Workshop turnout rather weak

DOLORES OTTING

So where were we? Oh, yes. Griffin Structures held its first public

outreach City Hall workshop.

Needless to say, since there was no advertising arranged by the

city. There were barely any people.

Imagine $750,000 of our tax money spent for Phase I and II of the

study to remodel or rebuild City Hall, and to this day, not one cent

has been spent on advertising. I am really starting to feel they

don’t want us there.

I see turquoise banners all over the city for the Flashlight

Spring Egg Hunt, even one at City Hall, but no banners for the City

Hall workshops. A yellow banner would look nice, and it would go well

with the turquoise banners and enhance the spring theme we have going

in the city with the nighttime egg hunt.

Back to the workshop. There were 10 of us in attendance, half of

whom I invited, and four council members who gave up their Saturday

morning and some of the afternoon to participate in the outreach. Our

hats go off to council members Don Webb, Leslie Daigle, Dick Nichols

and Steve Rosansky for staying until the bitter end. It finally ended

at 12:30. Our crowd of 14 had dwindled to about seven, and we --

excluding the council members -- had pretty much decided that we

liked our City Hall the way it was.

You are probably wondering what did we do for 2 1/2 hours.

Well, we looked at slides of other projects that had been done by

Griffin Structures and LPA and were asked to critique five aspects of

what we thought the new City Hall and council chambers would look

like. We went from “one stop shopping” to outside fountains. It ended

with us getting one orange dot and four white dots. We were then

asked to look at their list of priorities and place our orange dot on

what we thought was the most important item -- that is, parking --

and place our four white dots on other items of lesser significance.

There was a court stenographer there, so I am sure that the city

will post a copy of the transcript on the web so that all of you may

share in our exciting morning.

Besides the fact that only a handful of us showed up, they never

asked us if this was what we wanted. Instead, Griffin Structures

began the workshop by explicitly stating that it was not there to

query us as to whether or not we wanted a new City Hall. This is

quite contrary to the minutes of the Feb. 8 City Council meeting,

which show both council members John Heffernan and Daigle expressing

their support for the public outreach, “but they also felt that it

should include finding out if the community wants to commit $30

million to $40 million on a new City Hall facility.” How will they

ever know if they don’t ask?

An official from Griffin Structures also informed us that normally

the workshops he conducts have a very low turnout. This is certainly

not the norm for Newport Beach. We love our city and have a history

of the public attending all kinds of workshops. Let us not forget the

Visioning Festival and the cable franchise workshops -- both of which

are still up in the air -- that were attended by hundreds. We were

there, and we will continue to show up. The one catch, of course, is

that we have to know about it. This will probably go down as one of

the worst meetings in the history of our city, and it goes to show

that if you don’t tell us, then we won’t come, because quite simply,

we won’t know.

The minutes of the Feb. 8 City Council meeting have Bob McCaffrey

-- who was at the workshop -- expressing his surprise that there

weren’t more people in the audience to discuss the proposed action

and the spending of such a large amount of money. He stated that he

is not aware of any interest by the public to build a new City Hall,

and he didn’t believe that the $500,000 should be spent. He is right.

The next City Hall workshop is April 2 at 10 a.m. This is the

largest expenditure in the city’s history. I look forward to seeing

you there.

* DOLORES OTTING is a Newport Beach resident and city hall

activist.