EDITORIALS:Newport Beach and Costa Mesa must talk it out

Costa Mesa and Newport Beach officials seem to agree that they need to talk more about how to handle Newport’s proposed annexation of West Santa Ana Heights, where people are anxious to become the newest Newport residents. Such agreement is good, given that county officials essentially have told the two cities to work out their differences.

Of course, agreeing they need to talk and reaching any substantive agreements during those talks are two vastly different things.

Last week, the Orange County Local Agency Formation Commission voted to delay until November a decision on adding West Santa Ana Heights to Newport Beach. Because those 64 acres southwest of John Wayne Airport are within Costa Mesa’s “sphere of influence” ? land the county has established should be incorporated into Costa Mesa ? there is some unusual difficulty with the process. The people there don’t want to join Costa Mesa (their neighbors in East Santa Ana Heights recently joined Newport Beach, so their desire isn’t solely zip-code based), but Costa Mesa doesn’t want to give up the land without something in return.

That something in return is a foot-wide strip of land that runs along the inland side of Banning Ranch, land that is officially Newport Beach and that keeps Costa Mesa blocked from getting a piece of those 412 undeveloped acres of prime real estate.

Sound like the makings of a stalemate? Here’s part of what Costa Mesa City Manager Allan Roeder told the Pilot following the commission’s decision: “It has been all give on our part and all take on our neighboring city’s part.”

Newport, of course, has a reputation for not budging on such issues ? and winning. A proposed freeway along Pacific Coast Highway never happened. The Costa Mesa Freeway ends blocks before Newport Beach. Just about the only fight the city has waged, and lost, was over the El Toro airport.

This fight would appear to affect most of the residents of West Santa Ana Heights and those in Newport Terrace, which is connected to the rest of the city by that strip of land. Heights residents are complaining about the delay, but given how long they have been waiting, a few more months is not a serious worry. And Newport Terrace residents would be able to block any annexation attempt by Costa Mesa ? though officials there say they have no such intentions.

No, the real losers if this fight drags out and gets ugly are the residents of Costa Mesa and Newport Beach. The cities are too tied together to suddenly become bad neighbors. Each could make life next door difficult ? if not terrible.

An amicable agreement on annexation has to be worked out.