Here are a few items the council...

Here are a few items the council considered Tuesday:

TREE AWARD

The city was presented with the Sterling Award by the National

Arbor Day Foundation. The award recognizes the city’s excellence in

tree planting and maintenance, forestry education, funding and other

areas.

WHAT IT MEANS

Newport Beach becomes only the third city in California and the

15th nationwide to receive the exclusive award. The city also is a

“Tree City USA” for 2004, an honor it has received for 15 consecutive

years.

STREAMING

VIDEO CONTRACT

City Council members approved a $42,367 contract with Granicus

Inc. to provide streaming video of council meetings online. The city

also will purchase $7,000 worth of electronic hardware to set up the

streaming video, and it will spend $1,400 a month in ongoing

maintenance costs.

WHAT IT MEANS

Viewers will be able to watch council meetings live from their

computers or call them up later at the click of a mouse to see who

said what and how council members voted.

CITY TO OWN

5 ‘VIEW PARKS’

The city will become the owner of several pieces of county land

including five small “view parks” in Newport Coast and open space in

Buck Gully and Los Trancos and Muddy Creek canyons. The council

agreed to take over the property from the county, which wants to

streamline its administrative responsibilities.

WHAT IT MEANS

The Orange County supervisors still must approve the land

transfer, but once they do the city will be able to do more frequent

maintenance at the parks. While owning the land will cost Newport

Beach a little more, the upside is additional revenue from cellular

phone towers placed in some of the parks.

-- Compiled by Alicia Robinson