Keeping elections under control

Mathis Winkler

NEWPORT BEACH -- It’s an argument Greenlight opponents brought up over

and over again during the election campaign: Newport Beach residents

repeatedly will face costly elections on development projects that

trigger a citywide vote under the slow-growth measure.

Approved by 63.1% of the city’s voters, Greenlight recently became

part of the City Charter. From now on, any general plan amendment for a

project that adds more than 100 peak-hour car trips or dwelling units, or

40,000 square feet more than the plan allows, will have to go before a

citywide vote.

But Greenlight supporters -- still recovering from the “election

aftershock” -- said that elections for elections’ sake had not been their

motivation.

“The basic principle is whether a project is meritorious,” said Phil

Arst, who along with other community activists such as Allan Beek, Tom

Hyans and former Mayor Evelyn Hart, led Greenlight to success.

“We would look to the [City] Council to not even bring up to a vote

projects that didn’t even meet the guidelines.”

PUTTING GREENLIGHT TO WORK

Those “guidelines” Arst talked about have to be approved by at least

six of the seven council members.

They were included in a paragraph in the ballot initiative, which

encouraged the City Council to come up with guidelines for Greenlight’s

implementation, “provided that any such guidelines shall be consistent

with the [initiative] and its purposes and findings.”

Although council members initially had considered establishing a

committee to come up with suggestions for putting the measure in place,

they decided in the end to get recommendations from city officials and

adopt a list of guidelines after holding public meetings.

A study session on Jan. 9 will give residents a chance to present

ideas to council members.

“Anybody that’s interested should be there,” said City Atty. Bob

Burnham, adding that he’s given a draft of recommendations to city

officials.

While Burnham said that he had not talked to Greenlight supporters

during the drafting of his report, he did say that he had considered

comments from Beek, Hart and others in his recommendations.

“To some extent the guidelines weren’t just a product of me looking at

the measure, but a product of things said in the past six to eight

months,” he said.

The list of topics in need for clarification is fairly small.

First, council members will have to decide on a starting date for the

initiative’s “look-back period.” Should they set 1990 as the date, any

general plan amendment during the past 10 years would count toward the

threshold that triggers an election. Greenlight supporters have said that

they’d support a 2000 starting date in order to avoid unnecessary

elections.

Other areas that could benefit from the council’s interpretation are

definitions of “peak-hour” and “floor area,” as well as the question of

whether developers should get credit for reducing traffic or a building’s

square footage as part of a project.

Burnham added that another option would be to exempt residential

developments from the 40,000-square-foot threshold that would trigger an

election and instead look at whether the project would add 100 dwelling

units.

“We have some homes that exceed 40,000 square foot,” Burnham said.

ANOTHER ACTION ON A LIST OF ACTIONS

Despite talk about costly elections and extra spending to prepare

general plan amendments, city officials said that the process typically

doesn’t require a lot of work.

“To me, a project is a project,” said Patricia Temple, the city’s

planning director, adding that all projects had to go through the city’s

regular approval process, which includes an environmental review.

“It may add an hour or two to write staff reports,” she said, adding

that the developer and not the city had to shoulder the cost.

While city officials generally work on smaller projects themselves,

Temple said that she usually asks applicants with larger projects to pay

for outside consultants.

For example, city planners had worked on reports for the Dunes hotel

project, a planned resort with 470 rooms and 31,000 square feet of

conference space proposed by the Newport Dunes Resort, Temple said.

But to prepare reports for a 250,000-square-foot expansion project at

Koll Center, the city hired outside help.

HONORING GREENLIGHT’S SPIRIT

Two general plan amendments in the works -- a 2,160-square-foot lobby

expansion and a 440-square-foot filing room -- will require a citywide

vote because both are located in areas that have reached their

‘construction allowance,’ Temple said.

Mayor Gary Adams agreed with Arst that a citywide vote on such small

expansions was questionable.

“It does seem silly that a 440-square-foot filing room will need to go

through the process,” he said, adding that the real question was why the

city had been divided up in 49 distinct neighborhoods, causing a build up

in some areas while not in others.

But changing this system during the upcoming general plan update did

not seem possible, Adams said.

“We need to keep it the way it is,” he said. “Otherwise it could be

argued that making it less specific would be to counter what [Greenlight]

is all about.”