BREAKING NEWS:

Newport Beach officially can block county attempts to expand John Wayne Airport, after Orange County supervisors signed off on an unusual city-county agreement today.

Known as the “sphere issues” agreement, the pact lets the city stop the county from acquiring land to add a second commercial runway or expand the existing one at the airport. It also says the city and county will cooperate on studies of services in the Upper and Lower Newport Bay.

Supervisors voted 3 to 2 to approve the agreement, with Supervisors Chris Norby and Lou Correa dissenting. Newport Beach City Council members will vote tonight on the agreement, which has been amended since they passed it unanimously Oct. 10.

Since city officials started discussing it four years ago, the pact has been whittled to nearly nothing. Last week, officials nixed two other provisions from the deal. One would have given the city sole power to decide whether to build a horse trail in Santa Ana Heights, and the other gave the city $500,000 to build a park on a county-owned property at Mesa Drive and Birch Street.

The approved agreement doesn’t cover much, but Newport officials still are pleased with it because they consider airport expansion one of the biggest threats to the city’s quality of life.

“We’d hoped that the sphere issues agreement would be a little more comprehensive, but we got the main item that we wanted to get,” Newport Beach Mayor Don Webb said.