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Home My WebLink About00 - Insider's GuideReceived After Agenda Printed July 14, 2015 Insider's Guide From: Kiff, Dave Sent: Friday, July 10, 2015 10:44 AM Subject: Insider's Guide for the City Council meeting of Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - Special Sea Walls Edition Another happy sunny Friday to you Here is the Insider's Guide for the Newport Beach City Council meeting of Tuesday, July 14, 2015. The City Council meeting is held on the 2A and 4" Tuesdays of most months. The Study Session starts at 3:30 p.m. (earlier than usual) and 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, and you are welcome to attend. But you can -also watch on TV (Channels 3/31) or on your computer. I don't summarize every item on the Agenda — but to read the full agenda, click here: http://newportbeachca.gov/modules/ShowDocument.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.gov. They appreciate hearing from you, especially about any agenda item. The big item on the 3:30 p.m. study Session's agenda is Sea Walls— specifically around Balboa Island, including the Grand Canal. In a nutshell, the issues and questions are: • Are the sea walls at or near the end of their useful life? If so, what are the signs of deterioration? Are some areas more deteriorated than others? • What are the alternatives to address the problem? Replace them all, replace some and repair some, repair all and replace none? • What are the best repair or replacement construction methods/alternatives? • What about storm surges and sea level rise? If the walls are being repaired or replaced, should the walls be raised? By how much? Should the storm surge side of the Island (the south side) be raised more than the north side? If sea level rise may be gradual, can a project be engineered that increases the walls a little bit at a time, then facilitates later increases many years into the future? • Will views be protected? If the walls get higher, what other infrastructure has to be raised, too? • What would all this cost? From where will the funds to do this come? • How long will any project take? What are the steps necessary for design, permitting, and construction? • Given that this is focused on Balboa Island (and the Grand Canal), what about other public and private sea walls around town? If you've followed this issue on the Island or with the Tidelands Management Committee, you don't want to miss this discussion. We hope to have the presentation loaded onto the website by Friday afternoon. It's a long and detailed presentation. Only a short part of it will be formally presented at the meeting on July 14th. Your assigned homework, then, is to read the background material within the presentation so that you can be fully caught up by the time the Study Session begins. Persons called upon by the teacher who have not done their reading may get pushups. Here's what's on the evening session at 7:00 p.m.: • We're trying to expedite the permit process for those folks who want to put solar systems on their rooftops. That involves a muni code change. • We regularly (at least 1x every 3 years) update various fees and the percentage at which the larger tax base subsidizes certain programs (called the cost -recovery percentage). One of the areas looked at this time is the Fire Department, where there are various levels of fees for emergency medical services depending on the type of response. An item on the agenda asks the Council to consider this issue (which has been through the Finance Committee already) to approve, deny, or modify the suggested fee changes. • The Harbor Commission has asked the Council to review the placement of a short-term anchorage area in the Turning Basin between Lido Marina Village and the westerly end of Mariner's Mile. This will engender some discussion, as some residents have noted concerns about having more boats moored there (noise, lights, more) and this is the new location for the jet -pack operation. • The City Council will make its annual appointments to various Boards and Commissions, as many terms ended at the end of June 2015. Seats up include positions on the Library Board, the Arts Commission, the Civil Service Board, the Harbor Commission, the Parks, Beaches, and Recreation Commission, and the Planning Commission. • Every year the City Council reviews and approves about $300K in support for various special events in town. These can be the Christmas Boat Parade, the NB Film Festival, and various runs, walks, trots, sidles, and food/wine tastings. There are a handful of policies that help guide the allotment of these funds, which are already set aside in the adopted budget. • Finally, a large dollar item ($1.35M) is a contract with a private company to do our streetlight maintenance and on- call repair services. This is another function we outsourced a few years ago. Some notes for your calendar: • Another Concert on the Brownish -Green (way to go, drought!) will be this Sunday, July 12 at the Civic Center green. The Sligo Rags will be in town from 6-7:30 p.m. with their "acoustic Celtic folk with a decidedly bluegrass attitude." Bring your lawn chairs, blankets, a picnic, your controlled beverages (I won't tell), and your appetite for, um, Celtic folk. If they start that weird kicking stuff where theirjoints go in odd directions, I might focus on my hummus. • For those of you Central Newporters (Pier to Pier folks), on Wednesday, July 151h, our Public Works staff will hold an outreach meeting at the old City Hall (3300 Newport Boulevard) to talk about the planned improvements to the intersection of Balboa and 15 1h Street. It's from 6 to 7:00 p.m., and all are welcome. If you miss the meeting, you can call Iris Lee at 949-644-3323 for more information. • Shakespeare by the Sea is the weekend of July 18 —19, with presentations starting at 7:00 p.m. each night. Saturday is The Tempest, Sunday is As You Like It. These noteworthy dramas will be held at the Bonita Canyon Sports Park (1990 Ford Road) - versus other noteworthy dramas that occur right here at City Hall. I could not control my typing fingers enough to resist that. O • Mayor pro Tem Diane Dixon has another of her very successful Town Hall meetings planned for Monday, July 20`h starting at 6:30 p.m. at the old City Hall (3300 Newport Boulevard). The last meeting was focused a lot on input from parishioners from St James the Great. This meeting will be a recap of July 4" (which occurred, in case anyone missed it — it was between the 3rd and the 5`) and more. I will close by thanking all the good folks who helped make our usually very eventful aforementioned July 4 celebrations part of a peaceful, fun, and safe weekend. Arrests were down by about 20%, and that's not because more people were getting away with stuff. More people were celebrating safely and less were doing stupid things. All on what could have been a very busy Saturday. I can't name everyone here, but we continue to get great community (including WNBA folks) and City staff support (Recreation, Police, Fire/Lifeguards, Public Works/traffic engineering, Municipal Operations) for our parades, festivals, crowd control, beach safety, and more — including the challenging clean-ups the day after. Lots of progress has been made over the last several years to make sure that the tone of the 4`h in Newport stays fun and family-oriented. So thank you! And thanks for reading. Please have a good weekend, and 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. Sincerely, 7 Dave Kiff City Manager dkiff@newportbeachca.gov 949-644-3001