City Hall project picks up steam, sort...

City Hall project picks up steam, sort of

If this proposal for a new Newport Beach City Hall is a railroad

job, then the cart is in front of the engine.

I attended the outreach meeting at the Newport Beach Council

Chambers on Saturday and listened to a professional firm the city has

hired for more than $500,000 to reach out to the community and

present a proposal to examine the pros and cons of a new City Hall.

It was disturbing to attend a meeting, which could affect spending

millions of dollars of taxpayer money, with an underflow crowd of 17

people.

Four were City Council members and one represented the commercial

center next door. There were just 13 ordinary residents who showed up

for the “outreach” meeting.

Public notice of this meeting appeared to be one notice in the

Daily Pilot, and the city representative felt the Daily Pilot didn’t

seem much interested (no reporter present), and he also felt the

televising of the council meeting and the Newport Beach website would

help get the word out. I’m not sure how many people watch the

televised council meetings, and it would be interesting to know how

many hits the website gets about the proposed new City Hall.

What I heard is that the City Hall was built in several segments

and that it’s old, doesn’t meet earthquake or disability standards,

is crowded and is not constructed in a way that makes it

user-friendly. All of this may be true depending upon one’s opinion.

What I don’t hear is: Do the residents of Newport Beach want to

build and pay for a new City Hall, and what will it cost each

taxpayer on a yearly basis? Is the cart before the horse? I’m sure

there is a segment of this city that feels we are an important city,

we can afford the very best, and we are willing to pay for it. I tend

to wonder just how big that segment is.

At the last City Council meeting, our good mayor instructed the

firm to take advantages of the different community associations to

get the word out and get input from the citizens of Newport Beach.

Instead, what seems to be planed is three meeting at the City Council

Chambers on Saturday mornings.

Maybe the citizens don’t care about this issue. It just seems to

me if we the taxpayers are being asked to pay this cost, along with

future voters, we ought to be a heck of a lot more interested and

involved. And that means now.

BOB MCCAFFREY

Balboa Island

City needs resident opinion on City Hall

As discussed in the Forum “Watchdog” and “Q & A” on Sunday, it

appears as though the residents of Newport Beach are again going to

get another round of politician hogwash as it relates to the City

Hall rebuild-remodel-relocate issue.

I agree with Dolores Otting that the city has not promoted the

workshops sufficiently. I did receive a letter from the city a few

days before the April 2 meeting, no e-mail, and I barely noticed the

banner as I drove by City Hall one day.

Is Griffin Structures Inc. intending to use part of its $580,000

city contract to obtain polling information from the residents prior

to coming up with preliminary designs? It seems polling information

would be valuable since many residents will not be able to attend a

workshop.

As to City Manager Homer Bludau’s comments, I feel it is time to

discontinue empire building in the management of Newport Beach city

government. Not once did I read in his comments that the city (or

preferably an outside third party auditor) has produced a

comprehensive study measuring the costs and benefits of downsizing

the city departments and outsourcing work to private firms.

Wouldn’t this information also be valuable before building a Taj

Majal at taxpayer expense?

Finally, when asked where the money will come from, Bludau

responded that “... we would be looking at a bond issue that would be

paid over time, like a home mortgage. It would not result in any more

taxes or increased fees or charges to the public to help in paying

for it.”

Does this mean that the city is so flush with cash (now and in the

future), that it can service the debt on a $30-million bond offering

without increasing revenue?

I would like to review these assumptions.

ED LYON

Newport Beach

More than urban runoff hurts Back Bay

In regard to your Sunday editorial: “We must stop the pollution of

our waters.” I couldn’t agree more. And with the unusually heavy

rains, the runoff problem becomes crystal clear.

There is a far greater problem that the article does not address,

and that is the ever increasing amount of pollutants that are dumped,

daily, directly into the waters with every increase in gates and

passengers at John Wayne airport. Fran Robinson fought so hard to

preserve the natural beauty of the Upper Bay for generations to come,

but now with a couple gates here and a few more flights there, we are

slowly destroying the creatures that make this their home.

The time has come to stop this madness before it is too late. A

plan needs to be developed by the City Council and our state

legislature to begin reducing the number of flights at John Wayne.

Perhaps it would be easier if we just made a chart equating the

increase of flights/gates to which form of wildlife we are destroying

so the stupidity would be easier for everyone to see.

TREB HEINING

Newport Beach

Benefits of field lights ought to be clear

I’m encouraging the city of Costa Mesa to continue to have fields

at Kaiser School. I coached soccer for eight years in Costa Mesa,

Region 120.

I happen to be a mom of boys, and it was just a such a tremendous

opportunity to be able to meet my son’s friend, and as he’s now a

junior at Estancia High School, to know these families and to have

that. It’s such an important part of our community, especially coming

from someone whose son went to private school and into the public

school system. It provides a great opportunity for these kids to know

each other, and the lighted fields are so important.

One of the things the boys that I coached for years were so

excited to have was the fields with the lights. So the residents that

are complaining about that need to remember the kids and the program

and what it’s about: It’s not just competition and soccer; it’s about

these kids getting to know each other so that way when they get to

high school they are drug-free and alcohol-free and they’re not

drunken driving on our streets because they had a positive, safe

environment growing up in a city that supported them.

MICHELLE ARANT

Costa Mesa