City’s veto power is official

Newport Beach can officially block county attempts to expand John Wayne Airport, after Orange County supervisors and the City Council signed off on a unique city-county agreement Tuesday.

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

For its part, the city agrees to conform to airport-area land-use rules and promises not to try to annex any land that’s now part of the airport.

Supervisors voted, 3-2, to approve the agreement, with Supervisors Chris Norby and Lou Correa dissenting.

The agreement has been changed since Newport Beach City Council members approved it Oct. 10, so they took a new vote Tuesday and unanimously approved it.

The pact will not affect the existing settlement agreement, which caps the number of flights and passengers at John Wayne, sets curfews and is in effect though 2015.

Supervisor Bill Campbell said he voted for the agreement because he represents several cities that planes fly over before landing at John Wayne Airport, including Orange and Tustin, and they would be affected by airport expansion as much as cities in the takeoff path.

Since city officials started discussing the pact four years ago, it has been whittled to nearly nothing.

Last week, officials nixed two other provisions from the deal, both regarding Santa Ana Heights. One clause would have given the city sole power to decide whether to build a horse trail in the area, and the other allowed the city $500,000 from the heights’ redevelopment funds to build a park on a county-owned property at Mesa Drive and Birch Street.

Officials agreed to strip those provisions because of opposition on the board of supervisors, but those issues likely will get hashed out when the county talks about the future of the Santa Ana Heights redevelopment agency.

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