Anthony Kuo is a Candidate for District 5. This Interview was conducted in mid-September. Questions and Responses have been edited for clarity
Christopher Wong: I’m sitting here with Anthony in front of Mandy’s Express. I’ve been around here at night, and it’s packed. I think you and I both can agree that we like busy Irvine businesses.
Anthony Kuo: Yes, yes. If a business isn’t busy, one of my least favorite conversations that happens very regularly with folks in town is they’ll say, XYZ business closed. And they’re devastated. And then they’ll follow that up with, we used to go there once a year.
Christopher Wong: Yes.
Anthony Kuo: And then you sit there and you make them think about that and then they go, “Oh. Oh, yeah, maybe that’s why it’s closed.”
Christopher Wong: Yeah. Even down half a block away, Gelson’s just closed. You know, there’s a few issues there.
Anthony Kuo: One is people don’t realize that anchor stores, like grocery stores, usually sign 20 to 30-year leases. I don’t know what their lease looks like. I assume you don’t know what their lease looks like.
Christopher Wong: Nope.
Anthony Kuo: I don’t know if there was an escalator. I don’t know if they were paying a lease cost that was calculated 30 years ago. But the big question, and I talked to my aunt and my uncle and others about this, is I actually went to Gelson’s a lot. It was never busy. Period. And so then to say, well, what’s going to go there? I go to Ralphs here a lot. Ralphs is busy sometimes. But I don’t think that this location could handle a second grocery store. I just don’t think there’s a demand for it. But, yes, you’re right. At the end of the day, we want local businesses, whether they’re big chains or mom and pop stores, to be successful.
Economic Development
Christopher Wong: Let’s talk a little bit about economic development in Irvine. Because a good chunk of our budget is made up of sales tax by these businesses. How would you help as a council person?
Anthony Kuo: One of the things I love about Irvine is you see so many partnerships. I served on the council partially during COVID, as you recall. I saw this meme on the internet one time and it said, “Remember those businesses that supported your PTAs and your sports boosters? Hey, it’s our turn to support them.” There’s one thing about liking the restaurant and liking their food, but you do want to have that partnership between businesses and the community. I, to this day, have businesses that reach out to me and say, “We want to host fundraisers for the PTAs or the swim teams, but we don’t know who to contact.” So I connect them.
There is, I think, though, a little bit of a misnomer. There was a study in the 1990s that said there’s a general assumption that economic development is driven by big box stores and certain retailers. The reality is that it’s not. Economic development is driven by good-paying jobs. Because if you don’t have good-paying jobs, and you’ve got all these new fancy stores and restaurants with no one to spend their money in, then they won’t be successful.
So we need to continue to partner with the Irvine Chamber, Orange County Business Council, and really attract these high-paying jobs. I know that different city leaders have done that before. Some have traveled in order to do that. Some have just picked up the phone. It’s a matter of attracting them and making sure, “Hey, if there’s a business that is kind of on the fence, what do we do with it?”
In 2017 or 2018, Broadcom was at the commercial building on the UCI campus. There was debate on whether they would move to FivePoint property at the Great Park. As the chairman of the planning commission, I got a 17-page letter from the mayor of Tustin saying that we were rushing things and we need to do our due diligence. The reality was that the city of Tustin was in negotiation with Broadcom to attract those jobs to Tustin. So we need to not be naive and not think that different agencies and different jurisdictions are not competing for these same jobs.
We’re lucky to have UC Irvine that’s pumping out graduates that know how to get stuff done. We’re lucky to have great funding, great neighborhoods that executives who have a say in choosing where their corporate offices are, are choosing to make Irvine not only their home, but their business home. In order for a city to promote economic development, we need to figure out what is it the businesses want, and what is it the community can bear.
One of the great things about Irvine’s economy is that it’s diverse. If one sector takes an economic downturn, let’s call it the widget-making sector, we still have automotive businesses. We still have food headquarters. We still have tech. We still have biotech. That was one of the issues in the 90s with Silicon Valley. Everyone there was making microchips, and when the tech industry took a hit, the whole area took a hit. Working with our landowners and working with businesses that want to be here, it’s all about attracting the right businesses to give them an opportunity to flourish.
Housing
Christopher Wong: I think that kind of flows into that other question that I had here about housing. How do we address housing needs for people who want to work and live here?
Anthony Kuo: The reality is there will never be enough housing. There’s not enough housing in Irvine. There’s not enough housing in California. There’s not enough housing in Orange County. It is a systemic issue. If you go to other states, there’s probably not enough housing there either. The reason is because the builders are just not building at the pace that growth is occurring.
Is it the city’s job to build housing? Philosophically, I think not. But we have to work with development partners to say, “Hey, you have land, do you want to entitle it? Here are the steps that you need to go through. Mitigate your property. If your property, project, community, or shopping center is going to generate additional traffic, we’re going to ask you to pay traffic fees. We’re going to ask you to make the traffic signals near your property more technologically advanced and more efficient. If you are building a neighborhood and you think you’re going to generate students, well, you’ve got to work with the school district to project how many students we need for additional elementary schools, junior highs, or high schools.” The school districts are the experts in that because they know the numbers and predictions.
So for me, it’s all about mitigating what impacts you are going to create. That’s the whole point of an EIR, and that’s the whole point of CEQA, whether you’re mitigating traffic, pollution, light, or noise. So, is it the city’s responsibility to build? No. But it is the city’s responsibility to work with those who want to build. If housing costs are extraordinarily high, real estate developers aren’t dummies. They’re going to say, “Hey, I can sell homes for a lot of money.” When we talk about affordability, there’s a lack of affordability everywhere. This is not an Irvine-centric issue. As soon as we try to tackle the issue, we will get impacted by other communities. It’s sort of like the expression, “a rising tide lifts all boats.” Well, a tide that recedes lowers all boats also.
But it is the city’s responsibility to work with those who want to build.
Christopher Wong: That doesn’t preclude the state mandates for affordable housing, right? We work with ICLT and the developers to make sure that some of the units will be for low-income families or affordable?
Anthony Kuo: To be quite honest, we don’t have to work with anyone because there is a 15% affordable housing mandate in the municipal code. It’s existed since the 70s or 80s. Anyone who’s saying, “Well, we’re going to demand that you provide affordable housing”—that’s already in city law. That’s already in the code.
There were projects, like the redevelopment of the marketplace along Jamboree, where certain council members demanded 30% affordability. I think that may or may not be good because you’re going to see the impacts again. Are there going to be impacts to schools? Are there going to be impacts to traffic? Thankfully, on the schools issue, that is with the Tustin School District, and Tustin School District is a school district that actually needs the students. So the mitigation measures on education were very easy for the developer and the school to work together on.
But we also have to remember—and I think some people could make this a “haves versus the have-nots” issue—we have existing homeowners: some who bought a year ago, some 30 years ago, some more. We owe it to them to protect their property values as well. What you don’t want in a market situation is to flood the market with all this housing to make it affordable and then have folks lose out on their equity or property values. That is also one of the things that attracts folks to move here: strong property values and all the things associated with them—safe communities, good schools, accessible parks.
That is also one of the things that attracts folks to move here: strong property values and all the things associated with them—safe communities, good schools, accessible parks.
Christopher Wong: Safe schools and accessible parks. These are services that Irvine helps create and provide. How do we tackle the current services, expenditures, and needs that we have as a city, and maybe do a little bit more within that constrained nature of the budget? Are we just going to kind of hunker down to core services only? Are there opportunities for what we need to do?
Anthony Kuo: The first thing that the council needs to do is to take leadership and identify all those expenditures and say, “What are the core services that we absolutely have to have?” I’ll bet you you’re not going to get agreement on the council to that. Then say, “What are the nearly essential services, and then what are the discretionary things?”
I think maybe some City Hall employees might not be happy that I said this, but this was actually something that happened in the 90s during the downturn: sometimes you have to go to your employees and say, “Hey, will you put 50 cents into the kitty so we can buy coffee?” Things like that where there are all these expenses—the person needs to look at all of them and go, “What are those categories? What can we agree on that is an absolute must-fund?” It’s kind of like how you would look at your business budget or your home budget. Are you spending money on name-brand cereal when we’ve got an electric bill to pay because it was really hot?
Unnecessary things that are really nice to have. Let’s think of an example. I’ll give you an example, and I’ve gotten hit on this before because this is how politics works—I get it, I’m a big boy. I heard of a secret video where I was against bike lanes, and the way that it was portrayed was, “He hates bike lanes.” Then they all kind of laughed. Who would hate bike lanes? I don’t hate bike lanes. I’m a cyclist. I have a bike in my garage.
If we’re spending all this money restriping our bike lanes—and thankfully we’re not in this position—and we can’t afford to keep lights on in the park or pay and retain a group of police officers, that’s what we need. We need to look at all of our expenditures and say, “Hey, that might be really nice and a really cool thing to have or do. But if I’ve got expenditures A, B, and C, and we’ve got folks in the community or council members throwing out budget items R, S, and T, I’ve got to pay certain bills first.” I have to prioritize those things. Again, which is not to say bike lanes aren’t great, but if we’re spending all this money on that, then are we taking care of the things we need to take care of first?
The Library
Christopher Wong: Another one of those services that I personally love—and I think I bring this up—is the library. I’ve never seen a library as popular as they are now. However, there is that kind of hanging spectre of expenditures. We took in the library, we have all these new employees, and we’re paying the county a non-insignificant amount of money every month for the library. What should Irvine look to do for these libraries?
Anthony Kuo: The first thing to know is, yes, there are all these new expenditures associated with the library. But there’s revenue associated with the library, too. We were paying—don’t quote me on the exact number, I have it somewhere—like 27% of the Orange County Public Library’s revenue. That’s what we accounted for. And I think we were getting like 11% of the expenditures in terms of services. When we’re getting some of that revenue back to spend on libraries, that’s where that money is supposed to be spent. So I think some folks have articulated to me, “Oh my gosh, we have this library, it’s expensive.” Yes, but there is money to pay for it.
Editors Note: Irvine's $17 million annual contribution made up 28% of the total property tax funding received by OCPL [https://voiceofoc.org/2023/03/irvine-looks-to-leave-county-library-network-kicking-off-fight-for-funds/]
Now, what do we do with the planning? You raise a really important question. What’s going to happen with University Library? We don’t own the land. We don’t own the building. Is the county going to try to put us over a barrel? Or are they just going to say, “No, we’re going to hold on to it”? They could very well hold on to it, demolish it, and say, “We’re going to make it a maintenance yard for you.” They have the right to do that. So we do need to negotiate. However, we should negotiate with them with other tools in our arsenal to say, “Great. If you don’t want to negotiate with us on University Park, we will build a library here.”
There has been real discussion about leasing space from the Irvine Company to put in the library where the old Barnes & Noble was.
It’s more than just about the books. It’s that community space. I was at the University Park Library a few weeks ago for a really important conversation about pool safety. It was the middle of the summer, it was hot, and people were enjoying that facility. Sometimes parents get distracted, and it’s important to watch the water. There was a great program there hosted by the mayor’s office. They brought in folks from the Orange County Fire Authority and the Orange County Pediatric Association. It’s not just the books; it’s story time, having a community facility, and all of the above.
When we talk about library services, they are intrinsically part of community services. Some people are going to the library to check out a book online, pick it up, jump in their car, and leave. You’re going to have folks that actually want to go and touch every book and use the Dewey Decimal System to find a reference book. Then you’re going to have folks who want to sit on a sofa, enjoy the air conditioning, and read the paper for an hour or two. That’s okay, too. So we have to look at where the use is.
When we talk about library services, they are intrinsically part of community services.
I think it’s important to find out where the needs of the community are. Maybe in certain neighborhoods, everybody is just doing the check-out online, picking it up, and going. In that case, we don’t need a big facility. But maybe in a neighborhood where people are bringing their newspapers from somewhere else, you just go to the community center and turn one of the underutilized rooms into a reading room. There are a lot of different ideas that can be explored, but we need to understand what those needs are.
The great thing about library services—or library needs—in Irvine is that every study done leading up to the separation showed that the three public libraries in Irvine were through the roof on statistics, whether it was foot traffic or books checked out. Our three libraries that were part of that system always performed well. None of those libraries were underutilized. The idea that we have a new system under the banner of City Hall that people are continuing to love and use is a great thing. When the community comes and says, “We don’t have enough library services,” that’s a wonderful problem to have. It gives us great opportunities to tackle.
Priorities for the District and the City
Christopher Wong: What kind of priorities do we have here in District 5? Let me rephrase that: What are your priorities for District 5? Overall, you would represent District 5, but you would also represent the city as a whole.
Anthony Kuo: Right, and that’s really the good part and the bad part about districts. The good part is you represent a specific district. You also need to work with other council members to get what you want to have happen. When we have, for example, one member of the council who represents us on the fire board or the sanitation district, that doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t have a say. It just means that person is the point person. But at the end of the day, you as a district council member should represent your district.
At all levels of government, this exists. Could I call my buddy who’s a congressman in Kentucky? I could. But my representative is here in Orange County, and that’s the channel we go through. If there are issues in other parts of town, do I reach out to that council member and say, “Hey, I have a question about this shopping center or business in your district”? Absolutely, we work together on it. But at the end of the day, as a council member for the 5th District, when someone comes to me and says, “Hey, I have an issue at Sandpiper Park,” they should know that I know where Sandpiper Park is. When we get a call that says, “Will you partner with us at Plaza Vista School?” we can say, “Plaza Vista School is actually not in this district, though there might be residents who go there.” We need to know who we’re representing and what those specific challenges are.
When I served on the council previously in an at-large capacity, I hosted two wildfire awareness town hall meetings. I didn’t host them in Woodbridge because we don’t have wildfires there. I hosted them in Portola Springs because they abut the northern open space, as well as Turtle Rock, which abuts the southern open space.
When you have districts, you really do have unique challenges. One of the unique challenges of District 5 that I point out to people is that we are the only district that doesn’t have a city limit border. We are completely surrounded by the rest of Irvine. With every district, you have different needs and challenges. District 1 probably doesn’t have the challenge of aging infrastructure and aging homes. When we talk about programs like the One Irvine program, Councilmember Mai’s district, Councilmember Carroll’s district, and District 5 are where the homes are approaching 40, 50, or 50-plus years old. Those needs are very different from District 1 and District 2.
Improving the Day to Day Lives of Citizens
Christopher Wong: It’s great that you bring up the One Irvine program. Those are the kinds of things you can do to help the day-to-day lives of the citizens. What other programs or things can you do as a council person to help improve those day-to-day lives of the citizens in District 5?
Anthony Kuo: One of the many things I love about Irvine is how engaged our community is. It’s not incumbent on City Hall to reinvent the wheel every single time. If we want to use the bully pulpit of City Hall to have a toy drive, there are a lot of charities we can partner with. If we want to do a program with the youth, there are a lot of nonprofits and PTAs we can partner with. If we want to do something about physical fitness, we’ve got swim teams and soccer teams.
Specific to District 5, you’ve got homes in University Park and Woodbridge—not all of Woodbridge is 50 years old, but the village of Woodbridge is 50. Westpark was built mostly in the 90s, except Westpark 1 was built a bit earlier. So you do have aging homes. That is exactly what One Irvine was designed for. I was so proud to be part of the start of that because I remember speaking in meetings about it, saying, “Hey, we just redid our windows from single pane to double pane, and our utility bills have gone down.” Guess what happened? A couple of weeks later, the neighbor decided they were going to redo their windows. A couple of weeks after that, another neighbor. It lifts the entire neighborhood and causes people to really take pride in their property. You go to some neighborhoods elsewhere in Orange County or the country, and usually there’s one neighbor where people think, “Gosh, I wish that person would mow their lawn or paint their garage door.” When one person starts to take pride in their home, it has a very contagious feel.
Christopher Wong: You and I have been in Irvine for quite a while, and the city has seen a lot of change. Looking forward to the next 5 to 10 years, where do you think the policies you would enact as a council person will put Irvine?
Anthony Kuo: One of the interesting things I’ve always observed about Irvine is that it has become huge. We’re currently the second most populous city in the county, and we will be the first at some point in the next few years. We have to use that for good in leading our neighbors throughout the county on initiatives that are important to all of us.
We have to use that for good in leading our neighbors throughout the county on initiatives that are important to all of us.
I did that with catalytic converter theft. We wrote an ordinance, and then we transmitted that ordinance to our neighboring cities, saying, “Hey, we’ve already done the heavy lifting. If you want to adopt this, it will help you as well.” But it also means not necessarily being a donor city. When it comes to things like the fire authority and libraries, it’s not our responsibility to carry the burdens of every other city in the county. We have to take care of the needs of our residents.
Regardless, we have a projected deficit. The fact that we have a projected deficit means we have finite resources. We are not in a position to fund everything we might want.
The Budget
Christopher Wong: One of the things we’ve always prided ourselves on in Irvine is being very fiscally responsible. Where you see a bunch of other cities deep in the red, we see this problem, and we’re trying to address it.
Anthony Kuo: I actually have something to say about that. The budget deficit, as with all budgets, has two driving factors. One is overspending, and there are programs where we have overspent and things we could probably scale back. But the second factor is projected revenues. One of the areas where revenues did not meet projections was property tax revenue.
When we talked earlier about housing affordability, that directly relates to property values because homes are not selling as quickly as they were a year, two years, or five years ago. New homes are also not being built at that pace. The property tax for each of those parcels isn’t being reassessed as frequently as the actuaries thought it would be. Because of that, they projected a certain amount of revenue from property tax, but in reality, we didn’t get that much. That’s another reason why we have to do what we can to protect strong property values.
Christopher Wong: Why Anthony for councilperson?
Anthony Kuo: When I first ran for city council, there was a gentleman named Ray Quigley who was on the charter city council. He was elected to council in 1971 with that first group, and I’ve known him and his family for a long time. I grew up here. My family owned a small business, Chinatown, near UCI for 20-something years. I’ve served as a commissioner and as a volunteer in nonprofits, not only in District 5 but elsewhere throughout Irvine and Orange County. I’ve served on city commissions for planning and finance, served on the city council, as well as outside agencies.
When I first ran, Ray Quigley said, “Anthony is the most prepared person to run for city council in Irvine ever.” We’ve got some real, historic challenges that have never faced City Hall before, and experience matters. I’m not trying to be negative when I say that, but a lot of the challenges we have are because this current council is so inexperienced. When we went to districts and expanded the council at the same time, we had a lot of new people, and they need to know what the job of a council member is.
The first and foremost job of a council member is being a responsible fiduciary. When you go from having a $30 million-plus surplus four years ago to a $6 million projected deficit today—that is actually a $36 million swing. I feel like I need to go back because I know the history of City Hall. We know what city government was like when we were able to provide the services we needed to within the means the taxpayers gave us. The current council is falling short on that.
We know what city government was like when we were able to provide the services we needed to within the means the taxpayers gave us.