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At the last city council meeting, Councilman Scott Peotter proclaimed that Councilman and then-Finance Chair Keith Curry has been abrasive and has had a personality issue for “years”.
Mayor Diane Dixon followed, claiming that people have literally cried to her privately about Curry’s behavior.
To be fair, Curry is far from a snugly personality– but as Peotter said in his own words: This is not new behavior.
So why then, did the council vote to waive standard procedure to create an “emergency agenda item” to oust Curry from the seat on the board which he has served on for a decade? Why did they decide to throw the rules out the window? Well, I’m going to give you the full scoop, and I’m not going to pull any punches this time:
Flatly, Dixon got her feelings hurt when Curry rightly called her out in a Daily Pilot article for refusing to pursue election reform, with Dixon ostentatiously proclaiming that she didn’t want to do that “in an election year”. Perhaps Dixon was unaware of the fact that the only non-election years in Newport are the ones which end in odd numbers– even then, the campaigns rev up early. Dixon herself filed to run for council in 2013– just six months after moving to Newport from the LA area. (Six months. Really. Anyway…)
Furthermore, Curry again correctly called Dixon’s whimsical plan to invest taxpayer money in the stockmarket “fiscally irresponsible”– which it is. For those new to our local politics (which directly affects our lives far more than national politics), investing taxpayer money in the stock market is exactly what caused Orange County as a whole to go bankrupt under the infamous Robert Citron, whose policies mirror the ones that Dixon is proposing.
To be clear: Dixon has a record of wild fiscal irresponsibility. She has repeatedly voted to raise taxes and is squarely the one to blame when you slide a quarter into the parking meter and only get 8 minutes of use, as she both proposed and passed jacking up meter rates by a whopping 15% just six months into her term. Most recently, she voted to double our water rates, and also voted to increase our annual budget spending— all immediately after being elected on by proclaiming a fiscally conservative platform.
But Dixon said from the dais that her proposal had nothing to do with the attempt at putting all the taxpayer money on the roulette table… What was it for, then? Well, nobody seems to know that answer. First, it was because he was “obstructive”. When he pointed out that he obstructed nothing and that the item in question was actually on the agenda for the very next meeting, Dixon basically just called him a meanie-head. But once again, that’s not new– so why waive all the council rules for an “emergency meeting”? Clearly, Curry’s temperament was not the cause either– so we find ourselves back at the beginning:
Dixon felt sad. On the end of a stream of unpopular initiatives including the “Lights Out at 11pm“, attempting to shut down Dog Beach (thereby bringing attention to it and making it far more popular), a backlash on tax increases, the actual and attempted thefts of property rights from property owners, and attempts to shut down Newport’s small harbor businesses, Curry’s call-out of Dixon’s proposals to gamble with taxpayer money and refusing to look into election reform were the 1-2 punch that triggered Dixon into using her position as mayor as a vindictive battering ram.
So who would join her on her quest? Peotter, ever the Curry opponent, was a sure-bet as an inevitable sponsor of the motion. Muldoon would have likely followed. But the real disappointment here is Newport’s own Duffy Duffield, whose article in the Daily Pilot was so out of touch with reality that it simply could not have been penned by him. His rhetoric in the council chambers was equally bizarre. As a man I once thought of having unimpeachable integrity, it is clear that politics has taken its toll on Newport’s beloved boat man. Either that, or he is carelessly allowing himself to be used as a puppet– same thing, really.
So what was the outcome? All four above-mentioned members of “Team Newport”– who ran on a proclaimed platform of fiscal responsibility– voted to remove Curry as the finance chair– even though nobody will argue that Curry is the most financially literate person up there.
In the end, outside of all the drama from the dais, largely, this is an inconsequential vote, as Curry will still be on the committee, just not as Chair, and this was clearly done as a show of power by Dixon as punishment to Curry for him bringing her whoppers of failure into the light– as all council members should have done, but only Curry did.
Only one question remains: Will the current council set us up for failure just like we had done to us under the Orange County Bankruptcy just 20 short years ago? We’ll know soon enough. The budget will be coming out in a few short weeks, and inevitably, this will be a hot item to discuss. I am sure there is already a broker lined up to “help us manage our funds”– for a fee and/or percentage of profits, of course… and under Dixon’s proposal, that sum of money will be a hefty one, for sure.
