Commentary: Team Newport hasn’t delivered on fiscal promises

Recently, Balboa Island resident Bob McCaffrey wrote an opinion piece extolling our current council in all its magnificence. There is only one, slight problem with his article: Nearly everything he wrote, in my opinion, is either flatly incorrect or wildly misleading.

McCaffrey pounds once again on the argument that the $250 million Civic Center was an atrocious expense. Here’s the problem: Nobody who voted for it will even be in office next year; they’re all termed out.

Additionally, they even admitted it was overkill. Nobody is defending it. This is 2016. It was a horrible mistake, everyone knows it, and everyone associated with it is already termed out. Let’s focus on the real issues.

He champions council candidate Will O’Neill for “crunching numbers’’ and finding out that 10 years ago the city’s debt was under $5 million. Again, the math is right, but just like the City Hall cost, this was part of McCaffrey and campaign manager Dave Ellis’s “Team Newport” messaging two years ago. This isn’t new information, nor did it require any “number crunching.” This is widely available knowledge.

McCaffrey’s attack on the “make whole” provision is simply, as Councilman Keith Curry put it, fiscally illiterate. If we removed that provision, our interest rates would have skyrocketed, not remained the same.

Is McCaffrey proposing that he wants even higher interest rates on the city hall project? I surely hope not.

He said, “It’s time to turn the page,” and I couldn’t agree more. Since his last batch of candidates have gotten in office, we have seen an increase in multiple departments that are CalPERS pension reliant — our biggest debt by far — and these increases were recommended by the very same people who McCaffrey supported.

He touts the fiscal responsibility of the rest of council, but under their leadership we have seen an increase in taxes, specifically the parking meter fees, which raised a whopping 15% at the behest of his “Team Newport.”

Last election, I bought into McCaffrey’s pitch. I even supported members of Team Newport. However, since they have been in office I have seen nothing but neglect for taxpayers, crony land deals, and attacks on property rights.

The keystone “Team Newport” issues of fighting the dock tax and keeping the fire rings ended in complete backpedaling, with the council settling on a plan to get rid of half of the fire rings, virtually the same plan proposed under the previous council. And instead of repealing a dock tax, they actually unanimously affirmed one. Let that sink in.

I am sick and tired of politicians saying one thing and doing another. I am the only candidate running with a long track record of activism in opposing tax increases, opposing attacks on property rights, and supporting small businesses. I’ve done this for years on my own time, and on my own dime. I didn’t wake up one Saturday morning and decide to run for council without ever having been involved with the city before.

This year is the year that the citizens can make an informed decision: They can listen to the same people promise the same things and get the same results, or they can vote for someone with a proven track record of small-government activism right here in Newport Beach.

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Newport Beach businessman MIKE GLENN is a candidate for City Council.