Open space not suited for hall

I admit it, I have become jaded, feeling that you cannot fight city hall, especially when it’s literally city hall. However, given that the powers that be are even considering moving the Newport Beach City Hall to dedicated open space, I must protest.

Please, folks, can we stop this in its tracks? Newport Beach has very little open space, and as I understand it, this open space (behind the Central Library) has long-forgotten native coastal sage scrub and other “weeds,” as one council member refers to our natural habitat areas.

If we have learned anything from New Orleans isn’t it that messing with the natural habitat can have really bad consequences? We may delude ourselves into thinking that one little plot of land doesn’t matter, but if we are not part of the solution, then we most certainly are part of the problem. To be a part of the solution, we should encourage our city leaders to take action that our national leadership has not, and we should be a positive force in the environment.

Our neighbor city, Irvine, is busy building wetlands to help protect us and is also one of the cities that have stepped up to the challenge of taking the Kyoto Protocol seriously, if not as a nation, then city by city.

I checked www.stopglobal warming.org to see if Newport Beach was listed as one of the cities that have stepped up to the plate for the environment, such as Irvine and some 35 other California cities. We were not listed.

As residents of one of the most beautiful coastal cities in the world, should we not be leaders in doing things right? So, while consideration is given to sights, let us not forget that architecture has come a long way and we have an opportunity to not only do no harm but to build to do good.

Please visit KOCE at www.koce.org and get a copy of “Greener Buildings, Bluer Skies.” It will tell us of a great opportunity to build green as it guides us through the Natural Resources Defense Council building in Santa Monica, another city here in our great state leading progressively into our future.

Last but not least, regardless of how any of us feel about the proposed city hall (should we or shouldn’t we build here or there, or spend this or that?) should we not vote on this being done at all? There is a petition being passed around that feels we should, and I must agree.

CHRISTIE WOOD

Newport Beach