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Home My WebLink About00 - Insider's GuideReceived After Agenda Printed ' April 28, 2015 Insidre's Guide From: Kiff, Dave Sent: Friday, April 24, 2015 9:33 AM Subject: Insider's Guide for the City Council meeting of Tuesday, April 28th, 2015. And More Drought Info! A good damp Friday morning to you. Here is the Insider's Guide for the Newport Beach City Council meeting of Tuesday, April 28", 2015. The City Council meeting is held on the 2nd and 4`" Tuesdays of most months. There is no study session at this upcoming meeting, so the regular session will start at 7:00 p.m. The Council meets in the Council Chambers at 100 Civic Center Drive. There is plenty of parking - you are always welcome to attend. But you can also watch on TV (Channels 3/31) or on your computer. To spare you some detail, I don't summarize every item on the Agenda — but to read the full agenda, click here: http: / /newportbeachca.gov /mod ules /ShowDocu me nt.aspx ?documentid =4414 If you are so inclined, please weigh in on these issues by contacting the entire City Council with one email address — that's CitvCouncil @newportbeachca.eov. They appreciate hearing from you, especially about any agenda item. It seems like a fairly sleepy meeting — if you see me nodding off, please chalk it up to advancing age and pretend you didn't see it. Here are the Regular Session items of note: • The Back Bay Drive restriping and repaving is all done, and we'll close out that contract. If you haven't ridden, walked, or driven down Back Bay Drive following this work, please do so. We think the new striping makes more sense for the many varieties of users. Hopefully you'll agree. • About $500K in more slurry sealing is coming to a street near you, especially in Irvine Terrace, lower Corona del Mar, and Shorecliffs. • After two years of not charging for their use (there is a joke in here somewhere), we'll ask the Council to authorize a small charging charge for the EV chargers atop the Civic Center Parking structure. It's a small amount, but it seems more fair to the taxpayer that we pass along the cost of electricity to the car owners. If you have ChargePoint or similar, you know the drill. • A somewhat contested item may be the Council's preliminary request to change the Code so that one commercial "jetpack" vendor is allowed to operate in Newport Harbor. Concurrently, private use of jetpacks or other water - propelled vessels would not be allowed. A group.of residents had complained about noise and safety, and the Council gave some direction at a recent Study Session to limit commercial operators to one, as selected by a request for proposals (RFP) process. • Council Member Muldoon recently asked that the City follow the lead of multiple other cities in the region to add the US Motto "In God We Trust" to the Council Chambers. We prepared some font mockups and will ask the Council for suggestions on placement of the motto in the chambers. • A fairly large — and long- awaited — dollar item is the complete rehabilitation of%Dover Drive and Westcliff. We have waited to complete this project because we didn't want Dover ripped up more, even as PCH is ripped up thanks to the big wastewater project. This is about a $3.5M project, and includes brand new (and drought - friendly!) medians and related landscaping, including a change to smart irrigation systems. Soon the road should be its old smooth self again versus the condition it's been in for a couple of years now. Stay tuned for more specific dates and times of the repair work — it probably will occur sometime in late June. The specific stretches to be fixed are Dover from PCH to Irvine and Westcliff from Dover to Irvine. ® There is an item about Uptown Newport, a development already approved and underway near MacArthur and Jamboree. This item changes the timing of certain public benefit and park fees that the developer contributes to the City to help us provide parks and other public facilities to the new residents at Uptown. Some Drought Notes, written from my desk as it's sprinkling outside... ® At the last Council meeting, the Council said it was OK for us to stop watering our turf medians now, a little earlier than the May 5 -6 expected deadline. So expect to see some changes out there. ® I sat in at a terrific presentation last night here at the Civic Center about converting your garden to a drought - friendly one. About 100 people attended. It was nearly a 3 -hour presentation, and usually those send me towards the exits within 45 minutes— but this one had a lot of great information about improving your soil's water retention, setting up the right irrigation systems, getting good rebates, and picking the right plants. We taped it for NBTV, so it will be coming to Channel 3/31 soon — be sure to tune in if you can. Meantime, Shane Burckle, our Water Conservation Coordinator, can help you bypass some of that and get the meeting materials —Shane is at sburckle@ newportbeachca.gov. o It looks like the amount that we'll have to reduce our consumption citywide will be between 32% and 28 %, down from the 36% initially reported. This does not mean that every home has to cut water use by 28 -32 %- indeed, some of you mega- conservers would not survive that. The City's approach — still yet to be refined — is to work within our "Level One" or "Level Two" restrictions as included in our municipal code. For more information, please keep an eye on this web page - http:// www .newportbeachca.gov /index.aspx ?page =229. ® I got a good question from resident Sean M, who asked: I'd like to cut back /eliminate watering the parkway between the sidewalk and the street, but the parkway includes City -owned trees. I don't mind letting the grass go brown, but it would be a shame to kill those handsome trees. Exactly how much water do those trees need? Good question, Sean — let's save those trees. The answer was provided by our Municipal Operations folks: For mature trees (over 5 years old), it is sufficient during cooler weather to give them a good soaking with a hose (or, if they've capped off parkway irrigation, rig up a bubbler system) every two weeks. For younger trees, and during warmer weather, you should do that weekly. Additionally, you should consider building a water basin (a dirt moat— no alligators, please) to allow the water to soak in and stay around the tree instead of running elsewhere on the parkway. Sean, for sending this question in, you get an extra allocation of 2 GPD every third Tuesday! Congratulations! • 1 thought that this was a pretty interesting read on the State's water issues, for those of you following the "agriculture v. residents" debates. Yes, we should take everything we read with several grains of salt, but I especially liked this quote: "Humans faced with a crisis want to find a villain, pick a fight, and exercise quick, top - down action to bring the accused to justice" @ http://I)lantingseedsbiog.cdfa.ca.gov/wordpress/`?p=829 0 A couple of other notes: • It's a busy weekend with both the NB Film Festival and the Newport to Ensenada race going on. • There is lots of discussion in various parts of town about new utility undergrounding districts— Newport Heights and CdM to name a few. If you're in one of those proposed districts and have questions, I would love it if you would pass the questions along to us — or wild rumors — before assuming more nefarious things. Additionally, please make as much use as you can about the web portal on this issue — it's here: http: / /newportbeachca.gov /index.asox ?page =1171. For old engineer's reports, you want to look here: http: // www. newportbeachca .gov /index.aspx ?page =2296. For the City Council Policy (L -28) on assessment ballot counting, please look here: http: / /www.newl)ortbeachca.gov/ Modules /ShowDocument.aspx ?documentid =8724 • For your Reading of the Week, I've linked this very recent document from the Manhattan Institute and its "Center for State and Local Leadership." Mr. Stephen Eide, the writer, contacted us forthis report — I thought it was comprehensive and thoughtful. I share his overall conclusion —that rising retirement and benefit costs threaten municipal services. Our city will do better than others, but the crowd -out is occurring. Yes, there will be other perspectives on what Mr. Eide wrote, but it is certainly worth the read: http://www.manhattan - institute.org/pdf/cr 98.pdf. Please feel free to forward this e -mail to family, friends and members of your HOA if you represent one. I always like hearing from you, too, so please don't hesitate to ask a question or offer a comment. I hope you have a nice weekend. Sincerely, Dave Kiff City Manager dkiff@ newportbeachca.gov 949 - 644 -3001