Picture foggy if Measure V fails

When Newport Beach voters decide on Measure V next month, they’ll essentially be determining how the city should be developed through 2025.

If it passes, it will overhaul the city’s general plan for the first time since 1988.

Supporters have worked hard to convey how the city will be shaped if Measure V passes. But what happens if it fails?

The easy answer is the existing general plan stays in place. But in the long run, the city will have to address the issue again.

This is the fourth in a series of stories about the general plan update and how it would affect the city.

Having a general plan is required by the state, and the California attorney general told Newport officials in 2000 and 2001 their plan needs to be revised, Newport Beach Assistant City Manager Sharon Wood said.

In practical terms, no Measure V means the potential for 30,467 more car trips per day and 461,224 more square feet of nonresidential building than Measure V allows, but also 1,149 fewer new homes.

Wood said the intersection improvements detailed in the general plan update would be paid for by developers — but the city couldn’t charge them fees or require them to set aside land for road upgrades that aren’t in the old plan.

What the City Council might do if the measure fails is murky. Council members could tweak the plan and put it on the ballot again, or revise it so it doesn’t have to go to a vote, said Councilman Steve Rosansky, a Measure V proponent .

“I don’t know that there’s been any official consideration of what’s going to happen if it doesn’t pass,” he said. “The bottom line is we’re going to be stuck with the existing general plan for a while…. Who wants to go to another vote and lose again?”

Voters should approve the measure, Rosansky said, “because it’s a better plan than what we have today.”

Measure V is on the ballot because of a city charter change known as Greenlight that Newport voters approved in 2000. That rule requires a public vote on development projects that add more than 100 homes, 40,000 square feet of building space or 100 peak hour car trips a day to the general plan.

While the new plan decreases the peak-hour car trips and square footage of nonresidential buildings, it far exceeds the threshold of added homes.

“If Measure V fails, people can start from the current traffic on the streets and vote on individual developments, and if they’re beneficial, pass them,” said Phil Arst, a member of the Greenlight residents group. Greenlight wrote the 2000 measure and is now pushing one that tightens the voter controls on development even further.

Arst’s group believes the success of Measure V will mean unacceptable increases in traffic and building density that will change the city’s character.

Even if voters reject Measure V, two other unknown quantities will help determine what would happen next.

Measure X, Greenlight’s initiative, would require a vote on any project in Newport that adds to existing development by more than 100 homes, 40,000 square feet or 100 peak-hour trips.

A statewide measure, Proposition 90, would allow property owners to sue local governments for changing zoning in a way that reduces their property values. In some cases, that’s exactly what Measure V does, so a successful Proposition 90 would render it nearly impossible to make large-scale changes to the general plan.

“The city would have to virtually call a halt to general planning because anything they do is subject to a damage claim,” Arst said.

Rosansky agreed, “In a Prop. 90 world, we’re going to be in worse shape even than with our existing general plan.”