth the hazards. Awaiting them was a feast of food, of friendship, and for a brief time, kindness and peace amidst a sea of troubles outside Mary’s gates.
Posted inHousing & Homelessness
Is This Mary’s Kitchen’s Last Thanksgiving?
Mary’s Kitchen became a focal point in the years-long debate over how to help the homeless and revived debate around OC’s progress in solving homelessness across the region.
