Mailbag - April 18, 2000
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Newport’s traffic ordinance works well
I am writing in reference to the public forum hosted by the Chamber of
Commerce at the Newport Beach Police Department on Monday April 3. For
your readers who were unable to attend, I’d like to reassure them that,
is spite of the recent opposition to the city’s Traffic Phasing
Ordinance, the ordinance works.
Newport Beach’s ordinance is arguably one of the toughest in Orange
County. Although the ordinance is very technical, the basic premise is
that it prohibits projects from being built that would cause an
intersection to become congested. Based on a series of formulas and
calculations, the goal of the law is to ensure that traffic at major
intersections in the city never exceeds 90% of capacity during peak hours
of travel.
It’s important that your readers are aware of the ordinance and the
benefits it brings. It creates a pool of money for traffic improvements.
For example, in recent years, the ordinance has generated nearly all of
the local money for city traffic improvements. Revenues have also allowed
the city to receive matching funds -- from state and federal government
-- that would not otherwise be available. In Newport Beach, we need and
have an ordinance designed to help reduce traffic congestion. Without the
ordinance, we will have a traffic crisis.
LYNNE FISHEL
Newport Beach
Editor’s note: There is not yet a proposal to change or repeal the
city’s Traffic Phasing Ordinance, although an argument has been made that
the proposed Greenlight initiative will render it useless.
Newport Beach shows its ‘reel’ face
Does it not seem just a bit hypocritical that the City of Newport
Beach donated in cash a total of $37,000 to the newly created Newport
Beach Film Festival (under a year in existence), while failing to support
the previous Newport Beach International Film Festival (four years in
existence)?
If the city of Newport Beach wanted a different festival -- separate
from the one that Jeff Conner worked so diligently and unselfishly toward
for more than four years -- then why does the city support the current
festival which is a carbon copy of the previous film festival (i.e., same
staff, same volunteers, same programmers, same theater venues, same
reception venues, same sponsors, same filmmakers, and same name, albeit
one word)?
I guess I won’t be attempting to create a nonprofit organization
within the city of Newport Beach any time soon -- you never know which of
its two “faces” you will see.
GREG MCCARTHY
Costa Mesa
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