THE BELL CURVE:Advice for newly annexed neighbors

Sometimes we do learn from history. Like Tuesday night when the Newport Beach City Council finally put a stamp on the city hall vs. park dispute that has been cluttering the Pilot’s “Forum” pages for almost as long as the El Toro airport flap — and was beginning to take on some of the same colorations. Anybody else notice that?

Think back a moment. Building a commercial airport in El Toro was voted on twice. And our side won twice. The airport was in, but the other side had an unbeatable strategy. Just keep calling for new elections until they finally win one. And pour whatever money and muscle is required to achieve that end, starting with hired guns to stand outside supermarkets with petitions to sign.

So until Tuesday, history seemed to be repeating itself — as it is prone to do if not taken on frontally. That didn’t happen when the chips were down with El Toro. So we now have a balloon ride over a mythical Great Park and a zillion dollars’ worth of upscale new homes instead of a sorely needed airport as a result.

In case the parallel isn’t clear, prior to Tuesday the Newport Beach City Council three times voted that the park behind the library should remain a park and not the site of a new city hall. Now there is a fourth vote with a similar result — which didn’t happen with El Toro. But the money and muscle are still out there to supersede through a public election — where they can be most effective — the decisions that are properly being made by the council. Last I saw, the petition solicitors were still in front of the supermarkets. So there is one more step to take.

This is an issue that has now been decided four times by the city council. That shouldn’t be necessary again. The decisions that remain to be made should be made by the council — and certainly not by the 15% of the citizenry that would vote in a popularity contest for the site of a new city hall.

Deadlines make it impossible for me to write about the “Great Cow Stampede” down the streets of Costa Mesa, which will take place about the same time you’re reading this. It was officially regarded as good PR by Costa Mesa City Council members who got downright playful with the idea — a first in the present council.

On reflection, the Cow Stampede seems to me a natural progression for a body that has generated such a plentiful supply of bull over the past several years.

Local city councils struggling with illegal immigrants and preserving parks should thank God they don’t have to deal with such socially critical issues as the Naked Man, which recently faced Huntington Beach officials.

In case you missed it, a guy named Mike seemed to spend most of his waking hours hanging out around his backyard waist-high fence naked as a jaybird, thereby offering early sex education to young women living within view. Many complaints forced the City Council to take up the issue.

History was on the Naked Man’s side. Seven years ago, the council scrapped a proposed ban on a local “nude juice bar.” But we have clearly retrogressed since then. Last week, Huntington Beach passed a law banning public nudity. It says something about our current cultural priorities that the principal reasons given for passing this ban were not to protect vulnerable young women, but rather to retain the growing classy reputation of the city as a tourist attraction. The onetime reputation of Huntington Beach for loose living doesn’t fit the image of four-star hotels.

Neither does the Naked Man.

Welcome to my neighbors across the way in West Santa Ana Heights who have finally realized their dream of a Newport Beach address. As an old pro who was annexed three — or was it four? — years ago, I would offer only one small bit of advice. When you are told the day and time the street sweeper will be around, believe it. Write it down. Get off the street. They aren’t kidding.

My household has the misfortune of being scheduled in early morning for sweeper runs, and my stepson has personally financed several Newport Beach programs with his fines, which he chooses to regard as a kind of rent he pays for living here. Apropos of the Naked Man item above, both my son and I, trailing whatever garment or lack thereof we were sleeping in, have much too often been in plain view running to get behind the wheel of our car before the Grim Sweeper bears down on us

So consider yourself warned.