Getting green out of the Great Park deal

Paul Clinton

Councilman Ralph Bauer wants Huntington Beach to share in any wealth

created by a Great Park, at the closed El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

To accomplish that, Bauer has pledged to lobby supervisors to include

the city in discussions about how an approximately $800,000 annual share

of park money would be spent.

At Monday’s council meeting, Bauer’s six colleagues agreed with him.

At an April 16 board of supervisors meeting, Chairwoman Cynthia Coad

cut a deal with South County Supervisor Todd Spitzer to receive the funds

in exchange for her support of Irvine’s annexation of the base.

Bauer, who said he was dismayed by the public horse trading, said he

worried that the funds wouldn’t leave Coad’s Fourth District.

Irvine has pledged to develop a Great Park at the vacant marine base,

after county voters supported Measure W.

“If there are to be benefits of the Great Park, there ought to be

benefits for the entire county,” Bauer said at Monday’s council meeting.

“It ought not to be one supervisorial district that benefits.”

On Tuesday, Coad pledged that the money, which would also include $2

million in state park bond money from South County, would be used for

smaller regional parkland in north and western sections of the county.

Coad said she has proposed creating a joint-powers agency to

administer the property tax revenue, which would continue for 100 years.

“It would be for [parks in] all North County cities,” Coad said about

the funds. “It would not just be given to cities.”

The money would go to fix an imbalance between open space in southern

and northern sections of the county. Right now, there is one acre of open

space for six South County residents and one for 249 North County

residents, Coad said.

Coad said the money would not be used to create large, regional parks.

Rather, it would be used for small neighborhood ones in the thickest of

the urban sprawl. Coad pointed to unincorporated Midway City on the

northern Huntington Beach border.