Despite nagging economic woes, everything's fine in Irvine, Mayor Sukhee Kang assured local businessmen during his annual “Business State of the City” address
to a Chamber of Commerce crowd.
According to Sean Emery's Register report, Kang pointed to such pain-easers as city programs that will help Irvine businesses ride out hard times, more than 1,000 new jobs coming to town and new opportunities created by the Great Park, where the first
round of construction is expected to begin within the next few months.
“A single kernel of dirt grows into a green,
bold, powerful mountain. All it needs is opportunity,” Kang reportedly said. “Irvine is the land of
opportunity-a thoroughly integrated city in which people prosper and
thrive together.”
Swell.
But reality shows a politician's words do not always match events on the ground. Elsewhere the Regerino reports median home prices are down 40 percent in two Irvine ZIP codes, and even a UC Irvine student and University High School's 2005 National Merit Scholarship semifinalist are reduced to stealing from cars (allegedly).
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.