Will voters have a say in city hall site?

Proponents of building a city hall on a park site next to Newport Beach’s central library will try to get the issue on the February ballot, architect Bill Ficker said Monday.

Ficker first proposed a city hall on the 12-acre park site last June, but the City Council has rejected the concept in three separate votes taken before and after Ficker’s plan surfaced.

He hasn’t filed the paperwork for a ballot initiative, and to qualify he’ll need signatures from 10% of the city’s nearly 60,000 registered voters.

But a poll he commissioned showed 60% of respondents would probably or definitely support putting a city hall on the park site. There would still be room for a smaller park.

The poll of 300 likely voters was conducted last week by Wilson Research Strategies in Washington, D.C., and had a margin of error of 5.7%, according to the firm.

“It’s extremely favorable,” Ficker said. “We [already] decided that we would go ahead and pursue the initiative, but the polling … would be the tipping point, I’d say.”

The council has been unable to decide on a city hall site since opening serious discussion on it in 2005. Residents balked at a plan to rebuild on the Balboa Peninsula site, so the council launched a study of other locations but found few that were both buildable and available.

Council members will vote tonight on whether to draw up a site plan for a city hall on an Orange County Transportation Authority bus terminal in Newport Center.

Ficker expects plenty of support in the community, but it’s not clear how much backing he’ll have from council members, who split 4-3 over a February vote to move ahead with building the park. Ficker is also suggesting the current city hall parcel be turned into a park.

Mayor Steve Rosansky has recently been a leading supporter of a city hall on the library park site, but he said Monday he doesn’t know if he’ll back a ballot issue.

“I still support looking at the idea of a city hall at the park,” he said, but added, “I’ve never been a big fan of ballot-box planning, and I don’t know what the initiative … is going to say.”

Councilman Ed Selich, who strongly opposed Ficker’s city hall plan, said some residents who were polled told him they thought the questions were “stacked” toward the city hall option.

“I think the City Council is elected to make decisions like this and not put it out to the people, unless enough people sign a petition and use that right” to vote on it, Selich said.

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