By Grace Leung, Newport Beach City Manager
The next meeting of the Newport Beach City Council will be on Tuesday, March 11. The full agenda is available here: https://newportbeach.legistar1.com/newportbeach/meetings/2025/3/3739_A_City_Council_25-03-11_Agenda.pdf?id=64ca6b68-c8f6-4e07-a3c9-291f8fe499b3.
A Study Session will begin at 4 p.m. Agenda items include:
- Capital Improvement Program (CIP) early look. City staff will present new projects and funding proposals for the Fiscal Year 2025-26 CIP for review and discussion by the City Council.
The Regular Meeting will begin at 5 p.m. Agenda items include:
- Consideration of $30,000 in cultural arts grant awards as recommended by the City Arts Commission. The funds were previously earmarked to fund specific cultural or artistic programs approved by the City Council in Fiscal Year 2024-25. The Arts Commission reviews funding requests and makes recommendations to the Council.
- Amendment of Ordinance No. 2022-8 related to the completion of residential home construction. In 2019, the City Council adopted a three-year time limit to complete construction of one-unit and two-unit family dwellings. In 2022, as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted supply chains and delayed construction, the Council temporarily granted the City’s building official authority to extend the time limit for up to one additional year. The amendment under consideration would remove an April 2025 sunset provision and permanently allow the building official to extend building permits for up to one additional year.
City Council Meeting Information
The Newport Beach City Council meets on the second and fourth Tuesdays of most months (the exceptions are August and December). Typically, there is a Study Session that starts at 4 p.m. Study sessions are times for the Council to take a deeper look at a specific issue, or hear a presentation, that might eventually lead to a specific and more formal action. A closed session often follows the Study Session. Closed sessions are typically to address legal, personnel, and other matters where additional confidentiality is important.
The Regular (evening) Session typically starts at 6 p.m. and often has a specific listing of different items ready for formal votes. Items on the “Consent Calendar” are heard all at once, unless a Council member has removed (aka “pulled”) an item from the Consent Calendar for specific discussion and separate vote. If an item on the agenda is recommended to be “continued,” it means that the item won’t be heard nor voted on that evening but will be pushed forward to another noticed meeting.
Public Comment is welcomed at both the Study Session and the Regular Session. The public can comment on any item on the agenda. If you want to comment on a Consent Calendar item that was not pulled from the Consent Calendar by a Council Member, you will want to do so at the time listed on the agenda – right before the Council votes on the entire Consent Calendar (it’s Roman Numeral XIII on the posted agenda). If an item is pulled, the Mayor will offer that members of the public can comment as that specific item is heard separately.
Additionally, there is a specific section of Public Comment for items not on the agenda, but on a subject of some relationship to the city government. If you cannot attend a meeting and/or want to communicate with the City Council directly, this e-mail gets to all of them: citycouncil@newportbeachca.gov. The City Manager also gets a copy of the email, because in almost all cases it’s something that the City Manager follows up on.
The Council meets in the Council Chambers at 100 Civic Center Drive, off of Avocado between San Miguel and East Coast Highway. There is plenty of parking in the parking structure. You are always welcome to attend in person, but you can also watch on TV, Spectrum channel 30 and Cox channel 852 or stream it on your computer.
