The City's Aviation Committee is expected to meet in the Community Room on Monday evening from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.  

However, agendas disclosing the topics to be discussed are rarely posted before the end of business on Friday, and quite frequently the announcement is that the meeting has been cancelled.

Look for details here. 

The City's Aviation Committee is expected to meet in the Community Room on Monday evening from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.  

However, agendas disclosing the topics to be discussed are rarely posted before the end of business on Friday, and quite frequently the announcement is that the meeting has been cancelled.

Look for details here. 

The Corona del Mar Residents Association will be holding its monthly meeting (the last for 2022) in Classroom 2 at OASIS from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m.

The featured speaker will be Tom Johnson, publisher of the online-only paper Stu News Newport, who will be providing his analysis of the November 8 election results.

The public is welcome. Details here.

From 6:00 to 7:00 p.m., the City will be hosting a presentation in the Community Room about the homeless services provided by the Share Our Selves facility in Costa Mesa.

Details here. 

The Newport Beach City Council will be holding its first post-election meeting starting at the (unfortunately early for many people) hour of 4:00 p.m.

The City Clerk posts the agenda, which now includes links to the written comments on selected items that I submitted Monday evening.  

Newport Beach voters will be selecting four new City Council members from four of the seven districts to serve for four year terms. 

They will have three candidates to choose between from District 3 (west and north sides of Back Bay), one of whom is me. For details on how to vote, 

Voting started in October and ends at 8:00 p.m. on November 8.  

For directions on how and where to vote in Newport Beach, see our City Clerk's website.

City Manager Grace Leung will be speaking at 7:45 a.m. in the Friends Room at the Newport Beach Central Library, updating the public on her goals for the coming year and key city initiatives and projects. 

This is part of the Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce's monthly Wake Up! Newport series.  Details here.

For those unable to attend live, the series is recorded and can be viewed later and on NBTV, but questions can be asked only in person.

The City's tiny three-member General Plan Update Steering Committee will be meeting in the City Council chamber at 6:00 p.m. 

According to the agenda, "A presentation will be made regarding a potential public-private partnership that would focus on a community planning effort for the Airport Area."

No further details have been provided.

Interesting fact:  While the City is embarking on a comprehensive update of its General Plan, the City has no printed copies of the current Plan available for review.  All the public has access to is a webpage on which what claims to be the current Plan can be viewed as 77 separate files, or a single file that turns out to not be up to date. 

The City Council will be holding its second regular business meeting for the month of October starting at the unusually early hour of 4:00 p.m.  on Tuesday,  October 25. 

As revealed when the agenda was posted on Thursday, October 20, at 4:00 p.m., there will be several weighty items for the Council to consider, with no study or closed sessions preceding them.  Among those items:

• Reconsideration of decision made at the October 11 meeting regarding the Tennis Club at Newport Beach's requests for General Plan, Planned Community and Development Agreement amendments (1602 E. Coast Hwy)

• Possible approval of the Lido House hotel's request to expand and take over the abandoned Lido Fire Station site.

• Adoption of an updated General Plan Circulation Element

You can find the summary agenda and directions for participating here.  Although one would not guess from that, it is also possible to download the full 1,063 page agenda packet as a single file. 

I submitted written comments on selected items by the 5:00 p.m. Monday deadline described in the directions. 

I am the only candidate to have done that, and will likely be the only non-incumbent candidate to say anything at the meeting.

Several candidates, including me, were invited to address the Newport Harbor Exchange Club at its noon luncheon, held at the Newport Beach Yacht Club (by the entrance to the Balboa Island bridge). Other candidates had spoken at earlier meetings.

I expect to be at the Newport Island End of Summer Extravaganza in their park, where candidates have been invited to speak at around 3:30 p.m.

I expect to be at the City Council meeting where, at 4:00 p.m. staff will be presenting proposed revisions to the Circulation Element of our City's General Plan.  See the agenda for details.

My neighbors held a "Meet & Greet" event for me on my home street -- Private Road, off Irvine Avenue on the west side of the Upper Back Bay.

It was held in our shared park and pool area on Sunday, October 2, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m.

It was fun, with everyone invited!

The Bayside Village Community Association invited council candidates to make presentations at their board meeting, 10:00 a.m. in the Bayside Village Clubhouse.

The Corona del Mar Residents Association hosted their biennial council candidate forum in the Evelyn Hart Event Center at OASIS (801 Narcissus Ave). 

A  gathering from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. was followed by the event from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m., moderated by Good Morning Newport personality Alex Crawford. 

Three groups on Balboa Island -- the Balboa Island Improvement Association, the Little Balboa Island Property Owners Association and the Balboa Island Merchants Association --  hosted a council candidate forum at the island Fire Station, 124 Marine Ave.

It ran from 8:30 to 10:00 a.m. with questions asked by the Presidents of the three associations.

Speak Up Newport devoted their September monthly meeting to a council candidate forum. It was held in the Community Room adjacent to the Council Chambers at City Hall (100 Civic Center Drive). The program was accessible via Zoom.  And it will be broadcast and available for later streaming on NBTV. 

 See SUN's announcement for details: the reception started at 5:15 p.m., followed by the program from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m.

The City Council will be holding a study session about "fractional home ownership" at 4:00 p.m.,  followed by its regular business meeting starting no earlier than 5:30 p.m. (the actual hour has become unpredictable).  See City's full agenda here and in-depth description in Stu News Newport.

Fractional home ownership is a controversial scheme that purports to allow the functional equivalent of timeshare-type short-term lodgings in areas where Newport Beach would not normally allow them. At a November 2021 study session, our staff told the Council, in essence, that they were legally distinct from timeshares and would be difficult or impossible to regulate. Now it seems further investigation has revealed other cities do indeed treat them the same as timeshares. 

The only separate item of business at the regular meeting will be the re-adoption of the City's new General Plan Housing Element. This document commits the City to planning to add more than 4,845 new dwelling units over the next eight years, but likely far more since roughly half the new units need to be available to lower income families in the County, and it may require approval of a much larger number of higher-priced units to subsidize them (numbers range up to 20,000 or more). The proposed Housing Element contains many policies written and added by City and state staff with little or no public input.

Everything else is on what is called the "Consent Calendar," which is usually adopted by a single vote without any discussion by the Council members.

This particular Consent Calendar contains contradictory items:  Item 5 initiates an effort to reduce the bulk of the Municipal Code and Council policies;  while Item 3 proposes to add thousands of words to that code, attempting to restate the state regulations regarding the award of so-called "density bonuses" -- extra residential units allowed to a developer promising at least some affordable ones.

Item 14 is the City's response to a recent Orange County Grand Jury report on the response to homelessness. And Item 16 seeks Council approval of a somewhat muddled proposal for three citizens to select up to 30 of their fellow citizens to serve on a General Plan Update Advisory Committee. 

Since 2021, a controversy has been simmering in Newport Beach, and countywide, over a private fence that intrudes into the Upper Newport Bay Nature Preserve public park lands, and the County's attempt to sell to the politically-well-connected adjacent homeowner the patch of public land behind the fence, which the County did not have legal authority to do.

Not only did more than 1,300 County residents send in paper petitions protesting the sale and demanding removal of the fence, but it developed the County could not legally have sold the land without multiple state approvals which it did not have. The County has since received a Grand Jury Report, and Notices of Violation from both the California Coastal Commission and the California State Lands Commission criticizing the attempted sale and ordering removal of the fence.

I was a co-plaintiff in an Orange County Superior Court case, Susan Skinner vs Orange County Board of Supervisors, Case No. 30-2021-01220379-CU-WM-CJC, challenging an inadequately notice closed session in which the Supervisors apparently secretly voted to direct County staff to take no action to remove the fence.

Although no one would know without asking, Item SCS3 on the Board's September 13, 2022, "supplemental agenda" appears to be another attempt to hide from the public the discussion of this item of great public interest.

Given the fence benefits a single private land owner, it is difficult to comprehend what the Board would have left to discuss about removal of the fence, let alone privately, in the face to the petitions, and multiple orders.

Scheduling a private discussion without clear notice is not transparency!

See coverage in Voice of OC.

The Newport Heights Community Association hosted a Council candidates forum from 5:30 to  7:30 p.m. in the Youth Center at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, 600 St. Andrews Road Place (across the street and just south of Newport Harbor High).

Unlike most other forums, the candidates will give 5-minute introductions, after which the floor will be thrown open for audience questions.

Next Up Newport and SPON hosted a Council candidates forum from 4:00 to  6:00 p.m. in the Harbor View Homes Clubhouse at 1854 Port Westbourne Place, with Stu News Newport publisher Tom Johnson as the moderator.

After a nicely catered "meet 'n' greet" from 4:00 to 4:20,  there was a program of questions from the moderator, followed by a continuation of the "meet 'n' greet" if any time remains. 

I have a copy of the questions asked, and will be posting my answers as time permits.

After not meeting since July 21, the Planning Commission will be considering a relatively full agenda on September 8, including:

• A recommendation to Council on adopting a new General Plan Circulation Element, which, for unclear reasons, is being pushed forward before the rest of the General Plan is finalized. 

• A recommendation to Council on a new proposal for the Tennis Club property in Newport Center's Corporate Plaza West that will require a General Plan amendment and many other approvals. A smaller proposal was approved in 2012 without bothering to amend the General Plan and hence without counting the development it added toward the Greenlight quotas. Now that the General Plan is finally being amended, the combined development being approved would easily require a Greenlight vote. Yet to slip this through without the required voter approval, staff is claiming the Commission need consider only the amount this adds, not to the current General Plan, but to the previous proposal. So 41 bungalows and a large clubhouse are being added as if they were just 14 rooms. This is part of a pattern of City staff and elected officials playing fast and loose with our voter-imposed rules to avoid the public votes on new development the people thought they had required.

• Discussion of possible changes to the City's Residential Care Facilities regulations. Unfortunately, staff has provided no indication of what it might be recommending -- 

The Corona del Mar Chamber of Commerce will be hosting a Council candidates forum at the Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club  (1601 Bayside Drive ) beginning  with a reception at 7:30 a.m.  The program runs from 8:00 to 9:30 a.m.  See the Chambers' announcement.

Note:  this hearing regarding this item (as well as the other Newport Beach Item 13b) has been postponed -- likely to the October meeting.

As Item 11a on its September 7 agenda, the California Coastal Commission was to be considering a City request to add Transfer of Development Rights provisions to our municipal code for the coastal zone. 

The request is troubling for at least two reasons:

1. This is an example of a completely staff-driven policy proposal, written for the benefit of unknown parties, and about which no one on the Council has publicly ever made a comment, asked a question or suggested the slightest modification.

2. Even without this code, the City has not only already approved transfers of development rights in the coastal zone, but misused the to evade the Greenlight protections we the people added to our City Charter by initiative in 2000. Greenlight requires staff to separately track Council-approved increases in traffic , commercial square footage and residential units above the limits last approved by the people in the City's General Plan. Adopting a "lets see what we can get away with if we don't get sued" attitude, staff has used TDRs to create a sort of shadow General Plan, approving things voters never approved while claiming those approvals don't need to be tracked because, in their view, a TDR is not a change in the General Plan requiring Greenlight scrutiny. Those include where the voter-approved plan continues to show a hotel (a commercial use), some of the rooms have been used to justify building residences elsewhere that voters never approved. Similarly, where the voter-approved Plan  continues to show tennis courts, staff has surreptitiously used TDR's to allow some of those courts to be built as hotel rooms never approved by voters.  None of these changes to the general plan accomplished through TDR's are counted in the Greenlight tracking.  

The Friends of OASIS hosting at Newport Beach Council Candidates forum in the Evelyn Hart Event Center (801 Narcissus Ave, Corona del Mar) with the doors opening at 10:00 a.m. and an hour-long program starting at 10:30 a.m. Seven questions were asked and more complete answers from me to each are posted here.

As I normally do, in addition to the comments I made in person at the meeting, I submitted written comments on selected items the day before.

Here are some items of note  and concern that happened at the August 23, 2022, City Council meeting:

Pay raises for City employees:  The "consent calendar" (a set of items that are scheduled to be approved in bulk, on a single vote, without announcement, comment or discussion by the Council) included an item increasing the cost of living adjustments for City employees over the next three years from the previously-agreed-to 2% per year to 3% per year.  We were told these adjustments would, by the end of the three years, correct for this years 9% inflation.

Although there had been no previous public discussion of this, and none had been scheduled for this meeting, Mayor Kevin Muldoon cited the item as an example of the complete transparency with which the City handles such things. He said it had been carefully considered by the Council Labor Group and unanimously supported by the whole Council in closed session.

The problem with this is the public was unaware a Council Labor Group existed, let alone who was on it or when it was meeting, and the closed session appeared on an earlier agenda without the the slightest indication of what was to be discussed. In other words, the public had never before been told that a raise was being considered and had no opportunity to comment on it. That is not transparency. It is the opposite of transparency.

Revisions to Density Bonus ordinance: "Density Bonus" refers to extra residential units that ever changing state law requires cities to allow, above the number the city normally would allow if the developer promises to make affordable some of the other units they propose to build.   On August 23, staff asked the Council to introduce an ordinance updating the outdated density bonus provisions in our Municipal Code. Rather than suggesting the Council simply acknowledge the state law, staff proposes to completely restate it, adding thousands of words and dozens of pages to our codes.  Their purported reason for this was to create something internal City staff could consult when reviewing density bonus applications.  But it seems safe to assume no one on the Council or Planning Commission has actually read those thousands of words and dozens of pages to confirm they correctly restate the state law. Rather than having the Council approve something it has not read, it would seem City planning management could simply have produced an internal memo to educate their employees. Indeed, the idea they need an internal checklist has been suggested before, including by me. 

20 Bay Island Residential Redevelopment Appeal: The Council was scheduled to hear a neighbor's appeal of the demolition and replacement of the home at 20 Bay Island. Unfortunately, the appeal was withdrawn at the last minute, causing the hearing to be cancelled. This prevented the many other than the appellant who had written in from making their case that the City had mishandled the permit. Their argument was that the home to be demolished was a rare example of a private residence designed by a renowned architect of the era in which it was built.

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and our own Municipal Code may not have required the City to deny the demolition,  but they appear to have required it to investigate the claims and disclose to both the decision makers and the public the expected consequences of an approval and any possible ways of mitigating its bad effects.  It is, therefore, disturbing to see that this had been presented to and approved by the Planning Commission without the slightest hint the building to be destroyed might have historical significance.

See coverage in Voice of OC and video.

Since 2021, a controversy has been simmering in Newport Beach, and countywide, over a private fence that intrudes into the Upper Newport Bay Nature Preserve public park lands, and the County's attempt to sell to the politically-well-connected adjacent homeowner the patch of public land behind the fence, which the County did not have legal authority to do.

Not only did more than 1,300 County residents send in paper petitions protesting the sale and demanding removal of the fence, but it developed the County could not legally have sold the land without multiple state approvals which it did not have.

Despite the public outcry and the sale having been blocked, the Board of Supervisors appears to have directed County staff to leave the fence untouched (I am a co-plaintiff in an Orange County Superior Court case, Susan Skinner vs Orange County Board of Supervisors, Case No. 30-2021-01220379-CU-WM-CJC, demanding the Board publicly revisit that decision).

In June, the Orange County Grand Jury issued a scathing report criticizing the County's handling of this and requesting removal of the illegal fence.

Approval of County staff's proposed response -- denying any errors and refusing to remove the fence -- was Item S37J on the Supervisors' August 23 agenda.

Although others wrote in, I was only member of the public to speak at the meeting, questioning the response and asking for a better one.

The first of many forums was held in the Friends Room at the Central Library on the morning of August 18.

At the forum, I promised (and was the only candidate to promise) to posted more detailed and thoughtful written responses to each question asked.  The answers I promised can be found here.