Friends of OASIS Forum -My Answers

My answer:

The new General Plan Housing Element that will be considered by the City Council on September 13, confirms the moderator's statement, indicating on page 2-3 that between 2010 and 2018 all age groups in Newport Beach under 45 years decreased in numbers, while the number of residents 65+ increased by 4.4%, ending at 22.7% of the total population.

Although the line items related to seniors are hard to find, the City's recently approved 2022-2023 budget shows roughly $3.3 million being spent on the OASIS center with about $560 thousand of that offset by class fees and room rental charges, and another $60 thousand provided by the Friends from their membership fees.

To the best of knowledge there has been no public review of the adequacy of these numbers for many years: staff simply presents a number similar to the year before and, being hidden in the budget, the Council rubberstamps it. And since the OASIS-generated revenues appear to be mingled with the rest of the City's "general fund" it is not entirely clear staff is conscious of the agreement between the City and the Friends whereby all revenues generated at OASIS are supposed to be spent of senior services.

I support the idea of additional community services on the west side of Newport Beach, but as I pointed out, according to a City staff report, the original recognition of the need for a senior center seems to have come from a 1970's Council member who convinced her colleagues to appoint a 16-member advisory committee to evaluate community needs and make a recommendation for spending the federal community development block grant money that was available at the time.

Since not all seniors are active participants in OASIS, it might be time to reconvene such a panel to evaluate our seniors' current needs and how they could be better addressed.

As I indicated, I am in the age group that would normally enjoy the programs offered at OASIS, but watching the City meetings and those other agencies affecting us, such as the airport administration and Coastal Commission has not left a lot of time for recreation since I started watching them in 2009.

Like most people in Newport Beach, I am aware of at least some of the programs available at OASIS through the quarterly Newport Navigator publication mailed out by our Recreation and Senior Services Department, as well as (in more detail) from the City website and the joint City/Friends monthly newsletter -- none of which, oddly, seem to mention the candidates forum.

The highest priority issue I identified was the City's need to deal with the large new housing requirement being imposed on it by the state, which turned out to be the subject of the next question (which see).

Because issues change and the new ones can't be predicted, my highest personal priority is making participation in our City government more welcoming than it is now.

That is an area in which improvement is always possible, but in which in recent years, in many areas, we have seen backsliding rather than improvement.

As one example, over the time I have been watching:

• The hour for City Council meetings has been moved from 7:00 p.m. to a variable and unpredictable hour, often in the afternoon or early evening when people are working or having dinner

• Public comment opportunities have been reduced from 5 minutes to 3 minutes

• Members of the public are no longer allowed to "pull" items from the consent calendar for separate discussion and vote, and are given a single 3 minutes to comment on the entire consent calendar, sometimes containing dozens of items

• Closed sessions are held without the public knowing what the Council is discussing or what the outcome was

All of those could be easily corrected.

It is important to understand that despite Newport Beach being a more desirable place to live than most other parts of Orange County, it is expected, under the state mandate to provide the same fraction of low-income housing as every other part of the County. This means that while the new mandate seems burdensome everywhere, it is especially burdensome in Newport Beach because, without government subsidies, the free market will require a very large number of higher-priced units to support the affordable ones. So the already formidable 4,845 unit mandate may turn into a much larger number, not to mention the new non-residential development needed to support the greatly increased population.

I hope some of the lower income requirement can be met with affordable senior housing (which ties this in to Question 1). And the Housing Land Trust that seems in the works may be able to secure grants to make some of that possible.

As where the new housing would go, the Council (through an appointed committee working with staff) has identified potential locations, as described in the General Plan Housing Element about to be adopted.

My biggest concern is with the current Council's seeming intent to put its response to a Greenlight vote in March 2024, with no plan as to what to do if voters reject the plan.

My fear is this could lead to state litigation invalidating Greenlight. That could completely remove the initiative that since 2000 has served the City well by keeping both residential and commercial development at manageable levels.

My observation is that: (1) Greenlight (which is Section 423 of our City Charter) contains a clause stating "This section shall not apply if state or federal law precludes a vote of the voters on the amendment;" and (2) the Environmental Impact Report required to adopt the new housing plan is required to evaluate alternative plans.

So my idea would be to put at least two plans on the ballot, with an understanding the public will be directing the Council to adopt the one receiving the greatest number of votes, even if it is not the majority that Greenlight would normally require. Since something would be adopted this would presumably avoid litigation from the state, thus preserving Greenlight, just as it is now, to be applied to any future additions to the adopted plan.

I feel uniquely qualified to comment on the noise part of this question because:

• I have lived for 42 years directly adjacent to the initial part of the southbound departure path over the Upper Back Bay

• My PhD in physics allows me to understand the details of the Airport's noise monitoring data

• I have attended all the noise meetings at the Airport since 2011

I am also intimately familiar with the Settlement Agreement limiting regularly-scheduled commercial activity, as well as the Access Plan it relates to, and the County's General Aviation Noise Ordinance extending some limitations to private and non-regularly-scheduled commercial operations (known as "General Aviation").

The City's tools for "mitigating" the noise, especially outdoors, are very limited, so it seems important not to over-promise in this area. Marginal improvements may be made by modifying departure procedures, but the only real long-range hope is that technological improvements in quieting aircraft design will outweigh increases in numbers.

And the largest threat of increased numbers comes from the general aviation jets (both private and chartered) through the Airport's General Aviation Improvement Program.

The curfew for those is based on noise only, with no limitation on numbers, which at present are mercifully low during the curfew hours, apparently reflecting a lack of demand at those times. Since flights departing or arriving at odd hours are likely to be connecting to distant parts of the globe, one thing that might keep the numbers low is keeping JWA from adding a customs facility that would be accessible during the curfew hours.

The airport's recently launched Fly Friendly program will hopefully educate general aviation pilots about the community's sensitivity to noise, including during curfew hours,

Regarding "ash and debris," that is a subject I am much less familiar with, but my understanding is the greatest health threat comes from ultrafine particles we cannot see at all. Again, the main hope would seem to be technological improvements allowing the gradual replacement of existing planes with newer, more efficient and cleaner engines -- including the conversion to cleaner fuels of the small, private propeller-driven planes that currently burn leaded "aviation gas."

Intuitively, since there is more effective dispersion if the pollutants are released at higher altitudes, one would guess that steeper takeoffs resulting in higher altitudes over much of the City would be helpful. But it is possible the steeper takeoffs might release more pollutants, negating the improvement or even worsening the impact on those closest to the airfield.

What I do know about aircraft pollution is that City staff has been very secretive about various studies it has commissioned in response to citizen concerns, their theory being that publicity about those concerns would lower property values. A single City-paid report from 2010 has been publicly posted under "Studies" on the City's JWA Documents and Resources page. A contract for a literature study by a UCI professor was cancelled before it began. And the results of subsequent follow-up studies, believed to have been commissioned with our tax dollars in support of the City's opposition to the FAA's NextGen departure changes and JWA's General Aviation Improvement Program, have never been publicly released.

In my view, traffic engineering is an example of an issue for which council members should expect solutions to be offered by the professional staff we hire and not generally come into office with their own personal plan to "resolve."

That said, I thought our City's staff and Council did not engage themselves sufficiently in the development of the Southern California Association of Government's new regional transportation plan for 2024-2050: Connect SoCal. That seems unfortunate to me both because much of the traffic in Newport Beach is regionally-driven and because the Connect SoCal studies were important determinants of how the state's Regional Housing Needs Assessment allocations (see Question 4) were distributed.

I am also bothered that we currently have a new General Plan Circulation Element being pushed through by staff ahead of the remainder of the General Plan Update. While there has been some effort to solicit public input on this, that occurred mostly at the height of the COVID pandemic and involved a small part of the public. What especially bother me is that the current plan, adopted in 2006, made clear predictions about the changes in roads and intersections that it was anticipated would be necessary to accommodate the growth allowed by the remainder of that General Plan. The new Circulation Element appears to contain only policies and does not inform the public of the physical changes those policies may dictate.

I am guess "temporary housing" is the moderator's term for what our City calls Short Term Lodgings (and most others call Short Term Rentals).

As with Question 6, this, and especially the "how to increase" aspect, seems to me to be an area in which Council members, rather than beginning with their personal idea of a solution, would be wise to start with suggestions from the professional staff that implements the existing policies.

But as a former candidate said some years ago, when seeking advice from staff, Council members should start with the goal they want to achieve, and ask the staff not "can we get there?" (with the possible answer "we can't") but rather "tell me what we have to do to get there!"

The literal answer to the present question would seem to be "hire more enforcement officers."

But f the question is suggesting there is already adequate staff, but they are willfully not enforcing the regulations past Councils have established, then that is a management problem.

I have heard some of our present Council members respond to citizen concerns of that kind by saying "the Council can't tell the police [or other departments] what to do - they report to the City Manager, not the Council." I find that inadequate in many respects. For the Council sets the policy framework within which the City Manager and all the other employees work. If the Council has enacted the policies the people want, but the people see them not being enforced, then it is the Council's responsibility to hire a City manager who will see they are enforced as the people want. That, in my view, is what the Council-Manager form of government we have in Newport Beach is all about: the people, through their elected representatives make the laws the people want, and a professional staff, which includes enforcement officers, is hired to execute them.