EDITORIAL

So far, since last November’s election, the Newport Beach City Council

has done a good job of listening to its constituents, who spoke most

dramatically and clearly when they passed the slow-growth Greenlight

initiative.

In fact, complaints about an unresponsive council helped fuel the

drive to place restrictions on future growth in the city, making it clear

to most that the new council -- which added three members in Steve

Bromberg, John Heffernan and Gary Proctor -- had to change its ways,

especially when it comes to planning and development.

Simply put, the City Council needs to stop letting the character, look

and feel of the city slip away. Doing so, of course, is not so simple, as

illustrated by the council’s debate last week over a Planning Commission

proposal to require close review of new building on Corona del Mar’s

bluffs.

Competing beliefs in the importance of property rights and the need

for environmental protection clashed as council members tried to decide

whether the review would be fair to homeowners and consistent with city

regulations. In the end, they sent the proposal back to the Planning

Commission for more discussion, missing an opportunity to make a strong

statement about how Newport Beach will look in the coming years and

decades.

That statement does need to recognize the rights of homeowners, who

are paying millions of dollars to buy land in Corona del Mar.

But limitations on how large those new mansions can be are not

unreasonable, and property rights can only extend so far before they

infringe on the rights of others -- namely those neighbors who are still

in the bluff’s small, old bungalows.

The crafting of this statement, by virtue of the council’s action, is

now back in the hands of the planning commissioners, who should be

applauded for tackling the issue in the first place. They now should not

hesitate to recommend to the council a clear, precise and fair policy on

handling new home construction in Corona del Mar.