Voice of OC (https://voiceofoc.org/tag/nick-berardino/)
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva’s bill allowing a cemetery to be built on one of two sites in Irvine, which could ultimately be decided by Irvine voters if a citywide ballot initiative is successful.
Nick Berardino, a former general manager with the Orange County Employees Association and OC fair board member, reflects on a decade of muckraking by the journalists at Voice of OC.
The county is transferring property on the eastern edge of Anaheim for potential development as a veterans and civilian cemetery. Supervisors clashed over whether it would let Irvine “off the hook” for a proposed veterans cemetery at the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro.
The location of Orange County’s first veterans cemetery remains unclear after the Irvine City Council directed staff to identify a site in or around the Great Park and put the project through the planning process. Councilman Jeff Lalloway brought a motion Tuesday night to reinstate original cemetery site near the heart of the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, adjacent to the Great Park. But, before it could go to a vote, Mayor Don Wagner introduced a substitute motion that directs different commissions and city staff to start studying the original site and explore other city-owned land. “Give me a site,” Wagner told Voice of OC after the meeting. “You tell me where it can be … is it a golf course (that’s slated to be built in the Great Park)?
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.
The location of Orange County’s first veterans cemetery could change again as the county Board of Supervisors will have a closed session discussion June 26 about the possibility of creating the cemetery on county-owned land near Anaheim Hills.
Nick Berardino, a longtime union activist in Orange County, OC Fair Board member and U.S. Marine Vietnam combat veteran, writes that Irvine voters should endorse Measure B to create a veterans cemetery at a Strawberry fields site near the 405 and 5 freeway interchanges.
Voters June 5 could give Orange County its first veterans cemetery but in the political infighting leading up to the election, some veterans fear people have lost sight of who the cemetery is about—veterans.
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.
The Equestrian Center at the Orange County Fairgrounds is likely to stay after members of the Fairground Board of Directors opposed a draft plan to tear down the horse stables.