Commentary: Stop undergrounding petition in Newport Heights. We don’t need or want it.

This is not my first rodeo. Newport Heights homeowners have been through this repeatedly.

Eleven years ago, I wrote a Daily Pilot commentary with almost the same message: “The undergrounding utility petition process in Newport Heights (AD 118) has gone on long enough. The city should officially end it now and update the petition process itself.”

I wrote then that it was unreasonable to force homeowners to pay thousands of dollars, endure construction, rewire homes, repair landscaping and deal with contractors simply because some neighbors preferred a different aesthetic.

I also noted that although city officials claimed neutrality, the city had no formal resident request initiating the district, despite that being the usual process described on its website. The same concern exists today with AD 118-2.

Reasonable people can disagree about undergrounding utilities. However, the real issue is whether a minority of residents should repeatedly be allowed to try to impose a massive assessment (tax) on neighbors who do not want the project.

Current estimates are roughly $50,000 per parcel, before individual on-property costs. Yet overlapping undergrounding proposals in Newport Heights have failed seven times in 13 years — all at taxpayer expense!

Most poles in the proposed district — roughly two-thirds — are in alleys. That may make the argument primarily about aesthetics for some, but not an urgent neighborhood-wide public safety problem. Residents should not be compelled to spend tens of thousands of dollars because others prefer a better view.

Proponents emphasize safety, but the available evidence does not justify their alarmist tone. Southern California Edison has officially promoted above-ground equipment in areas that are not at high wildfire risk, and the city itself previously acknowledged that Edison and other utilities generally prefer overhead systems. It is telling that the official city petition does not claim undergrounding is necessary for safety or reliability.

The proponents’ fear-based imagery is troubling. Their website relies on videos and photographs of catastrophic fires from dramatically different, high-risk areas to imply that Newport Heights faces comparable danger. It simply does not.

According to the Orange County Public Works fire-hazard rating, Newport Heights scores 0.03 on a 1-to-5 scale on wildfire-risk assessments. Debate the aesthetics if you want, but do not frighten residents with disaster imagery that does not reflect local conditions.

There are serious concerns about the petition process itself. Official city petition materials were distributed with privately prepared advocacy pages, including what opponents assert is misleading information and allegedly manipulated images, physically stapled in front of the official documents. Examples of those allegations are posted at NoUndergrounding.com.

More concerning, a July 17 mailing included only the petition signature-certification page, without the accompanying two-page city explanation describing what property owners were being asked to sign. That practice undermines informed consent.

A petition seeking authority for a $50,000 assessment should be presented with the complete official explanation, not stripped down or surrounded by biased advocacy material that could be mistaken for city information.

After these concerns were reported, the city allowed signature gathering to continue. That is a mistake. The integrity of any assessment-district petition depends on neutral materials and, it should be needless to say, inclusion of the complete petition. The city should care whether petitions were circulated properly and prevent private advocacy from being attached to official documents.

There is also a human cost that proponents seem to overlook. Half of Newport Heights homes were built before 1965. Imagine a retired homeowner living on Social Security, perhaps with a reverse mortgage, suddenly being forced to pay $50,000 and supervise contractors whose work will be more expensive because of the age of their home. That homeowner may have no realistic way to pay. Selling a home occupied for decades could become the only option.

Proponents often say undergrounding may increase property values. But most residents are not planning to sell their place in paradise. They would rather use $50,000 or $60,000 for retirement, long-term care, home repairs, solar panels, education, travel, savings — or simply the security of remaining in the home they love.

Who benefits from undergrounding? Contractors gain work. Realtors benefit from increased turnover from forced sales. Utilities profit from new infrastructure at no cost to them. The city collects more property-tax revenue when long-held homes change hands at higher assessed values. But none of that justifies forcing unwilling residents to finance a cosmetic project they have repeatedly rejected.

The City Council should end this cycle and modernize the process. The governing framework dates to 1913, long before today’s electrical, communications, solar and internet infrastructure.

Petition requirements, disclosure rules, time limits and protections against repetitive proposals all deserve review.

Seven defeats in 13 years should mean something.

To proponents: respect your neighbors and their repeated decisions.

To the city: stop spending public money facilitating the same failed efforts.

Please leave Newport Heights homeowners in peace.

— Weiss is a member of Newport Heights No Undergrounding Coalition