Commentary: Making homeowners pay to underground utilities is wrong
The Newport Beach undergrounding debate should not be a debate about the pros and cons of undergrounding. It is really about forcing residents to suffer an unrequested and undesired financial burden for a non-essential service.
The city should change its purportedly neutral, but actually pro-undergrounding, policy. Its tacit approval of the undergrounding petition process (by paying for the mailing, refusing to notify residents of their ability to rescind their names with another mailing and repeated refusal of requested information) has pitted neighbor against neighbor and created irreparable harm to our community in the name of aesthetics.
The city says it realizes that the outdated petition process based on a 1913 law is contentious. It doesn’t seem to realize that the process is permanently fracturing our community. In Assessment District 118, many neighbors who have been friends for decades are now not talking to each other because of this issue. How sad, and how avoidable, if the City Council would change the laws to remedy the process where as few as three people (or in AD118’s case, the city) can so easily initiate a petition for an Assessment District.
The city shouldn’t be neutral. It should be proactive in protecting its residents from financial attack.
On Jan. 16, the city of Newport Beach sent out a Petition for Proposed Undergrounding District 118, with an enclosed response postcard asking homeowners to simply “acknowledge interest in the formation of this district.” This was misleading. The Pro-Undergrounding Petition is more than a simple expression of interest.
Why is simply “acknowledging interest” a binding commitment? If 60% of the homeowners “acknowledge interest in the formation of this district” by putting their names on a vaguely worded postcard, it will obligate the city to send out a binding ballot election where if 51% of the turnout (not 51% of the total homeowners) are in favor, it will legally obligate all homeowners to spend or borrow an average of $25,000, and delay by up to eight years already-funded alley improvements in Newport Heights. We think this is wrong.
Almost three months have passed since the mailing was sent out, and they still haven’t been able to enlist the number of people needed by law to take the undergrounding process forward. We feel that the city should stop this process now. Not doing so is a waste of time, effort and possibly $400,000 of taxpayer money, simply for the estimate.
Arguing the pros and cons of undergrounding is irrelevant and distracts from the main point, which again bears repeating: Residents should not be forced to pay this kind of money for non-essential services.
PORTIA WEISS lives in Newport Heights.