Greenlight is alive and well

Phil Arst and Tom Billings

Sixty-three percent of Newport Beach residents who registered

their opinions in a recent official city poll believe that more

development will lower their quality of life. This puts the

Greenlight principles that the city should be preserved as a

residential beach/bay community squarely on track with the wishes of

the majority.

Greenlight is a volunteer grassroots residents’ group staffed by

hundreds of volunteers. It has the core belief that residents should

have control over the destiny of the city. The Greenlight law, passed

in November 2000, provides residents with the voting power to control

new high-density developments that would otherwise turn the city into

another congested Santa Monica.

Recognition of this majority support for Greenlight principles was

also clearly evidenced in the last city council election. The

pro-development slate of candidates (Tod Ridgeway, Gary Adams and Don

Webb) acknowledged resident’s support of Greenlight’s principles by

never making counter-arguments that more development was good for the

city. Such a position would have lost them the election.

Instead, they hid their pro-development agenda and under the

political spin of Dave Ellis, their slick political campaign manager,

were caught using dishonest campaign methods (“Consultant cops phony

phone messages”, Daily Pilot Nov. 21). They also raised several

hundred thousand dollars to overcome the Greenlight residential

majority. The election was therefore not a test of Greenlight but

rather demonstrated that money, political spin and duplicity were

used to overcome the wishes and property rights of the majority of

the voters. Greenlight is proud that it ran an honest campaign and at

least did double the number of Greenlight representatives on the City

Council to two (Dick Nichols and John Heffernan) out of seven vs. the

four pro-development councilmen elected by Ellis political

campaigning.

So what is Greenlight’s future? Our ranks of dedicated volunteers

increased during the last election and we have welcomed to our

steering committee a group of eager young volunteers. We remain

committed to maintaining residents’ quality of life and property

values by stopping over-development and its resultant traffic

congestion. We seek to preserve parkland like Banning Ranch. Our

goals also include providing top-level police, fire and other city

services. We will pay for them by making the city operate more

efficiently, instead of growing excessively.

We will push for strong conflict of interest and election reform

ordinances to prohibit a repetition of the recent awarding of

lucrative city contracts to Ellis and then using him to manage the

voting councilmen’s own deceitful political campaigns and other such

abuses or appearances of abuses of the public trust.

Given the lack of both legitimacy and representation for the

residents in the newly elected city council, Greenlight is needed

more than ever to protect the will of 63% of the electorate. Our

biggest threat is that the “Team Ellis” council majority will pay

back developer contributors by sneaking excessive large developments

into the coming General Plan update. We will be on watch for their

attempts to overdevelop the city and will keep you informed so you

can help us maintain Newport Beach as the best place to live

anywhere.

* PHIL ARST is the head of the Greenlight residents group. TOM

BILLINGS is a new steering committee member.