Putting issues behind

Although a final tally of the votes wouldn’t be in for hours, lead Measure B proponent Bill Ficker was in bed by 11 p.m. on election night. He said he slept better than he had in weeks.

“I knew there wasn’t anything else I could do,” Ficker said.

Ficker awoke at 6 a.m. to find Measure B had prevailed with 52.8% of the vote.

After leading a massive signature drive last year to get Measure B on the ballot, fighting a legal challenge and leading a political campaign bankrolled almost entirely by one generous retiree, Ficker says it’s time for Newporters to put their differences aside to build a new city hall.

“We should all put our shoulder behind it and make it all happen in the best way and not the worst way,” he said.

Residents on both sides said they felt it was time for the city to leave politics behind and move forward with the project.

Environmentalist Jan Vandersloot said Friday that although he was disappointed Measure B had passed, he intended to make sure the city built an environmentally friendly city hall on the site that left room for a park.

“The people voted, and if it holds up in the court challenge we will try to create a city hall that is more environmentally supportive of the park and making sure it will only take up 2.8 acres of land.”

Mayor Ed Selich said even though he did not support Measure B, he feels it is time for the City Council to put differences aside on the issue and work together to build the best city hall possible on the site.

“I’m obviously disappointed the way the vote turned out,” Selich said. “As the saying goes, ‘the voters have spoken,’ so I think the council is going to move ahead and do what we have to do to get a city hall built on the site next to the library.”

Selich estimated it would take until the summer of 2009, at least, before the city could get the proper environmental and traffic studies completed and break ground on the project.

With an estimated two years for construction, a new city hall might not be open for business until 2011, he said.

In the meantime, he said, council members would have to decide what to do with the site of the current City Hall, which the mayor hoped could be converted to some kind of community use.

Council member and former mayor Steve Rosansky, a proponent of Measure B, said he “went to sleep happy” at about 1 a.m., when about half of the precincts had reported positive results.

As did Selich, Rosansky urged citizens to find a common ground.

“At the end of the day, what we’re talking about is building a new City Hall,” he said. “We need a new City Hall, and we should focus on that direction and put these other extraneous issues aside.”

The city’s main difficulty, Rosansky added, would be dealing with a November lawsuit filed by activist Allan Beek, which challenges the legality of leaving the City Hall issue up to voters. An Orange County District Court judge blocked a restraining order in December that would have prevented Measure B from appearing on the ballot, but Beek said Tuesday he intended to proceed with the lawsuit.

A phone call to Beek was not returned Wednesday.

Karen Tringali, an organizer for Newporters Vote No on B, said the measure’s narrow victory showed that Newport Beach was not unified behind the idea of building City Hall on a parcel that many felt should be preserved as a park.

“The groundswell of support we received in the last few weeks certainly would have indicated to us that there were more and more people beginning to understand the real issues at play and becoming more supportive or changing their minds,” she said.

“I think the fact of the matter is that voting was so close that it should certainly leave a question in people’s minds about how definitive this victory really is.”

BY THE NUMBERS

Breakdown of final vote:

27,318 votes cast out of 60,238 registered voters.

Voter turnout: 45.4% 

Measure B votes

Early voting

Yes: 80

No: 79

Absentee ballots

Yes: 6,632

No: 5,414

Election day

Yes: 7,193

No: 6,953

Grand totals:

Yes: 13,905

No: 12,446

NOTABLE QUOTABLES

“Whether you’re for city hall in the park or against city hall in the park, it’s an obscenity that the other side has spent so much money.”

Keith Curry

Newport Beach Councilman

“It’s easier for people to vote no than yes.”

Steve Rosansky

Newport Beach Councilman

“There could be a lot of extra costs involved in mitigating all of the traffic and environmental impacts of the city hall in the park that we don’t know about. Everybody knows once you start digging that’s when you find out what all the problems are.”

Ed Selich

Newport Beach Mayor

“There’s no doubt in my mind there will be a park with city hall.”

Ron Hendrickson

City Hall in the Park supporter

“We demanded of ourselves that we run a completely factual and clean campaign.”

Bill Ficker

Lead Measure B proponent

BRIANNA BAILEY may be reached at (714) 966-4625 or at [email protected].