ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Funny Business on Pierside

The importance of those unglamorous, technical laws that the Legislature routinely passes is being celebrated in Huntington Beach today where residents, concerned about good government and environmental safeguards, are breathing a sigh of relief.

Opposition has been growing to the controversial Pierside Village Project, which would allow several restaurants to be opened on the ocean side of Pacific Coast Highway, south of the pier. In a brazen move to get around protests, the City Council put the beach project on its agenda for Monday night. The strategy was to transfer project review to the city’s Redevelopment Agency--which is nothing more than the council wearing a different hat.

The Pierside project has a growing list of opponents because it would obstruct beach access and ocean view. The switch would have taken it away from the city Planning Commission, where it deadlocked 3 to 3 last week.

Even more critical, however, is that on the eve of city elections, moving the project to the agency’s jurisdiction would have put the beach lease out of reach of Measure C on Tuesday’s ballot. That citizens’ initiative calls for a public vote on the sale or lease of any city beach and parkland, and that could affect the fate of the project.

The council, except for Peter M. Green and Grace Winchell, has been supportive of the beach lease and, according to Green, was behind the move to switch jurisdiction. But an obscure state law that prohibits taking such a decision away from a planning commission beached the council’s ploy.

The city’s history of strong developer influence over council decisions, and the fear of losing irreplaceable public beachfront to private use prompted the ballot initiative in the first place. The council’s blatant effort to circumvent the measure and public judgment of its beach and parkland decisions makes it all the more apparent why Measure C is needed--and how important it is for Huntington Beach voters to cast a yes vote for its passage.