Greenlight II is dangerous for Newport

A specter is haunting the city of Newport Beach. It is not one of pestilence, crime or death, but of a deception that is corrupting the spirit of its people. Its voice is dark and foreboding, spreading fear and distrust to all within earshot.

The voice belongs to the Greenlight group, loudly proclaiming its initiatives as a panacea to the city’s traffic congestion and density concerns. The emergence of this emotionally based movement has grave implications for every resident of the city. In simple terms, the Greenlight initiative is a plan to wall off the city to and prohibit future growth.

One of the ways they will accomplish this will be to force developers to get a popular vote on future projects. They are relying on the well-known dictum of politics that voters will almost always vote “no” on issues of which they have little knowledge, and these “no” votes will doom the city to stagnation.

It is an undeniable truth that inertia is the greatest impediment to societal advancement. It is not in anyone’s interest to have voters study the minute details of every issue coming before its governing body, nor should the public be forced to vote or hold a special election every time a new project is proposed. It does the community a disservice to require people to vote on issues about which they may have limited knowledge.

At its heart, the Greenlight II initiative is an attack on representative government. The essence of representative government is to filter public opinion through knowledgeable representatives who can study those opinions and affect sound policy. The Greenlight movement turns this principle on its head. It stalls all attempts to better the city with expensive and time consuming electoral reviews better left to the officials already elected to conduct the city’s affairs.

Followed to its logical conclusion, the initiative would render the Newport Beach City Council incapable of performing the job to which its members were elected. It should be clear that government must possess the means to attain the ends for which it was established or the bonds of society would quickly dissolve. If put into practice, this initiative will transform Newport’s representative government into a quaint relic.

Another consequence of the Greenlight II initiative is that the city will be inundated with lawsuits. The provisions of this initiative essentially constitute the taking of private property since it severely restricts what a property owner can do. When extreme restrictions are placed on private property, the value of the property is greatly diminished. The resultant lawsuits will drain the city’s general fund, increase the city’s litigation costs, and significantly impact the taxpayers. These are far-reaching ramifications that the city can ill-afford to ignore.

Next, they are propagating the false notion that all the city’s traffic congestion problems stem from development and growth occurring within the city. The plain truth is that traffic in Newport, like all surrounding communities, will continue to increase regardless of Greenlight’s flailing measures to stop it.

Look at the evidence: The first Greenlight initiative has done nothing to alleviate or reduce traffic congestion.

As the communities surrounding Newport continue to grow, people move in, have children, come to the beach, eat at restaurants, shop at stores and conduct business, all the time driving through Newport. Our traffic congestion is largely the result of events occurring outside the city, over which Greenlight has no control.

Yet Greenlight’s solution is to impose draconian measures upon the city’s residents and property owners. To believe that traffic congestion can be alleviated or resolved by imposing punitive measures on Newport’s property owners is no less a folly than sticking one’s finger in a dike. It is simply not an alternative to intelligently confronting the inexorable growth of our surrounding communities.

Greenlight is a group befuddled by the opiate of their own deception. It has claimed that development will cause property values to decline. This shrill admonition is the precise opposite of historical trends and is simply another disingenuous assertion designed to deceive the public and engender fear. There is simply no correlation between development and declining property values.

It is therefore ironic that the biggest threat to property values is Greenlight’s initiative, which proudly touts itself as a stabilizing force that will buttress property values. The initiative will simply lead to decreased property values by not allowing property to attain its “highest and best” use.

The City Council has expended a great deal of effort to involve the residents of the community by seeking a consensus on the future vision for Newport. The council has held outreach programs and sought public involvement in updating the general plan by setting up a general plan update committee. This committee ? composed of residents, council members, community leaders and city staffers ? has spent an enormous amount of time and energy coming up with a plan to meet this vision. Now the efforts of the committee are in danger of being hijacked by the leaders of Greenlight who are threatening to render the years of work by the committee meaningless and arrogantly proclaiming that their vision for Newport is better than the consensus of the community.

The most disturbing consequence, however, is the group’s disingenuous assertion that Greenlight wants to give the residents a vote on future projects.

In fact, this initiative will have the effect of robbing the residents of their vote by ensuring that no project will ever be brought to a vote of the people. Greenlight has devised this scheme to silence the voice of the residents by making it economically unfeasible for a developer to submit a project to the electorate. The Greenlight proponents know that no developer will risk money on a project that is subject to a citywide vote, and they are keenly aware of the chilling effect this initiative will have on future growth.

They assert that their initiative is needed to protect the quality of life in Newport. However, the residents will be denied a vote on future projects, the city will be denied the benefit of many well-planned projects, and the residents will be worse off. Their ill-conceived policies will cause the city to stagnate, revenues to fall and business to decline, and they will put city services in jeopardy.

Greenlight is a dangerous faction with the potential to do great harm to the city of Newport Beach. A faction such as this can become a potent engine harnessed by an unprincipled few to usurp control of the city and subvert the power of the people.

With neither a reputation to lose, nor principles to restrain them, Greenlight dwells in the past by trying to halt all growth, and there are many reasons why those who love this city should fear this return to medieval values. We have a right to be angry at the arrogance and selfishness inherent in the Greenlight initiative.

Greenlight is simply incompatible with all manner of reason, sound government, and the principles we embrace. It would be disastrous for the city, property owners and the residents of Newport Beach and should be soundly rejected.