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.
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