NEWPORT BEACH : 2 Groups Seek Recall of 3 on City Council

Two Corona del Mar homeowner associations are launching efforts to recall three City Council members who have supported an unpopular plan to build tollbooths along Newport Coast Drive.

Residents from the Harbor View Hills Homeowners Assn. and the Spyglass Hill Community Assn. are upset that council members John C. Cox Jr., Janice A. Debay and Mayor Clarence J. Turner are apparently undermining their efforts to remove several tollbooths from the west end of the future San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor, where it will overlap Newport Coast Drive.

Some residents are worried that the tollbooths will encourage thousands of motorists to bypass the tollway by traveling down residential thoroughfares and onto West Coast Highway through Corona del Mar.

“This will devastate our community. We will become a freeway and we don’t want that,” said Claire Schwan, president of the Spyglass Hill Community Assn., whose group agreed Tuesday night to begin the recall effort against the three council members. “We are trying to keep the area beautiful and lovely, and nobody is listening to us.”

Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) has prodded the state attorney general’s office into preparing an opinion on whether it is legal for the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency to impose tolls on what is now a free public road.

In addition, a council majority voted earlier this year to send a letter to the attorney general indicating that local residents were not adequately informed of the tollbooth placement and asking the state to intervene.

But Turner, Cox and Debay--who were in the minority on that vote--then wrote a letter to the attorney general contradicting the council majority’s position. For that reason, residents are now eager to vote them out of office.

“We feel that it is time for our City Council members to stand behind the citizens here,” said Yvonne Houssels, president of the Harbor View Hills Community Assn. and an organizer of the recall effort.

Debay acknowledged Wednesday that she is concerned about the recall campaign, but she also said that the effort “is not meaningful” and only serves to “divide the community.”

Turner and Cox could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Houssels acknowledged that her group is unsure of how to mount a recall effort and does not know if it can get the measure placed on either the June or November ballot. The group is still studying strategies for the campaign and has not yet begun to collect the necessary signatures to get the recall measure on the city ballot.

The tollway agency has maintained that the tollbooths are necessary to generate revenue to help pay back the project’s bondholders. Agency officials also assert that the controversial tollbooths on Newport Coast Drive were included in the $1.1-billion project’s environmental report and that the public was adequately notified of the plan.