Newport council candidates cover funding measure, airport noise, development and more in first forum
Newport Beach City Council candidates took on new subjects like the Measure T ballot initiative and standing issues such as development and airport noise during the first forum of the 2018 election season Thursday.
All eight candidates vying for the four available seats participated in the forum, presented by the Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce at the Central Library.
The four incumbents strongly backed Measure T, which will ask voters to approve an amendment to Newport’s city charter to require 55% voter approval whenever the council wants to spend at least $50 million on capital projects using a financing method known as certificates of participation, or COP. The supporters were motivated by the $140-million price tag on the Newport Beach Civic Center, which was covered mostly with COPs.
“We did not need a City Hall like this. We just didn’t need it,” said Mayor Marshall “Duffy” Duffield, who is running for reelection in council District 3. “While you might like it, we didn’t need it.”
District 4 Councilman Kevin Muldoon said he wants to return spending power to the people.
“This money is taxpayer funds,” he said. “There are many other ways to finance projects if you don’t want to go to the vote by using cash, available cash.”
District 6 Councilman Scott Peotter said the idea of getting public approval for big spending isn’t new.
“I believe the ‘Taj Ma-City-Hall’ wouldn’t be like this if the council had to go to the voters before they borrowed $130 million of long-term debt that we cannot repay early even if we wanted to,” he said.
District 1 Councilwoman Diane Dixon said one of her 2014 campaign points was that voters should have been able to say whether they wanted the Civic Center, which with financing costs will cost more than double the original total.
The challengers in the race were mixed about Measure T.
Tim Stoaks, who is running against Duffield, said the matter needed more public and committee input.
Dixon’s challenger, Mike Glenn, said he’s wary of the city’s debt prospects and supports Measure T, adding that costs for major projects like a police station should be known well in advance.
“If we can’t budget for that and it comes up to us as a surprise, that’s a problem,” he said.
Roy Englebrecht, who is running against Muldoon, called Measure T a disingenuous attempt by the incumbents “to make themselves look good” and drum up campaign donations.
“I think the people that you elect represent you, and if they have the soul of this community, they will never overspend like they have in the past,” he said.
Joy Brenner, Peotter’s opponent, also said the measure is politically motivated and that if it were a good idea, city leaders would have done more homework.
“It’s very interesting, the irony. The City Council who has a track record of ignoring what the people want — the Museum House, Dave Kiff, port vs. harbor,” Brenner said, referencing a scuttled high-rise condominium proposal, the impending departure of the city manager and an attempt to get a new planning and development designation for Newport Harbor. “None of those actions did they want our opinion about.”
Dixon said one issue the council and most residents can be unified about is the impact of being close to Orange County’s John Wayne Airport.
She said local groups have been appealing directly to airlines to adjust takeoffs and use quieter, more technologically advanced planes.
“We’re talking to every single carrier,” she said. “They do not want Newport Beach to be hounding them.
“They’re responsive, they’re listening,” she added. “They will work with us in realigning their flight paths. It’s no longer an FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] issue, it’s a carrier issue.”
Stoaks, a longtime airport activist, said residents are talking to carriers as consumers, not potential plaintiffs.
“It’s a simple process of neighbor asking neighbor to do the right thing,” he said.
Muldoon said residents like those under the flight path in his district’s Bluffs neighborhood are rightfully upset about tighter departure paths over their homes.
“I’m hopeful that the way to this is through the airlines,” he said.
The candidates had different philosophies on development but largely seemed to agree on following guidelines like the city’s general plan, which is up for revision next year.
“If it’s outside of the general plan … it is not right for the council to make specific exceptions for their friends to develop properties,” Glenn said.
Brenner said she’s glad the general plan update will happen after the November election.
“I know when we turn the majority around on the council we will have a lot of citizens participating in the general plan update,” she said.
The topic energized Englebrecht, who took the audience on a verbal “road trip” through town to lament the loss of “billion-dollar views” to apartment and condo projects near Newport Center and Corona del Mar.
“Even if it meets the general plan, if it’s going to take another one of our billion-dollar views, we can’t let it happen,” he said. “Because if we let it happen, we’re not a great city anymore.”
Duffield said he has seen development displace marine-oriented harborfront businesses, even though the general plan supports marine businesses.
“I’m for, obviously, the general plan,” he said. “However, the general plan doesn’t seem to have a lot of teeth in it.”
Peotter, a former city planning commissioner, said he has long been a “property rights guy.”
“In general, if a project comes in and complies with the rule — that’s the general plan and the zoning [code] — I’m going to support it,” he said. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for us to sit there, put our fingers in the wind and decide those are our views, not the property rights of that particular owner.”
Thursday’s event was the first of eight planned Newport candidate forums. The next is at 6 p.m. Wednesday in the Marina Park Community Center at 1600 W. Balboa Blvd.
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