Putting issues behind

Although a final tally of the votes wouldn’t be in for hours, lead Measure B proponent Bill Ficker was in bed by 11 p.m. on election night. He said he slept better than he had in weeks.

“I knew there wasn’t anything else I could do,” Ficker said.

Ficker awoke at 6 a.m. to find Measure B had prevailed with 52.8% of the vote.

After leading a massive signature drive last year to get Measure B on the ballot, fighting a legal challenge and leading a political campaign bankrolled almost entirely by one generous retiree, Ficker says it’s time for Newporters to put their differences aside to build a new city hall.

“We should all put our shoulder behind it and make it all happen in the best way and not the worst way,” he said.

Residents on both sides said they felt it was time for the city to leave politics behind and move forward with the project.

Environmentalist Jan Vandersloot said Friday that although he was disappointed Measure B had passed, he intended to make sure the city built an environmentally friendly city hall on the site that left room for a park.

“The people voted, and if it holds up in the court challenge we will try to create a city hall that is more environmentally supportive of the park and making sure it will only take up 2.8 acres of land.”

Mayor Ed Selich said even though he did not support Measure B, he feels it is time for the City Council to put differences aside on the issue and work together to build the best city hall possible on the site.

“I’m obviously disappointed the way the vote turned out,” Selich said. “As the saying goes, ‘the voters have spoken,’ so I think the council is going to move ahead and do what we have to do to get a city hall built on the site next to the library.”

Selich estimated it would take until the summer of 2009, at least, before the city could get the proper environmental and traffic studies completed and break ground on the project.

With an estimated two years for construction, a new city hall might not be open for business until 2011, he said.

In the meantime, he said, council members would have to decide what to do with the site of the current City Hall, which the mayor hoped could be converted to some kind of community use.

Council member and former mayor Steve Rosansky, a proponent of Measure B, said he “went to sleep happy” at about 1 a.m., when about half of the precincts had reported positive results.