Commentary: Team Newport signals a taxpayer-minded era

With great anticipation and a sense of renewal, I attended the Dec. 9 Newport Beach City Council meeting.

Diane Dixon, Duffy Duffield, Kevin Muldoon and Scott Peotter (“Team Newport”) were sworn in to serve four-year terms.

It was the culmination of 2½ years of grass-roots activism by hundreds of residents.

Team Newport wasted no time by requesting agenda items to audit the $142.5 million Civic Center project, audit the Tidelands Fund for the first time since 1974, revisit the harbor taxes — including the moorings, “dock tax” and commercial marina taxes — and discuss a citizens-based finance committee. A much-deserved resolution for state Sen. Mimi Walters, our congresswoman-elect, was requested.

As we turned the page to a more transparent city government, there was still a whiff of the old ways.

In his goodbye comments to Mayor Rush Hill, Councilman Keith Curry reminded us why 60% of the 74th Assembly District voted against him. Fifty-five percent of Newport Beach voters rejected him for then-Huntington Beach Mayor Matthew Harper, who won 61 of 68 of the city’s precincts.

Curry thanked Hill for his role in the “historical importance” of the development of Newport’s Civic Center. He went on to compare it to the Eiffel Tower, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building, the Washington Monument and the Panama Canal.

You can’t make this stuff up. He called the critics of our $142.5-million monument to political ego “short-sighted” because 1 million will visit the library (some of them from Newport Beach) and 70,000 will attend the “free” concerts (funded by the taxpayers).

Thankfully, Team Newport has a different attitude. No more lectures, bloviating, condescending monologues, and taking on massive debt without voter approval.

Looking forward, I hope new blood gets involved in our city government. Our boards and commissions need new ideas, new ways of solving issues. We should encourage dissenting opinions, not squelch them with ridicule and punitive language.

Residents for Reform believes change is liberating and good for our city. Members of the group look forward to an era of debt-reduction, transparency and respect for taxpayers.

Newport Beach resident BOB MCCAFFREY is volunteer chairman of Residents for Reform.