Responding to criticism of a proposed, countywide slow-growth ballot measure, Irvine City Councilman Ray Catalano said Thursday that Orange County must "ration" space because the county cannot accommodate every person who wants to live here.
"We can't provide roads and homes for everybody who wants to live in Orange County," said Catalano, an urban-affairs professor at UC Irvine, at a transportation forum Thursday in Garden Grove.
"We're going to have to ration it," he said about the county's viable space.
The forum was sponsored by the Orange County Chapter of the American Society of Public Administration, a group of city and county government professionals. About 100 people attended the forum at the Garden Grove Community Center.
Former Irvine Mayor Bill Vardoulis, vice president of Church Engineering, said the proposed initiative, being circulated for signatures to qualify it for the June, 1988, ballot, would "hurt the elderly and the kids" and eventually force them out of the county by driving housing prices up.
