Want to know what’s going on in Newport Beach? Ask the city manager.
The Corona del Mar Chamber of Commerce hosted its monthly Good Morning CdM meeting on Thursday, Jan. 8 at the Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club with special guest Seimone Jurjis, the newly appointed Newport Beach City Manager.
Jurjis served as Community Development Director for the City of Newport Beach before being named Assistant City Manager in August 2023 and now City Manager upon the retirement of Grace Leung.
During his presentation to two dozen community members, Jurjis covered a variety of topics, including how the City of Newport Beach functions.
“I always explain to people who are not familiar with how governments work to think of it as a company, a publicly traded company,” said Jurjis. “You’ve got a board of directors, and you have a CEO and senior vice president. It’s kind of the same operation, either in public sector or private sector. Instead of a board of directors, we have council members, and they’re elected by the people. The people are the shareholders. The council members are our board of directors, and then the board of directors are the ones that hire the CEO. I’m the new CEO, but instead of CEO, we call it city manager.”
Jurjis explained how the various city departments work together, and that the city runs like “a really good company. We’re very fiscally conservative with our approach to everything we do. We always have a vision of what’s going to be in our future, and what are the curve balls that are going to be thrown at us.”
Jurjis discussed the city’s facility needs, including replacing aging fire stations. He specifically focused on the combination fire station and library planned for Balboa.
“We are saving some money by not building two separate facilities. Those facility changes are trying to be cost effective.”
His next topic was the trolley system in Newport Beach—or the lack of one.
“We did a pilot program for many years to go down the peninsula,” said Jurjis. “Cities run trolleys to encourage people to get on a bus or a van or a trolley so we’re not adding more cars to the street and creating more traffic. If you drive down the peninsula, there’s a lot of traffic. In the summertime, it gets really, really busy. We’ve had the pilot program for the last seven or eight years of running a trolley service during the summer season. It’s been really successful. So now the vision is, what if we just continue that? What if we do our own trolley service. Let’s buy trolleys, and let’s not just go down the peninsula. Let’s go down to Corona del Mar. Let’s go up to Fashion Island. So, we’ve ordered trolleys. They’re being manufactured now. They’re not electric, because there’s really no electric trolleys. They are natural gas. And we hope to have a program launched in the summer of 2027.”
The city is working on the routes that the trolley system will take, but in response to a question, Jurjis said it will probably go to Crystal Cove.
Homelessness was another topic addressed by Jurjis. According to him, the city’s last homeless count was 13 homeless, which is very low but it’s a topic the city will continue to address.
Public Safety was another important topic.
“We have a great police force. We put a lot of money into it, and we support them with everything they want to do and what their needs are,” said Jurjis. “We’ve installed 70 flock cameras throughout the city. Those are cameras that are put on a pole on the public sidewalk or street, and the job of the camera is to read your license plate.”
Jurjis explained that when people drive to Newport Beach to commit crimes, and those license plates can be read.
“We put them strategically where we think it’s important to have these flock cameras, and these flock cameras have really been a huge success for us,” said Jurjis. “They don’t know our flock cameras are reading their license plate.”
The city also purchased five drones that can be launched by the police department dispatcher.
“We have dispatch in our police department that gets a call of an accident that happened down the street at a certain intersection,” explained Jjurjis. “Dispatch can put the coordinates into the drone system. The drone launches automatically, and it’ll be autonomous and fly to its position. We do have drone pilots that we have on staff that will manage that flight and the response time. The whole idea is to get eyes on the scene as quickly as possible. Is it an accident that we need to call paramedic service, or is it a fire or is it a bad guy that we need to catch? The cameras are amazing. They can zoom in on the exact shoes you’re wearing. It’s amazing technology. It has blue and red lights, and a microphone and speakers.”
Jurjis said the drones are placed at fire stations and police stations strategically, so the drones can arrive on the scene faster than a patrol officer. The fire department can use the drones to check out reports of a fire.
Quality of life was another topic Jurjis addressed, including illegal vending on the beaches.
“People with ice cream carts try vending on the beach. You can’t do commercial sales on a public beach. That’s not allowed. That’s illegal. We still get those pockets of people on the sidewalk trying to sell tchotchkes. We address it, we go after them. And we have teams throughout the beaches, kind of scanning the beaches, seeing who’s out there. We have people who try to sell food, but it’s not allowed. And so we have teams that are dealing with those enforcement issues.”
Quality of life also means addressing the Corona del Mar corridor and the businesses there. Jurjis talked about updating the codes and looking at what’s allowed and not allowed. He mentioned developing a valet program and locating empty lots where cars can be parked.
“We don’t want to park cars on residential streets. This goal is we want to utilize commercial properties that have parking lots, like the Farmers and Merchants Bank after hours.”
Other CdM corridor issues to be addressed include identifying outdoor dining on public sidewalks.
“When you have a public sidewalk that is the people’s sidewalk, that’s not for private use,” said Jurjis. “You see people putting tables and chairs out there. We want to be permissive and allow it, but when you put tables and chairs on public sidewalk, who carries that liability? If somebody falls, if somebody spills something on the floor, who’s going to clean that up? So those are little issues that we want to be sensitive about. It’s a litigious state. People sue the city for everything, so we want to make sure that we’re properly covered.”
The city is also testing vehicle apps that can track a vehicle’s location and alert drivers where parking is available near them. They hope to launch the program by the end of the year.
During the Q&A portion of his presentation, Jurjis answered a question about the Newport Beach water supply.
“A long time ago, probably in the 1980s, somebody had the brilliant idea of ‘why don’t we buy land in Fountain Valley and drill and tap into that water,’ that’s good water. So, we’ve done that. Now, 75 percent of the water that we use in Newport Beach is groundwater pumped out of Fountain Valley. Now we have water rights. We own the land. We have our own piping. We have pipes from Fountain Valley that come into Newport Beach. That water is cheaper for us than it is to buy from the Metropolitan Water District, which is the Colorado River. That’s more expensive. So, 25 percent is purchased water from Metropolitan Water District.”
Unfortunately, said Jurjis, the pipes from Fountain Valley are aging, and the pumps are aging out. Sediment is built up in the pipe, so yields are shrinking. New wells need to be drilled, so the city is purchasing property to drill new wells.
“Our goal, after we finish all the build out, is to be 100 percent on groundwater, and we don’t have to rely on the Colorado River for our water source,” stated Jurjis. “The problem is when there is a drought and the state passes laws and they say cut back on your water usage, we’re still affected by that. But going forward, it’s cheaper for us to build, invest in these wells, pipe the water from the ground and utilize it for us for our own use within the city of Newport Beach.”
Contact Seimone Jurjis at (949) 644-3001 or by email at sjurjis@newportbeachca.gov.
