Sunday, May 6, 2007

CM PRESS # 132



WHERE TO PUT A NEW NEWPORT BEACH CITY HALL

The CM PRESS believes that the best location for a new city hall for Newport Beach would be at 77 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa.

You read that right.

We think the two cities should be merged for the benefit of all the residents of the presently separate cities. We already have one school district for both cities. Why not one city government? There would be some remarkable economies of scale if this were to happen.

What would happen with the duplicate city staffers? Two City Managers, two Police Chiefs, etc. They'd stay on and their positions would be eliminated through attrition--read, retirement in most cases. We wouldn't want to see anyone lose their jobs and we'd expect such a merger to take place in phases over many years.

Costa Mesa would gain the Newport name and the immediate rise in property values that this would cause.

What would Newport gain? All of South Coast Metro and its massive tax revenues, for one thing. It also wouldn't have to worry about mucking up some open space to put in a new city hall and it wouldn't have to bleed the coffers to pay for such a new city hall.

And, what about the long term?

Vanguard University has wanted to buy Costa Mesa's city hall for years.

After Costa Mesa and Newport Beach have merged into a new city that we think should retain the name Newport Beach (there's gold in that brand name) plans could be made to sell city hall to Vanguard and open a new one at Triangle Square or a similar location that is about midway between the two present cities.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.

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