District ducks St. Andrew’s parking plan

Michael Miller

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District Board of Education has put

off ruling on a proposal by St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church to

expand the student parking lot of neighboring Newport Harbor High

School.

After a long public comment session at the board’s meeting

Tuesday, members voted 6 to 1 to postpone discussion of the plan

until the church resolved the issue of its expansion. In an official

recommendation, Supt. Robert Barbot said the controversy about the

parking lot stemmed largely from municipal, not educational, issues.

“The Board of Education should refuse to be placed in the

unintended nexus whirlpool which has been created by linking

additional parking at NHHS to the church’s application for

expansion,” Barbot wrote in a statement.

The board had met Tuesday to vote on the church’s proposal. If

members had supported the resolution with a two-thirds majority, the

district would have accepted bid proposals for the construction work,

then awarded a contract to the highest bidder on or after the board’s

May 10 meeting.

In the end, though, the board decided not to rule on the matter.

Tom Egan, the lone member who voted against tabling the St. Andrew’s

proposal, said he did so because he wanted to abandon the issue

entirely.

“A school is a unique institution,” Egan said. “It’s not a

business. It’s a place where people send their kids, and so it has to

be safe and stable and not have much controversy associated with it,

because parents get scared when the schools have problems of any

sort. When I saw, after all the testimony from both sides, that these

folks are at loggerheads, I didn’t see any compromise happening.”

With the proposal now in limbo with the school board, Newport

Beach Planning Director Patricia Temple said the church would likely

meet with city officials to determine its next step. Last December,

the Planning Commission approved a recommendation for the St.

Andrew’s expansion, but added the condition that the church needed a

parking agreement with the district.

“We will go back to the city,” said Herb Smith, the chief

operating officer for St. Andrew’s. “It’s unclear to us whether we’ll

go back to the Planning Commission or the City Council, but we’re

trying to understand the process.”

In February, St. Andrew’s submitted a $3.5-million proposal to the

Newport-Mesa Unified School District offering to expand Newport

Harbor’s parking lot by 80 spaces and relocate some of its old

maintenance buildings. In exchange, the church and the school would

sign an agreement to share parking in the lot for 30 years, with the

possibility of four five-year extensions.

The parking agreement, which would increase the student parking

lot on 15th Street to 330 spaces, constitutes an important part of

the church’s plan for a 22,000-square-foot expansion. The City

Council, which has the final say on the issue, has put off discussing

the plan until a parking agreement is reached.

* MICHAEL MILLER covers education and may be reached at (714)

966-4617 or by e-mail at [email protected].