and put a stamp on it and send it, I don't think it would probably
generate enough of a percentage, which must be 25% to put it to a
vote.
It has to be 51% or more for a vote to make it happen or not
happen. I think they could come up with the 51% to kill it. I'm not
quite sure they could come up with the 25% who would sit down and
write letters. If there are 1,000 residents up here, 25% would be 250
people. I don't know if you could get 250 people to write that
letter.
And I think it's time. It's something that's going to happen
eventually. I've listened to the pros. I've listened to the cons. We
have [Newport Beach's] name. When we got a Post Office zip code
change to 92660, we became Newport Beach.
So James writes me a letter on Birch Street, he doesn't put Santa
Ana Heights. He puts Newport Beach. So as far as our mail's
concerned, we are Newport Beach. So in a sense, we have their name.
And, like I told the City Council one time and I don't know if they
appreciated it because it's true, do we really need their government?
Now, eventually, I think it's going to happen. We have, I think,
struck a reasonable deal. We did, similar to Newport Coast, sit down
with the city. We've expressed our concerns, optimism, support and we
have asked for certain considerations that they might be willing to
agree to. And I think they have finally come around to a point where
they agree with 14 or 15 of those. And if they've agreed to them, why
not do it now? We've spent a lot of time, money and effort just to
get to us this far. So why not now? About 10 years from now, we might
not get this good of a deal.
We're going to live with an airport, so the airport's not really
the issue. People felt at one point that it improved our chances of
having better input into the number of flights [as a flight takes off
overhead] out of John Wayne Airport. I think since El Toro airport
has gone sideways on everybody and we're going to now offer to
consider 1.4 million more passengers per year and another four gates
in order to keep some type of restrictions on the airport. We're
willing to concede this to keep this. I don't know if that's dancing
with the devil or not. It could be a little bit. If we get this much
this time, how much is it going to be next time. If the FAA said they
could have as many flights as they want and you could do it 24 hours
a day, seven days a week, they could make that happen. It'll make a
lot of people very angry, but it's a possibility.
