Judging the future of a new City Hall

S.J. CAHN

By Wednesday morning, Newport Beach should have a pretty good idea

what the city’s new, improved, revamped, moved, torn-apart,

restructured or left-alone City Hall will be.

The council will choose from three renovation options, ranging in

cost from $19.1 to $23.6 million, with the cost of also updating the

fire station and building a parking garage to be revealed at the

meeting.

With the newer buildings, there are potential savings, as the

renovated city hall is expected to be less costly to operate. There’s

also been talk that a more efficiently laid out city hall would make

city workers more productive. There’s suggestions that the new

parking structure will bring in dollars.

None of those arguments are convincing opponents of the plan, who

have come together as Newporters for Responsible Government. The

group has obvious ties to the controlled-growth and, in many

respects, anti-city-government Greenlight movement. Those ties may

not be official, but the Newporters people run in the same circles as

Greenlight -- and even have been endorsed by Greenlight council

candidates.

Actually, there’s another way to put it: Those ties are as

official as the $40-million to $60-million price tag that opponents

have saddled the project with at this early stage.

That big, ballooning number looms behind the talk of the “Taj

Ma-City Hall,” a wonderful piece of political shorthand that, I

suspect, we’ll see more and more of as the debate continues. Expect

to see it on signs throughout the city, if the project were ever to

go to a public vote -- which isn’t required and doesn’t, at this

point, seem terribly likely.

The last time I heard someone mention the “Taj Ma-City Hall” I

suddenly recalled the unhappy ending to the Taj Mahal story. Everyone

knows that the Indian emperor Shah Jahan had the towering white

edifice built as a mausoleum to his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died in

1631 while giving birth to the couple’s 14th child.

That work, which took about 20 years, drained the kingdom’s

treasury, and in 1657, when Shah Jahan fell ill, a son seized the

opportunity, imprisoning his father and taking the throne. Shah Jahan

remained in captivity (stories vary about how bleak this was) for

eight years until he died.

I’m sure there’s no lesson there for city leaders or for project

opponents.

That kidding aside, the most salient point I’ve heard against the

need for a new, expanded City Hall is whether Newport’s government

runs as efficiently as it should -- or even as efficiently as

residents tend to believe. A deep look at this issue could easily

stack Newport Beach residents’ love of their city-run services

against their love for limited, fiscally conservative governments.

Guessing which side wins that debate would be about as easy as

guessing, in early 2000, which side would win in a war between

Newport’s backing of business and development versus its feelings of

preserving the city as is.

* S.J. CAHN is the managing editor. He may be reached at (714)

966-4607 or by e-mail at [email protected].