I have lived in Irvine for almost two decades.  My wife Beth and I run a successful small business here and I’ve served on the Irvine Unified School Board for 7 years, including as President of the Board in 2008-2009. We have 2 children, both of whom attend Irvine Unified Schools Like many residents of Irvine, I am an immigrant to the United States. I moved to New York from Guyana, South America in 1977. I understood the importance of a quality education from an early age and I worked my way to graduate school at MIT where I received my doctorate in Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Like many of you, my wife and I were attracted to Irvine by the school system, wanting our children to grow up in a community that values education. The Irvine I know has been blessed with a quality of life that few cities can rival. We have one of the best public education systems in the state, we are one of the safest cities in the country and we are one of the best places to raise a family in the world.  But we can also do better. As a small business owner, I understand the importance of meeting a payroll and keeping costs down in line with revenues.  I also understand that in this economy, we need to prepare for some uncertainty due to fluctuations in the main drivers of the city’s revenue: the national economy, the state budget and  local sales and property taxes. Our city has just completed a “Bridge Plan” designed to meet the needs of city services during the most severe parts of the recent downturn. Today we appear to have exited the worst, but we are now in need of a plan for the future.  We must limit spending to keep our city financially whole while preserving and strengthening  public safety. Of special importance, is the construction of the Great Park which is going to be significantly impacted by the loss of redevelopment funding. Homes may be built, but the planned sports, recreation and cultural facilities of the park are in jeopardy. The city budget cannot sustain the costs of these facilities, therefore, the Great Park Plan needs to be significantly re-scaled. Having served on the school board for the past 7 years, I work with an operating budget significantly larger than the city’s budget and a work force more than 3 times the size.  As a school board member, I drew on my business background and my familiarity with the needs of our city’s neighborhood schools to help the school district determine how to significantly decrease spending while retaining top-notch academic quality. During the housing downturn, our district grew and we too had to figure out how to do more with less. We developed a facilities funding plan which ultimately resulted in a successful public-private partnership yielding more money to build and maintain top notch schools over a longer period of time. We successfully planned and financed 5 new schools during my time on the board; many other sites were retrofitted and upgraded. Thinking about the future, we built energy efficient “green” schools and with the help of another public-private partnership installed solar panels throughout Irvine which have now stabilized and limited the school district’s electricity spending. My board colleagues and I shared a relentless focus on doing the right thing for the community. We worked in a collaborative atmosphere with the greatest transparency and accountability. When I joined the board, I personally took on the responsibility of repairing and building stronger relationships with the city and between the district administration and its teachers. Today, these relationships have never been better. I partnered with Mayor Sukhee Kang to establish the City of Irvine Education Partnership fund. As school board president, I pushed for more community outreach until our budgeting priorities were fully vetted by the residents of Irvine. Our approach to planning actually resulted in lower financing costs for Irvine Unified School District projects. It was important to me that the businesses that depend on high quality schools to attract workers to Irvine, could move ahead with their own planning and homeowners could invest in Irvine, confident that the school district leadership was planning long term, thinking strategically and proceeding in a fiscally sound and balanced manner. If elected, I will dedicate myself to achieving similar results on the city council. I shall  1) strengthen and sustain city support for education; 2) maintain Irvine’s status as one of the safest cities in America; 3) develop and fully vet with the public a strategic financial plan for the Great Park that retains Irvine’s legacy of visionary planning and fiscally prudent execution.

• published: 03 Feb 2012
• views: 471