Open meeting controversies trouble two Orange County city councils

The Newport Beach City Council will hold a second hearing about a contentious park access road, after conservationists claimed this week that an earlier council vote ran afoul of open meeting laws.

The dust-up surrounds plans the council approved in March for a road through Banning Ranch. Conservationists who want to preserve Banning Ranch oppose the road and believe that paving the area would be the first step toward developing it. The road is part of plans for Sunset Ridge Park in West Newport, and would intersect with West Coast Highway about 1,000 feet west of Superior Avenue.

The conservation group, the Banning Ranch Conservancy, sent a letter to the city Tuesday accusing the council of violating the Brown Act during its March 23 meeting. The group claims the city did not post copies of an agreement to build the road between the city and the owners of Banning Ranch on its website before the meeting. Copies of the document also were not available in the lobby of the Council Chambers ahead of time, the group claims.

“We not only feel there was a violation of the letter of that law, but there was a violation of the sprit of that law,” said Banning Ranch Conservancy Executive Director Steve Ray at Tuesday’s council meeting.

The public was discouraged from commenting on the matter during the meeting because the documents were not readily available, Ray said.

On Tuesday, Mayor Keith Curry called Ray’s assertion that the public was discouraged from commenting on the road “disingenuous.” The mayor noted that the line of people who waited during the first hearing to comment on the access road snaked out the door.

After Ray’s remarks, Councilwoman Leslie Daigle put in a request for the council to reconsider the plans at a later hearing.

COSTA MESA RESPONDS TO ALLEGATIONS OF BROWN ACT VIOLATIONS

Costa Mesa City Atty. Kimberly Hall Barlow said Tuesday that forming the Orange County Fairgrounds subcommittee in closed session wasn’t a violation of the Brown Act, as some city critics had asserted.

The committee, made up of Council members Gary Monahan and Katrina Foley, was set up to delve into the city’s negotiations to buy the fairgrounds and to report back to the council.

“Rather than having the city manager contacting the council and getting feedback, I wanted to avoid any appearances that we were having an inappropriate meetings,” Barlow said. “Rather than doing that, I asked them to identify two council members to help us develop our proposal and strategy.”

Responding to an expert quoted in a Sunday Daily Pilot story who said that he believed that the Brown Act had been violated, Barlow said, “I’ve read it all; this is not a committee, this is related directly and only to the negotiations and the purchase of the fairgrounds.”

Attorney Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, has said that although the subcommittee is related to the negotiations and the purchase of the fairgrounds, the council should have created it  and discussed its [the subcommittee’s] role in public.