An Orange County Superior Court judge is set to decide on Wednesday, Aug. 19, if an initiative that would give Newport Beach voters a greater say on development in their community will be on the November ballot.
With the deadline approaching for ballots to be finalized, the city has asked the court to determine whether the public notice of the initiative by the community group that wants to put it before voters was conducted in accordance with the elections code. If not, city officials say the initiative is not valid and did not qualify for the ballot.
The proposed “Responsible Housing Initiative” would require the city to amend its current state-approved housing plan with zoning that would allow for new housing units at an amount “that more than meets” state mandates, its supporters argue, but removes a buffer of additional units the city has built in.
The state has allocated 4,845 units to Newport Beach to plan for, but the city has approved zoning and development standards that could accommodate up to 8,174 new homes. City officials have said they included a buffer in the event a project falls through.
The initiative was submitted by the Newport Beach Stewardship Association to the Orange County Registrar of Voters in October with the required number of signatures and appeared headed for the ballot.
But in April, when the group submitted three more, but separate, initiative questions related to processes at City Council meetings, term limits and how voters select council members, the city clerk noted that the public notice for the new initiatives was not properly published in what would be considered Newport Beach’s paper of record, City Attorney Aaron Harp said.
In reviewing that filing, Harp said the clerk also found that the public notice for the housing initiative was published in the same newspaper, which again was not considered a “general circulation” paper in Newport Beach.
In June, the city petitioned the Orange County Superior Court to review the matter, citing not only the incorrect publication of the notice, but also the activist group’s failure to publish the notice in three locations in the city.
“Rather than publishing the notice in the Daily Pilot as required by the elections code, the initiative proponents chose to publish the notice in the OC Reporter, which is not considered a paper of ‘general circulation’ in Newport Beach,” the city’s petition to the court said. “As a result, publication of the notice fails to comply with the elections code.”
Harp said that the Superior Court judge is expected to weigh in on the petition on Wednesday to determine what will happen with the housing initiative and this November’s ballot and whether the three additional initiatives proposed earlier this year can move forward in the process for making a future ballot.
On Tuesday, the City Council is set to hold a special meeting to review the language for the group’s three new initiative questions.
The three questions the group proposes to put on a future ballot include amending the city’s charter, which governs public meetings, public records and government oversight; council member term limits; and how council members representing their districts are elected.
Council members can serve eight years, take off four years, and then seek election again. The resident initiative would ask voters to change that to an eight-year lifetime limit.
Unlike most Orange County cities, Newport Beach councilmembers each represent one of six districts, but are elected by voters citywide. The new initiative proposes that councilmembers should be elected only by voters in the district they represent.
In a July 31 court filing, attorneys representing the Newport Beach Stewardship Association argue the city is stalling and that it knew “more than nine months ago that the notice for the certified signatures was published in the Orange County Reporter” and that the city “admitted as much in open court on July 17.”
“If the city were truly concerned about protecting voters, it would have raised concerns about the Orange County Reporter months ago, rather than ambushing NBSA with new objections right before the election,” the attorneys said.
“The four Initiatives are being challenged at every turn by the Newport Beach City Council majority,” Nancy Scarbrough, a resident and activist, said. “Rather than allowing Newport Beach voters to decide these measures at the ballot box, the City Council has pursued multiple legal efforts to keep them off the November ballot.”
In a minute order issued on Wednesday, Aug. 12, Superior Court Judge Julianne Bancroft said if the “court determines on Aug. 19 that the notice was proper, then the court will order the city to submit the ballot questions and arguments for and against to the Registrar of Voters immediately.”