V-plan backers want supervisor’s help
Deirdre Newman
NEWPORT-MESA -- Supporters of an alternative El Toro airport with
revised runways launched an e-mail campaign on Thursday to try to get
their initiative on the fast track for the November ballot.
The New Millennium Group is encouraging supporters to bombard the
three pro-airport supervisors with e-mails so theywill place the
Reasonable Airport, Park and Nature Preserve Initiative on the ballot.
The so-called reasonable airport, also known as the V-plan, calls for
realigning the runways into a V shape with flights departing to the
southwest toward Newport Coast and landing over the mountains to the
north of the closed Marine base.
The initiative faces a tough hurdle, however, as a decade worth of
airport planning by the county was rejected by voters when Measure W, the
Great Park initiative, passed in March.
Both Newport Beach and Costa Mesa city officials have dropped out of
the pro-El Toro fight, even declining to sign on to a lawsuit that
challenges Measure W.
Additionally, the Navy announced the day after the election that it
was considering selling the land piecemeal. Officials from the city of
Irvine are champing at the bit to snap it up.
Still, the group has been gathering petitions to get the initiative
on the ballot themselves, but members would not disclose how many
signatures they have obtained so far.
El Toro airport opponents scoff at the e-mail campaign, charging it’s
just a desperate attempt to compensate for a lukewarm reception to the
group’s petition drive.
“We’ve had four El Toro initiatives, and all four have gone on the
hard way -- through petitioning,” said Leonard Kranser, director of the
Committee for Safe and Healthy Communities. “And I see no reason why,
after we’ve had four initiativesthrough petitions, that these guys should
get a free ride because they’ve been unable to get enough public support
to get on through the petitioning route.”
V-plan supporters, though, say getting the supervisors to do it
instead accomplishes two important goals.
First, it would allow the group to save the money it is expending
during the petition drive and use it instead during the informational
phase of the campaign.
“We won’t have enough money for a campaign at the rate we’re going,”
said Bob McGowan, a member of the New Millennium Group. “We’re going to
have to go up against developers.”
McGowan said it’s incumbent upon the three pro-airport supervisors --
Cynthia Coad, Jim Silva and Charles Smith -- to rally to the New
Millennium Group’s cause and give voters yet another chance to approve an
airport.
“It doesn’t cost them anything to put it on the ballot,” McGowan said.
“After spending $55 million on the wrong plan, they could at least say,
‘let’s give it a shot for the right plan.”’
Supervisor Silva was in Washington, D.C., and could not be reached for
comment for this story. The supervisors have until August to decide
whether to put the initiative on the ballot.
* Deirdre Newman covers education. She may be reached at (949)
574-4221 or by e-mail at o7 deirdre.newman@latimes.comf7 .
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