WHEN GIVEN A CHOICE BETWEEN BEING ANNEXED BY NEWPORT BEACH OR COSTA MESA, MOST PREFER NEWPORT BEACH OR NO ANNEXATION AT ALL
According to the OC REGISTER today, Newport Beach City Manager Homer Bludau is opposed to Newport Beach annexing a 290 acre area of land that includes the Santa Ana Country Club and residential tracts south of Mesa Drive between Santa Ana Avenue and Irvine Avenue. LINK
Bludau told the REG, "I recognize that those residents want very badly to become part of the city [Newport Beach]." He then went on to say, "But we have some issues that we want to work with Costa Mesa on," [that might be jepordized if Newport moved to annex the area in question.]
The issues Bludau mentioned were the extension of the 55 freeway, park sharing, JWA issues, and what to do about Banning Ranch.
The article goes on to say that most of the residents in the area would prefer to remain un-annexed rather than becoming part of Costa Mesa.
The Newport Beach City Council will consider this issue of annexation at its Tuesday, Feb 26, meeting starting at 7:00 p.m. Here's a LINK to the agenda item.
WHAT DOES ALL THIS REALLY MEAN?
It doesn't take a genius to tell you that Newport Beach is more upscale than Costa Mesa and that Newport does not have a problem with slums, gangs, low student test scores, lower than they should be home values, a lower quality of life, and 60 acres of industrial buildings on their view bluffs as does Costa Mesa.
(This is an aside, but here's a LINK to the DP about what Newport does on its bluffs. Contrast that to Costa Mesa's bluff factories.)
And, it's no accident that Newport Beach is on warp drive moving away from Costa Mesa in quality of life. To their credit, citizens and officials in Newport have worked over the years to constantly improve their city in meaningful ways.
Meanwhile, in Costa Mesa we've had too many officials and citizens who are just interested in fixing potholes and putting in street medians instead of doing the things that really matter.
Most people with half a brain know their personal and family situations would be vastly improved just by being part of Newport Beach instead of Costa Mesa.
To repeat: It seems that Costa Mesa has too many people who think that fixing potholes and putting in street medians will solve our problems. They're mistaken. While these things are nice, they shouldn't be considered to be the main course. They're just the side dishes.
It's as though over in Newport, when people sit down for a Thanksgiving dinner they demand a turkey on the table with all the fixings, while in Costa Mesa we're happy with the side dishes but no turkey.
And, our leaders in Costa Mesa then brag about putting mashed potatoes and gravy on the table and hope we won't notice that there's no turkey.
Contrast Costa Mesa's sweet nothing approach to improvement to that of Newport Beach. A couple of years ago, the last low income apartment building in Corona del Mar was razed.
As reported in the DP, citizens in the neighborhood showed up in the street to cheer. They knew that their neighborhood, which was being held back by the apartment building and the problems that were emanating from it, would now start improving.
HOW ABOUT ANNEXING ALL OF COSTA MESA?
We think a strong case can be made for having Newport Beach and Costa Mesa annexing each other--merge the two cities for the mutual benefit of citizens of both cities that geographically already look like one city.
On a map, the new merged city, to retain the name Newport Beach, would look similar to Huntington Beach and the population of the new city would also be about the same size as Huntington Beach.
What would occur if this happened? Home values in Costa Mesa would jump and Newporters would move to start improving the old Costa Mesa rather than having it drag Newport lower. Newporters would get South Coast Metro as part of the new City.
Look folks, this would be a little like Ford and Rolls Royce merging as one company while retaining the Rolls Royce name and keeping Rolls Royce's management and philosophy.
Here's what we wrote about this earlier: LINK
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.
