The view from Newport Beach

From the Newport - Costa Mesa Daily Pilot, Saturday, November 8, 1997

Pilot news is available on-line at: http://www.latimes.com/HOME/COMMUN/PAPERS/PILOT/NEWS/

NEWPORT BEACH -- The Airport Working Group says the city's approach to pushing for an airport at El Toro just doesn't fly. The Newport Beach-based citizens group, in a letter to Mayor Jan Debay last week, criticized the city for making little progress and withholding information about its efforts.

The admonishment focuses mostly on the way officials have handled a team of consultants the city hired in May for $15,000 per month. And the letter comes just as officials revealed the consultants' duties -- namely, developing a grass-roots pro-airport campaign -- after a struggle to keep them secret.

The locally based consulting company, Government Solutions, has been meeting with other cities' leaders, coordinating a speakers' bureau and producing promotional materials during its time with the city.

The Airport Working Group asked the city to respond to its concerns by last Monday, but officials are still drafting its answers, City Manager Kevin Murphy said. But the City Council on Monday may advance one of the group's recommendations: hiring a full-time staff member to handle airport-related issues.

Airport Working Group executive director Barbara Lichman said that will be great -- as soon as it actually happens. "We've had six months of waiting," she said. "It's just taking too long to get anything accomplished."

The city has spent $1.3 million in the fight for an airport at El Toro since federal officials announced in March 1993 that the base will close in 1999. The conflict has erupted into a bitter struggle between Newport Beach's desire to limit John Wayne expansion and South County cities' desire to preserve their quiet communities.

Since county supervisors voted in December to pursue airport plans at the base, the winds seem to have shifted in South County's favor: Anti-airport groups last month won a court case challenging the county report that led to the December vote. And just before that, they convinced supervisors to let them develop a non-airport alternative for the 4,700-acre site.

The 15-year-old Airport Working Group, founded to fight John Wayne expansion and a driving force in the county's move toward turning El Toro into a commercial airport, has taken matters more into its own hands lately. They're developing a web site, and they've hired their own community outreach expert. "We sort of didn't understand why nothing was being done," she said. "We didn't feel the speed at which they were acting was commensurate with the problem."

The group's letter also outlined other suggestions for changing the city's course:
* Drafting a more detailed list of tasks for consultants hired by the city to work on airport issues. * Requiring a more explicit accounting of the consultants' time.
* Laying down strict deadlines for the consultants' tasks.
* Communicating more with the consultants.
* Hiring a staff member to coordinate the El Toro effort and handle John Wayne issues.

Lichman stressed that the group has no problem with the consultants -- just with the way they're being directed. "It has got to be done, and it has got to be done now," she said. "This is the most important issue facing the city of Newport Beach."

Murphy wouldn't comment on the letter's individual recommendations other than to say Debay is writing a response. Meanwhile, the council will decide Monday whether Murphy should draw up a report detailing the new airport staff position -- how much it would pay, what it would specifically entail. "The council would probably want to fill that pretty fast," he said.

Click here for more from Newport Beach.