Byron Salvatierra is a Candidate for District 5. This Interview was conducted in mid-September. Questions and Responses have been edited for clarity
Christopher Wong: Why Byron Salvatierra?
Byron Salvatierra: So, I’m Byron Salvatierra. I’m running for Irvine City Council in District 5.
Why Byron? Well, my parents immigrated here through Chicago, and we moved to Irvine in 1985. I went to school here—Springbrook, Lakeside, Woodbridge, IVC—and I really have that deep connection to the community. I think with those kinds of connections, I’ll really be able to represent the community.
Further, after IVC, I enlisted in the United States Army Reserve. I served one tour in Iraq. When I came back from Iraq, I finished my computer science degree at Cal State Long Beach. I worked for the Irvine Police Department as a non-sworn employee at that time. Now, I’ve been doing IT and cybersecurity for 25 years. In cybersecurity, I protect critical infrastructure, including a local utility and now a client on the East Coast. I’m also an Orange County Reserve firefighter.
Serving the community and the country has always been a part of who I am. My parents always reminded me that being able to grow up in Irvine was a real privilege. They grew up in the Philippines, and I felt a real sense of gratitude and always felt like I needed to give back. With that intent, I plan to be on the city council—hopefully to listen to the community, be empathetic, and represent faithfully the perspectives in the community.
I don’t think that a lot of people feel that kind of connection to the city council right now, and I think it’s perhaps for a good reason. We really enjoy prosperity and a great lifestyle here in Irvine, but I think we can do better by making sure that people feel that they can connect with their local representatives.
We really enjoy prosperity and a great lifestyle here in Irvine, but I think we can do better by making sure that people feel that they can connect with their local representatives.
Improving Citizen’s Lives
Christopher Wong: How would you improve the day-to-day lives of the citizens in your district as a council member?
Byron Salvatierra: For day-to-day life, what I’ve been hearing from my friends, family, and neighbors is that we’re missing a sense of community and connection. All too often, we work really hard to get here to Irvine, and then we stay in our lane, stay in our silos, and stay in our small bubble. A lot of people are really striving for connection and community.
I think a council member has a unique opportunity to bring those communities together. Even just running for city council now, I’ve been able to bring together communities that wouldn’t have connected in the first place—from street parties to talking to activists, to engaging with different religious groups. It’s been really great to go outside of my own bubble and learn what it is to be someone who lives in Irvine.
To improve day-to-day life, we should have more opportunities to connect on a neighbor level. Irvine’s been doing a lot of great things at the Great Park, like the Fiesta Latina and the Autumn Festival, but I think we can emphasize more community-level events. For example, in the Woodbridge Village Association, we have a July 4th parade and get-together. That’s always so amazing because I can celebrate with my neighbors.
I know University Park has something like that, and I’d love to enable other neighborhoods to have that kind of micro-community building. That would really improve day-to-day life. I could expound on the benefits of knowing your neighbors: it helps a lot with mental health, and knowing that you share an identity with the people around you helps you work together.
I’m an Irvine CERT member, and they had a program called Neighborhood Connections. They emphasized that if you know your neighbors during a disaster or a crisis, you can lean on each other rather than having to depend strictly on first responders and the police to come out. So, bringing it back to the streets and back to the people would really help improve day-to-day life.
Priorities
Christopher Wong: So what are the priorities for your district, and probably for the city as well?
Byron Salvatierra: Having canvassed and connected with a lot of people in the district, affordability was number one that kept coming up.
I’ll list them and then expand on each:
“Affordability. Excellent Service Delivery at the Municipal Level. Community”
Affordability. Excellent service delivery at the municipal level, including public safety, a strong financial foundation, and efficient operations. Community, growing that sense of togetherness and helping define what it means to be from Irvine.
Starting with Affordability. Housing is always the number one challenge. Houses in Irvine are among the most expensive in the nation. I experienced the challenge of housing myself. We were renting a condo in Northwood, and after staying there for just 10 months, the landlord said, “You have to go. I’ve sold the place.” It was shocking because we had only just moved in. I asked, “Can you at least give us the opportunity to make a bid on the house?” He said no, it was a cash offer. I explained that I had a VA loan, and the owner said, “I empathize with you. I’m a former law enforcement officer and I’d love to sell to a veteran, but the VA loan process takes way too long. A cash offer is always going to trump a VA loan.”
So we were pushed out of that house. Luckily, we found another condo to rent in Woodbridge, which is my hometown where I want to raise my kids. I started a conversation with that landlord about making an offer down the line, and he agreed. When we moved in, the condo was worth $600,000. It kept going up $100,000 every year, and after five years, it was close to a million dollars. There was no way we could save $200,000 for a 20% down payment.
The question is: is Irvine a place where only people who are already well-established can buy a home? That would be a shame. This is a master-planned community, and that master plan originally included housing for new homeowners. Our future housing plans should bake that in rather than continuously selling strictly at market rate.
There are other ways I’d like to address affordability. Having affordable after-school programs or daycare would be a huge boon. For my family, when my mom passed away from breast cancer, my kids were very young, and we ended up paying $3,200 a month for daycare. That’s where our savings for a down payment went. That’s my personal story, and it reflects a lot of young families trying to start or stay in Irvine.
We weren’t a low-income family—I worked for Blizzard Entertainment, and my wife was a data engineer at St. Joseph Health. We had a pretty good income, but saving for a down payment while raising two young kids and paying for daycare was impossible. That’s how I would try to address affordability.
The second priority I mentioned was excellence in municipal service delivery—excellence and efficiency.
People have grown accustomed to the level of safety provided by the Irvine Police Department, and that has to be sustained 100%. For several years now, we’ve been named the safest city in the nation for our size, and we must maintain that. It is a key way to ensure we keep people in the city and maintain economic development.
To do that, we need a balanced budget and a solid understanding of where money is coming in and going out. In recent years, we’ve gotten accustomed to the good years and increased the size of our city council discretionary and staff budgets. That absolutely needs to be looked at. When you compare Irvine’s city council staff budget to other cities, ours is ridiculously high.
Christopher Wong: Did you take a look at the latest budget that was proposed?
Byron Salvatierra: I know there is one we’ll be talking about on the 28th. I read that Target 28 discusses increasing revenue by raising user fees, freezing hiring, and stopping promotions. I think that’s a good temporary measure.
Target 28 is what we call a “listening halt” in the Army—let’s pay attention to what’s going on—but we need to scrutinize how we got to this position in the first place and look into what is structurally wrong.
Christopher Wong: Let’s keep going on that. The next question goes along with city services: How do we tackle the services and needs of the city while dealing with the constrained budget we’re going to be under?
Byron Salvatierra: City staff has proposed a solid plan, and I don’t think we need to go as far as to have a forensic audit. A forensic audit implies something criminal is going on, and I don’t think it’s criminal. We had projections that didn’t meet reality, and we made plans based on those projections that didn’t pan out.
Adjusting course through hiring freezes and temporary promotion freezes works. There’s a lot we can do to improve efficiency of delivery—perhaps we have overlapping staff or too much overtime for specific services. There’s also something to be said about pet projects and large festivals; those expenditures are pretty high.
The Library
Christopher Wong: Let’s shift over to another subject that is very near and dear to a lot of District 5 residents: the library. Clearly, the community loves the library, but it’s costing the city a ton of money. As a council member, how would you tackle the library issue?
Byron Salvatierra: It’s really unfortunate that we have a library issue. I understand the spirit of why we withdrew from the Orange County Public Library System—the library infrastructure is aging, and there was a perception that we were not getting the value out that we were putting in. However, the withdrawal may have been premature or not fully thought out.
When we withdrew, we were hit with a $40,000-a-month lease. That should have been anticipated and planned for.
How do we fix it now? We absolutely need to mend our relationship with the county. We have been positioning ourselves as antagonistic toward them, and issuing ultimatums doesn’t move relationships forward. We need to negotiate—ensuring the county gets a fair agreement for the lease while gaining tighter control over the renovation and budget plans for our library.
In short: we need to manage it financially in the short term and get the community involved so we can plan for the long term. We must return it to the level of service we enjoyed under the Orange County Public Library System. Forming a committee is a great way to do that. Facing budget headwinds will make it a challenge, but I’m glad to hear there’s still so much love for the library. It is a very treasured part of the community.
Economic Development
Christopher Wong: How would you encourage economic development in this district specifically, and then overall in the city?
Byron Salvatierra: Three things need to be addressed to ensure continued economic development. Irvine has enjoyed and will continue to enjoy a strong economy because we have a highly educated workforce and great housing opportunities. However, if we don’t continue to serve the housing needs of the city, that will become a challenge.
We have hospital staff driving all the way from Eastvale to provide healthcare services, and teachers driving from South County to teach in our schools. We need housing tailored for our workforce so they don’t have to live outside the city. If they live and work here, it improves our city revenues. So addressing housing and making sure we have the right-sized housing is number one.
Specific to District 5: there are challenges with development at Oak Creek. Even though that’s outside the district, it will be very impactful. I want to work with the rest of the council members to find the right type of housing for Irvine while representing District 5 to ensure our decisions are fair and equitable.
Second, we need to protect small businesses. I’ve seen too many small businesses open and close here in District 5. My favorite coffee shop on Jeffrey turned into a paint place. Paradise Cafe turned into Sherwin-Williams. Sunright closed down and then reopened. I remember El Torito, Ruby’s, and Barnes & Noble. Those last two have been shuttered for a long time. Having closed buildings doesn’t help economic development, and I’m curious why the Irvine Company keeps them closed.
My neighbor proposed putting an arcade gastropub where Ruby’s used to be, and I think that would be amazing. It fits our culture to have a place where we can play old-school pinball. Are you familiar with Mission Control?
If we had something like that, it would provide economic opportunity and a place for the community to gather. It would serve a younger demographic too—my kids grew up on the “frogs” at University Park, just like I did. We used to ride our bikes to Barnes & Noble, buy a book, get yogurt at Yogurtland, and then head over to Ruby’s if we got hungry. An arcade gastropub would give teenagers a great place to go.
Do you remember Joe’s Pizza next to the center?
Christopher Wong: I don’t. What I do remember is a Knollwoods in that center way back when.
Byron Salvatierra: I think there was an El Torito there too. It’s very disappointing that so much of that has shuttered, including several banks along the periphery that haven’t been replaced. There’s a lot of opportunity to make that a place where people can connect.
Sessions Sandwich Shop is already a hub. I talked to the staff there and asked what they’d put in that vacant space, and they said a gastropub would be amazing. If teens have a place to hang out there, they aren’t causing trouble on the streets with their e-bikes. If it has pinball or arcades, middle-aged adults can actually connect with the younger generation. My son was playing pinball at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, and I thought, We need a place like this in Irvine. Boomers is a bit too youth-oriented, but something geared toward our generation would be great.
I also think a library annex where Barnes & Noble used to be would be amazing as a “third space.” The University Park and Heritage Park libraries are super popular. If we had a library annex, teens could hang out without getting in trouble for doing wheelies in the parking lot.
If it wasn’t e-bikes, it used to be skateboards. We had a skateboarding problem growing up here, too.
But we normalized skateboarding. We opened a skate park here, and one at Main Place Mall, and it became an accepted part of the community. Once it became mainstream, it wasn’t cool anymore, so kids stopped doing it as much!
If we want to address a nuisance, we shouldn’t just try to make it illegal—skateboarding isn’t a crime, and e-biking isn’t a crime. You make it mainstream, make it accessible, give them a place to do it, and it ceases to be a nuisance.
Having worked for the Irvine Police Department, I know that passing additional laws won’t have the effect people expect. Laws require enforcement and correction. People joke that there isn’t a lot of crime in Irvine, but the call volume for Irvine Police is actually very high. If officers are chasing down e-bikers, they aren’t focusing on cases that need their attention. Fixing the e-bike issue through more laws isn’t effective, but giving kids a place to hang out will solve a lot of the problem. If we come together as a community to solve problems rather than expecting the city or law enforcement to fix everything, we get better outcomes.
“If we come together as a community to solve problems rather than expecting the city or law enforcement to fix everything, we get better outcomes.”
The third thing regarding economic development: we have great businesses in Irvine, like Rivian. They are an amazing company, and we want to see them succeed. If the city improves its partnership with Rivian and other auto manufacturers here—like Ford, Mazda, and Hyundai—we can grow EV transportation. Wouldn’t it be amazing if there were a Rivian electric shuttle that could take you from Woodbridge to the Great Park and stop at the Spectrum? That aligns with what we’re trying to build for iConnect. If we lean into the electric vehicle industry we have here, we can demonstrate that Irvine is a city of innovation and give those companies an opportunity to test and highlight their capabilities.
Christopher Wong: The next question was going to address housing needs, but you touched on that earlier, so I’ll skip forward.
Byron Salvatierra: One thing I do want to mention about housing affordability: we need to ensure it’s the right size for the needs of the community. We’ve fallen into the trap of approving whatever developers want because it provides the highest revenue for the city. But if we are purely revenue-focused, are we actually delivering the housing the community needs?
We need housing for new families, seniors, students, and our workforce. Recent developments seem to skew exclusively toward single-family, standalone, market-rate luxury homes. Speaking as a Woodbridge High Class of ’97 graduate, we can’t afford those homes! Who are we building them for? We should focus on building the right types of homes.
Irvine’s Future
Christopher Wong: Where do you see Irvine in the next 5 to 10 years, and how do you think your policies will help us get there?
Byron Salvatierra: Having grown up here and seen the diversity and cooperation of our residents, I would love to see that same spirit reflected at the government level. Currently, there’s a lack of cooperation on the city council; members seem antagonistic toward one another. It’s strange that we enjoy so much in Irvine, yet we’re fighting over it.
If the city council can cooperate and build toward a vision of kindness and compassion, it will allow us to remain an economic and technological leader.
Christopher Wong: What decision made by the current city council over the last couple of years do you believe represented a compromise for special interests over the residents’ best interests?
Byron Salvatierra: I have two examples.
First, as a veteran, I was disappointed when the city council continued to push for a veterans cemetery at the Great Park. People ask me, “You’re a veteran—wouldn’t you want a cemetery here in the city?” I didn’t serve so people would build memorials and cemeteries for me; I served because democracy is important to me, and the people living in a community should determine what that community wants. Overwhelmingly, the residents around the Great Park have said they do not want a cemetery there. Seeing that issue repeatedly pushed feels like a distraction from providing veterans with actual good services.
I connected with veterans at American Legion Post 838 and learned that they favor the Veterans Cemetery in Anaheim at Gypsum Canyon. That site has federal, state, and bipartisan support, as well as initial funding. As a bonus that people might not be aware of: I trained there as a reserve firefighter, and it’s a historic wildfire flare-up spot due to being a wind funnel. If that location becomes a cemetery and is regularly irrigated, veterans will effectively continue serving our community by protecting us from wildfires. That’s poetic, but bottom line: veterans in District 5 are not pushing for the Great Park location.
The second thing is the Orange County Power Authority (OCPA). Having protected local utility critical infrastructure for years, I know we are caught in a geographic monopoly. Continuing to raise rates and control markets doesn’t serve residents or ratepayers. The OCPA is the best way we can push back against that.
Killing a fledgling Orange County Power Authority is premature. Yes, it had false starts, bad leadership initially, and the opt-out model wasn’t ideal. But today, OCPA has great leadership, offers significant discounts for green energy, and provides incentives that SoCal Edison can’t. For our council members to vote against OCPA when Irvine was the founding charter city makes no sense. If they had concerns about how it was run, we should reform it—not destroy it before it has the chance to flourish. Community choice energy works in many other areas; let’s give ours a chance to grow.