The city of Irvine is throwing down the gauntlet to the Orange County Business Council,declaring that business doesn’t really support a commercial airport at El Toro. And to prove its case, the city plans to spend $250,000 to start the rival Tech Coast Chamber of Commerce.
But Business Council CEO and president Stan Oftelie doesn’t seem too worried.
“I’m surprised that they’re using a chamber of commerce for a government front group,” Oftelie quipped last week.
While the Business Council has supported a commercial airport at El Toro, its support has been low key,limited to a handful of economic studies showing how the airport would benefit business and a few polls to measure public support for the plan.
Oftelie said the airport is only one of many issues for Business Council members. He said he doubts the Tech Coast Chamber would gain wide acceptance among business executives because of its government backing and its one-issue theme.
“Most business people are concerned about the airport affecting the quality of life and the long-term economic impact. But they’re not obsessed with El Toro. Many of the political leaders are obsessed with it. That’s what you’re seeing,” he said.
The new chamber is part of Irvine’s aggressive campaign to stop an airport from being built at the former base, which abuts Irvine and Lake Forest.
The city has budgeted $7 million for its anti-airport efforts in the coming fiscal year, which comes on top of the $7.8 million it’s spending in the current year. Most of the money will go to advertising, particularly for mailers and television.
Stu Mollrich, the chief political consultant for Irvine on the El Toro issue, said the city is starting the Tech Coast Chamber of Commerce because the Business Council’s Board of Directors has lost touch with its members.
“The Orange County Business Council seems to be ignoring this trend against the airport and we’re wondering, ‘Shouldn’t the business community have another voice?’ That’s what we’re looking at doing,” said Mollrich.
Irvine’s new El Toro budget is a coup for Forde and Mollrich, a Newport Beach-based political consulting firm best known for its work on the Prop. 13 tax initiative of 1978.
In the current fiscal year, Forde and Mollrich are managing a budget of $1.5 million. In the next fiscal year beginning July 1, Forde and Mollrich will be managing $4.5 million of the city’s money. Another $500,000 is being paid to the firm as its fee.
City officials said they were particularly impressed this year by the public’s response to the firm’s mailers touting Irvine’s proposed use of the airport as a “great park.”
“It’s very exciting for us,” said Mollrich. “It’s a multi-faceted campaign that involves polling, planning, community outreach. It’s an issue that we’re closely attached to because we live in Laguna Beach and our office is in Newport Beach.”
The five-employee firm expects to be subcontracting most of the work and is looking for production companies, graphic artists and printers, Mollrich said.
Meanwhile, as proof of business opposition to the airport plan, Mollrich cited a survey distributed last year to 300 business executives, about 10% of whom were members of the Business Council. Mollrich said business opposes the airport because 59% of the respondents said quality of life is more important to attracting a talented workforce than a commercial airport is in fueling economic growth.
The Business Council’s Oftelie said he thought the survey was well done, but he noted that business executives were never asked whether they supported an airport at El Toro.
“I didn’t find anything in their survey that says, ‘Don’t build that airport,’ ” said Oftelie.
Oftelie also noted that only 5% of the 300 respondents were owners of a business and most of the executives who answered the survey “were pretty far down the food chain.”
Some members of the Business Council have quit in prior years because of its position on the airport, most notably Irvine-based Western Digital Corp. Some of its executives formed their own group, the Orange County Business Coalition, but it was loose-knit, with no formal charter or dues.
In recent years, Oftelie said, the council’s members haven’t complained to him about its support for the airport plan.
“Our Board of Directors is firmly behind the belief that the airport is good for the economy,” he said.
