The Brief

We're still five years away from hosting the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. But the city of Mission Viejo already has dreams of cashing in on the event. It hopes to lure international athletes to train in the city in the runup to the 2028 L.A. Games.

"It's sort of a concierge-level service that we intend to provide," said Mayor Brian Goodell, a former Olympic swimmer.

Convincing athletes to establish a base in Mission Viejo, a city of some 92,000 in inland south Orange County, is one of the city council's official strategic goals for the coming years. The city hopes these athletes, and the entourage of coaches, trainers, and medical personnel that often travel with them, will stimulate the local economy and spark civic pride.

"We don't have Disneyland, we don't have Knott's Berry Farm, we don't have a pier at the beach," Goodell said. "But we have great athletic facilities … and so sports tourism is a big economic driver for our city."

Still, it's a little unclear how much it would cost the city to mount the kind of concierge service Goodell envisions and how much the city stands to gain in return.

The city's 'Olympic tradition'

In addition to its Olympian mayor — Goodell won two Gold medals in the 1976 Montreal Olympics — Mission Viejo's ties to the games run deep. The city claims on its recently launched sports tourism website that 143 Olympic athletes have trained there in the past, including five-time medal winning diver Greg Louganis.

Mission Viejo Mayor Brian Goodell, an Olympic Gold Medalist, hopes to attract smaller countries to train in the city in the run-up to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games.

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During the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, the cycling road race started and finished in Mission Viejo. "It was one of the most exciting things you'd ever see. People were just on fire," Goodell said, "screaming, yelling, waving flags, and banners."

Goodell is especially proud of the Marguerite Aquatics Complex, home of the Nadadores swim team that his parents helped found in 1968. The city recently invested some $11 million in renovating the facilities, which include an Olympic-size competition pool and a new dive tower with double-wide platforms built for synchronized diving competitions.

When Goodell showed me around on a spring day, kids were practicing their dives into a foam pit and swimmers from as far away as New Zealand were warming up for a pro meet that was about to start.

Goodell pointed out that one of the images on Mission Viejo's seal is an Olympic torch. "So we believe in this," he said. "We're an Olympic city."

Let's talk economics

The mayor is already getting to experience some of that Olympic spirit again — the city council recently spent some $8,000 to send Goodell and a consultant to Australia to pitch Mission Viejo and its training facilities at a meeting of the Oceania National Olympic Committee.

Goodell said he'd also like to see the city hire someone to take charge of coordinating sports tourism efforts, akin to the visitors bureaus that exist in other O.C. cities, like Anaheim and Huntington Beach. Right now, he does some of this work himself, but much of it falls to the city's recreation director. "It's not really in his job description," Goodell said. "It's a whole nother job and a whole lot of work."

Kids practice dives on land at the Marguerite Aquatic Center in Mission Viejo.

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How much money does the city stand to make off of this venture? Goodell has said it's too early to know. But Mission Viejo has commissioned several economic studies of large events held in recent years at the Marguerite Aquatic Center.

One of them calculated that attendees at a 2019 U.S. Masters national swim meet spent a combined $471,269 in the city and generated close to $38,000 in sales tax. However, the authors also noted that some portion of that spending likely occurred outside Mission Viejo city limits.

The city has just four hotels, which Goodell said is a problem. "We end up exporting a lot of hotel room nights out to our neighboring cities and they love us for it," he said.

As for facilities, the city owns the Marguerite Aquatics Complex but the nonprofit Mission Viejo Nadadores Foundation runs the operation. According to tax filings, the foundation pays nothing to the city to rent the facility and any fees paid by outside groups to use the facilities for training and competitions goes to the Nadadores.

The aquatic center is generally not open to the public. There used to be an open swim time, but this year the city has been unable to find lifeguards to staff it, said Nadadores executive director Michele Mitchell.

Mitchell, who's a former Olympic diver, said the foundation and the city had a "symbiotic relationship." For example, she said, the Nadadores diving team recently raised $200,000 to add permanent bleachers alongside the diving pool and that that upgrade will become city property. She also said the foundation had contributed $1 million toward the recent renovations.

Mayor Goodell said, in the long term, the city's investment in promoting itself to Olympic athletes amounts to "pennies" compared to the economic and community benefits he expects to flow in.

"We have a lot of opportunities to use our facilities better, to create more opportunities for not only people to come here and enjoy this place, but also our residents to enjoy the feeling, the participation, and to come to watch some of the greatest athletes in the world compete."

Not everyone thinks this is a great idea

At the March City Council meeting, several residents spoke up against Goodell's lobbying trip to Australia. "This appears to be a taxpayer-funded joyride," said resident and former mayor Cathy Schlicht. Another resident called it a "boondoggle."

Councilmember Cynthia Vasquez voted in favor of paying for the trip, but she told LAist she's not yet convinced the city's Olympic recruiting venture should be a top priority. "I just want to be sure that we're being fiscally responsible and that there's not just that financial return, but also a return on the public good," she said.

An economist's viewpoint

Economists like Victor Matheson are often critical of the touted benefits of big events like the Olympics, largely because of the often huge initial cost of building stadiums and other infrastructure.

"So, for example, the Olympics need a 10,000-seat swimming facility that will never, ever be used except for the Olympics," said Matheson, a professor at College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts. That example is on the nose — for the L.A. games, the plan is to install a temporary pool in USC's Dedeaux baseball field to hold the diving and swimming events.

But the calculus is different, Matheson said, if the facilities already exist, which they do in Mission Viejo, and if they are, and will be, used by the community in the future.

Marketing material in Mayor Goodell's city office.

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The other, big thing to consider, he said, is the opportunity cost. "What would you have been doing otherwise with your facilities and your money," he said. For example, if hotels have empty rooms, then it's great if a team comes in to use them. If that team is taking up rooms that other guests would have otherwise booked then there's really no gain.

Goodell said bringing in Olympic athletes to train could temporarily displace some local sports teams and practices, "but we can be very flexible, too."

Mitchell from the Nadadores said foreign athletes generally come to train for only a few weeks, and that since the local swim and dive teams have access to the aquatic center around the clock, they can shift to accommodate more bodies.

What's the price of Olympic spirit?

Mission Viejo's plan to recruit Olympic athletes isn't all about money, it may be even more about stimulating the Olympic spirit and civic pride. Matheson said civic pride does have economic value, but not all that much.

"I think mayors get a little bit of stars in their eyes," he said of the Olympic pull. "I don't think it's a negative, but don't count on this making the L.A. suburbs wildly rich either."

Goodell and Mitchell, though, say the opportunity to have top athletes in the community is priceless. "It's a once in a 40-year opportunity to have the experience," Mitchell said, referring to the last time the Olympics were held in L.A., in 1984.

She noted that when she competed in the Olympics, in 1984 and 1988, she and other athletes visited hospitals, libraries, and elementary schools to meet with locals and talk about "Olympic ideals." She thinks it would also motivate kids to get "off the couch and off their phones and get involved in pick your sport."

Who's wooing whom?

Mission Viejo already has at least one team that seems sold on the idea of making the city its training base for the 2028 L.A. Games — and maybe longer. "Mission Viejo would be the perfect base for us," the New Zealand national swim team's Gary Francis told LAist.

"It gives us the opportunity to, you know, go down and swim in San Diego, go up and swim in San Francisco, Santa Clara," he said. "The fact that swimming is part of the culture around here, that's really good for us."

Francis said more than hotel stays, he'd like to arrange for homestays in Mission Viejo — for the cultural value, but also because it would be cheaper for his team. "Our federation [Swimming New Zealand] is really a pauper federation and a lot of our swimmers have to pay for everything themselves," he said, noting that travel expenses had doubled in recent years.

"It's always logistically hard for us," he said. Francis envisions an athlete exchange, where Southern California athletes might get the chance to visit and swim in New Zealand. "We have to make friends, he said. "What we can offer in return is a lot of hospitality."

Senate and House Republican leadership have resurrected a stalled plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security after a record 47-day funding lapse.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said in a joint statement on Wednesday that the House will take up a measure passed by the Senate last week to fund most of DHS except Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol through the end of September.

Republicans would then attempt to fund ICE and Border Patrol for three years using a party-line budget reconciliation bill that would not require support from Democrats.

"In following this two-track approach, the Republican Congress will fully reopen the Department, make sure all federal workers are paid, and specifically fund immigration enforcement and border security for the next three years so that those law-enforcement activities can continue uninhibited," Thune and Johnson wrote.

The agreement comes nearly a week after House Republicans dismissed an identical plan, refusing to take up the Senate-passed measure and instead passing a 60-day short term funding bill for all of DHS that had little chance of overcoming Democratic opposition in the Senate.

Johnson called the agreement a "joke" and President Donald Trump declined to publicly endorse the deal. Trump had previously resisted any package that did not include his push to overhaul federal elections known as the Save America Act.

"I think any deal they make, I'm pretty much not happy with it," Trump told reporters last week.

Democrats welcomed the agreement as in line with their pledge not to give ICE any more money without reforms after immigration enforcement agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. But the deal does not include any of the policy demands Democrats are pressing for, such as a ban on masks for immigration enforcement officers and requiring warrants issued by a judge, not just the agency, to enter homes.

"For days, Republican divisions derailed a bipartisan agreement, making American families pay the price for their dysfunction," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote in a statement Wednesday. "Throughout this fight, Senate Democrats never wavered."

Trump seemed to bless the revived plan earlier Wednesday, writing on social media that he wants a party-line bill to fund immigration enforcement on his desk by June 1.

"We are going to work as fast, and as focused, as possible to replenish funding for our Border and ICE Agents, and the Radical Left Democrats won't be able to stop us," Trump wrote.

Despite the shutdown, ICE has been minimally impacted because Republican lawmakers approved $75 billion for ICE through another party-line budget reconciliation bill last year.

Congress is on a two-week recess, but the Senate and House could move to fund all of DHS except ICE and CBP as early as Thursday using a procedure known as unanimous consent that allows the chambers to circumvent formal voting as long as no member objects.

Even during a recess when most members are not in Washington, this could be unpredictable, especially in the House, where many hard-line conservatives oppose a deal that does not fully fund DHS.

"Let's make this simple: caving to Democrats and not paying CBP and ICE is agreeing to defund Law Enforcement and leaving our borders wide open again," Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, wrote on X. "If that's the vote, I'm a NO."

If a member does object, that could require waiting for another vote when all members are back from recess.

Claudia Grisales contributed reporting.
Copyright 2026 NPR

California clocked its second-worst snowpack on record Wednesday, a potentially troubling signal ahead for fire season.

It’s an alarming end to a winter that saw abnormally dry conditions briefly wiped from California’s drought map in January, for the first time in a quarter-century.

Though precipitation to date has been near average, much of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then March’s record-breaking heat melted most of the snow that remains. The state’s major reservoirs are nevertheless brimming above historic averages and are flirting with capacity, and a smattering of snow, rain and thunderstorms are dousing last month’s heat wave.

But experts now warn that California’s case of the missing snowpack could herald an early fire season in the mountains.

On Wednesday, state engineers conducting the symbolic April 1 snowpack measurement at Phillips Station south of Lake Tahoe found no measurable snow in patches of white dotting the grassy field.

“I want to welcome you call to probably one of the quickest snow surveys we’ve had — maybe one where people could actually use an umbrella,” joked Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources. “We’re getting a lot of questions about are we heading into a hydrologic drought? The answer is, I don’t know.”

State data reports that California’s snowpack is closing out the season at an alarming 18% of average statewide, and an even more abysmal 6% of average in the northern mountains that feed California’s major reservoirs.

Only the extreme drought year of 2015 beat this year’s snowpack for the worst on record, measuring in at just 5% of average on April 1st, when the snow historically is at its deepest.

“I think everyone's anticipating that it will be a long, busy fire season,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network.

“Without a snowpack, and with an early spring, it just means that there’s much more time for something like that to happen.”

‘It’s pretty bizarre up here’ 

In the city of South Lake Tahoe, which survived the massive Caldor Fire in the fall of 2021 without losing any structures, fire chief Jim Drennan said his department is already ramping up prevention efforts.

“It's pretty bizarre up here right now. It really seems like June conditions more than March,” Drennan said. “People are already turning the sprinklers on for their lawns.”

Without more precipitation, an early spring may complicate prescribed burning efforts. But Drennan said fire agencies in the Tahoe basin can start mechanically clearing fuels from forest areas earlier than usual.

“That means we can get more work done,” he said.

It also means homeowners need to start hardening their homes now, said Martin Goldberg, battalion chief and fuels management officer for the Lake Valley Fire Protection District, which protects unincorporated communities in the Lake Tahoe Basin’s south shore.

Goldberg urges residents to scour their yards for burnable materials, create defensible space and reach out to local fire departments with questions. The risks are widespread — from firewood, wooden fences, gas cans, plants, pine needles — even lawn furniture stacked against a house.

“In years past, I wouldn't even think of raking and clearing until May,” Goldberg said. “But my yard's completely cleared of snowpack, and it has been for a couple weeks now.”

‘A haystack fire’

Battalion chief David Acuña, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, said fire season is shaped by more than just one year’s snowpack.

Climate change has been remaking California’s fire seasons into fire years. And California’s recent average to abundant water years have fueled what Acuña called “bumper crops of vegetation and brush.”

“Most of California is like a haystack. And if you’ve ever seen a haystack fire, they burn very intensely because there's layers of fuel,” Acuña said.

Like Quinn-Davidson, Acuña wasn’t ready to make specific predictions about fires to come.

But John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced, said the temperatures and snowpack conditions this year offer a glimpse of California in the latter decades of this century, as fossil fuel use continues to drive global temperatures higher.

How this year’s fires will play out will depend on when, where and how wind, heat, fuel and ignitions combine. But it foreshadows the consequences of a warmer California for water and fire under climate change.

“This,” Abatzoglou said, “is yet another stress test for the future in the state.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.