Former Orange City Council member reflects on 13 years of service

Mike Alvarez, who resigned from the Orange City Council March 8 after a ruling against his third consecutive term, has spent most of his newfound free time with his family. Photos courtesy of Alvarez

For former Orange City Council member Mike Alvarez, being a grandparent is like being involved in politics.

“You have to be careful what you say, and you have to balance being a grandparent with the other side,” Alvarez said regarding his two 5-month-old granddaughters. “I didn’t realize how much time we have to be involved with them. We’re with the twins at least twice a week and a lot of times, more than that.”

After his resignation from the council March 8, Alvarez has found himself with much more free time on his hands — time he spends with his wife, two daughters and two granddaughters.

Mike Alvarez, former Orange City Council member

Alvarez’s newfound family time is a result of two election challenges and a judge ruling he was not eligible to have run for a third consecutive term in 2020 for his District 3 Orange City Council seat, despite winning with 50.8% of the vote. Alvarez originally contested the decision, claiming his eligibility stemmed from Orange County’s transition to district elections in 2020. The council has yet to fill the vacant seat or decide whether the replacement will be appointed or elected.

“I never had gone through anything like that before,” Alvarez said. “It was odd because we went from one system of electing people to a different system right in the middle of COVID-19. I never even saw what the judge looked like … I didn’t trust how the judicial system works in the world of ‘Zooming.’”

Previously, Alvarez served as a council member from 1996 to 2004 and again from 2016 to 2020. His political involvement dates back to the 1970s, when he joined the student government at Villa Park High School — located four miles away from the Orange City Hall chambers.

“My friends would nominate me for it,” Alvarez said. “It was just for fun — to get involved and be active in the community. I enjoyed meeting people. At the time, Jim Beam, the mayor from Orange, came and talked to us, and I really enjoyed that and got to know him through the years.”

Alvarez, born and raised in Orange, spent two years at Santa Ana College before transferring and graduating from the University of California, Riverside, in 1979 with a degree in political science. Hoping to go into law, Alvarez was heavily involved with speech and debate during his undergraduate years. Although he was accepted into law school at Cornell University, Alvarez instead obtained a teaching credential from the University of California, Irvine in 1981 and decided to pursue a recently discovered passion: teaching American government to high school students.

“At that time, I was drawn to teaching because of what was going on in current events and things that were happening in our country,” Alvarez said. “It really motivated me to …  teach kids about what was going on and why it was important to their lives. It was just a great time to demonstrate to high schoolers what government was like.”

Alvarez taught at local schools such as Valencia High School in Placentia and Esperanza High School in Anaheim. After Alvarez’s father passed away, he left teaching to join his family real estate business. From there, Alvarez became involved with the Orange Chamber of Commerce, which eventually led to his interest in running for an Orange City Council seat.

Alvarez first ran in 1994 and lost, but ran again during the next 1996 election and won.

“It was pretty exciting to get elected because I had lost the time before,” Alvarez said. “I had gone back to Villa Park High School and recruited seniors from there to help with the campaign, and actually a teacher that was there when I was a student also helped organize my campaign. It was a pretty big effort.”

Alvarez believes the two terms he served on the council were very different in terms of technology and city issues.

“In 1996, the county had gone through a huge bankruptcy,” Alvarez said. “A lot of cities lost millions of dollars, including Orange. When I was elected, the city was just going through that. It was still reeling.”

Mayor Mark Murphy, who attended Alvarez’s rival school of Orange High School, was also born and raised in Orange. Murphy said the two are close and would tease each other often regarding their high schools.

“I think we both got involved (with the city council) for the same reason: the family and the hometown perspective of just trying to make things a little bit better and improve on things, but also maintaining and preserving things historic in nature,” Murphy said. “Mike and I come from the same sort of situation, having grown up here.”

Looking back, Alvarez is proud of his accomplishments on the council. The Orange City Council will meet April 13 to discuss filling the seat vacancy. If the Orange City Council decides to appoint a replacement before May 7, 2021, Alvarez will have the choice to run again for his District 3 seat in the 2022 election. However, if a special election occurs to fill the seat — which by law could only occur in the November 2021 election — then Alvarez could not run again for his former seat until November 2024.

Alvarez has not yet decided if he will pursue another term on the council.

“What I tried to do most was be approachable for everybody that needed help here in the city,” Alvarez said. “I helped a lot of people … I tried to treat everybody with a lot of respect and listened to whatever anybody had to say. If it was important to them, it was important to me as a council member.”