EDITORIAL:Harmony should be an asset to council

A host of pressing, important issues face Newport Beach and its new City Council. Where to build a new city hall. How to develop Banning Ranch. There will be the implementation of the just-approved general plan update. The fight to keep John Wayne Airport from expanding will not go away. And most recently, the existence of drug rehabilitation homes in Newport Beach has churned up residents.

The issues, combined, easily could represent a hornet’s nest of troubles, tribulations and stumbling blocks for the council, save for one change from this month’s election: There appears to be growing harmony on the dais.

“I think it’s going to be a council that’s going to be able to work well together,” Councilman Steve Rosansky, the only member of the seven-person council who didn’t have to run this fall, told the Pilot.

It is a promising prediction. A council that is able to press forward, united, on potentially divisive issues such as Banning Ranch and the drug rehab homes will have a better chance of producing long-lasting, meaningful solutions and results.

Working together, of course, should not be mistaken for working without debate and discussion — including deep disagreement. But these council members, including newcomers Michael Henn and Nancy Gardner, largely have shown the ability to debate through issues and then reach a consensus, even if it is not a united one. We trust they will continue in this vein.

It also will be important for this council to work with the community better than councils have in the past. There is the opportunity for healing of the rift that led to a group of residents forming the Greenlight group. With her roots in the city’s environmental groups, including some of City Hall’s toughest critics, Gardner seems the obvious person to work toward that healing. As such, she stands poised to be a defining figure in the coming years.

We believe she and her colleagues are up to the tasks ahead.