Residents tire of long debate over city hall location

The city hall-park issue seems to have divided Newport Beach residents as deeply as any issue, prompting responses from some who don’t usually bother to write to the City Council or the newspaper.

The search for a city hall site has been underway since 2005, but the latest twist is a possible ballot initiative on whether to build on a 12-acre park site next to the city’s central library on Avocado Avenue.

The land has been reserved as a park since 1992, and the council has on three occasions voted against using the park site for anything but a park. But architect Bill Ficker, a longtime city resident who has rarely been involved in politics, said he and other supporters of building on the park site will try to get the issue on the February ballot.

That’s good news to resident Dwight Ryan, who said he rarely goes to City Hall but would like to see the issue settled.

“It just as been an annoyance to me as we’ve gone through the months here that a number of sites have been looked at and there’s never an agreement reached,” Ryan said.

While he recognizes that council members should be able to make decisions without having to constantly turn to voters, he said, “in this case they’ve forfeited that.”

But Ficker’s persistence has led others to question his motives. Janet Murphy wrote a letter to the council Tuesday to share a piece of her mind, and she said one of the things she asked was, “Who is running the city of Newport Beach, the elected council or Bill Ficker?”

The council has already said no to using the park site for a city hall, Murphy said, so the issue doesn’t belong on the ballot.

“When you don’t like someone’s answer, you don’t just keep coming back, coming back, coming back,” she said.

Iryne Black said she thinks ballot initiatives should only be used in rare circumstances, and this isn’t one of them.

“I don’t care about City Hall. I don’t go to the City Hall very often,” she said, but she was still riled enough about the issue to send an e-mail to the Daily Pilot.

Councilman Ed Selich’s proposal to build a city hall on an Orange County Transportation Authority park-and-ride site in Newport Center is “the best I’ve heard,” she said.

And there are others, such as Jane Tucci, who wants to see a city hall on the park site but thinks the council should make the decision.

“I talk to so many of my friends and they say, ‘Why don’t they just do it?’ ” Tucci said. “I live very close to it, and I just don’t see what the big deal is.”

Although she said she never goes to City Hall, she sent city officials an e-mail Tuesday about her thoughts because “I’m just tired of seeing it in the paper.”

A poll Ficker commissioned, taken last week, showed 58% of the 300 likely voters polled think a new city hall is needed; 52% had heard of Ficker’s plan; and 82% said they want the chance to vote on it.

The poll was taken by Washington, D.C., firm Wilson Research Strategies and had a 5.7% margin of error, according to the firm. Others have said the poll was tailored to produce those responses.

What voters would do at the ballot, if the issue makes it there, is open for debate. “I would vote yes,” Ryan said, while Black maintained that because of existing traffic problems by the library, “it’s not going to win.”