With this week's annexation of Newport Coast, the redevelopment of
Balboa Village and the usual water-quality issues -- just to mention a
few -- Newport Beach has its hands full this year.
Leading the charge will Tod Ridgeway, who was unanimously given a
one-year term as mayor by his colleagues in December.
The 56-year-old developer, now entering the fourth year of his first
term as a city councilman, sat down with Assistant City Editor James
Meier on Thursday to chat about his new role, the Greenlight Initiative,
affordable housing and his reelection campaign.
What are your goals in your one-year term as mayor?
A: To really shepherd the general plan amendment process for the city
to develop, what I'd call, a balanced growth between the
environmentalists and the economy of this city. Part of that will include
trying to close the gap of the confrontation between the Greenlight
people and City Council.
My opinion is that we as the City Council have not done a good job
with eduction and communication to the citizens. I think about 65% of the
citizens consider themselves no-growth or slow-growth. Forget Greenlight.
What we have is a barrier to communicate, so one of my goals will be to
communicate what this current government, what it has done in the past
and what its goals for the future are.
The interesting thing between ourselves as council and all the
citizens who are involved in the government process is we all have one
goal in mind, and it's the same: the quality of life in this city. We
appear to find ourselves confrontational when, in my opinion, we probably
have common ground on 95% of the issues, if not more.
What I think has occurred through politicking is a failure to
communicate. Are we guilty at this point of time? The buck stops here, so
yes, we are guilty.
Some of the issues are much simpler -- the airport extension
agreement, annexation of Bay Knolls and Santa Ana Heights, continuing the
redevelopment of Balboa Village, clean water, storm drains, ocean issues.
I don't think there's any disagreement between any citizen and what we
are doing as a city on those. Those are easier to deal with because we
almost have a unanimous consensus.
Being a developer yourself, what's your take on managed growth and
development in this Greenlight city?
A: Well, you're qualifying it as if a developer has an expertise. And
it's funny. As a developer, obviously my friends and peers are all
developers and many of them are for managed growth. I like to use the
