Venezia: Peotter brings an unpleasantness to Newport government

Last week the Newport Beach City Council voted to reduce dock fees, delivering on a campaign promise by “Team Newport” — newly elected council members Marshall Duffield, Kevin Muldoon, Scott Peotter and Diane Dixon.

On Feb. 13, Peotter sent out an email blast to his supporters announcing the victory.

“We reduced the dock tax by $125,000,” he wrote. “What? You kept your promise. I know it may be a surprise to some, but we made some campaign promises to the voters and surprise! We are not messing around, we are actually doing them.”

There’s nothing wrong with keeping a campaign pledge and touting the win, but Peotter didn’t stop there.

He railed on about fellow Councilman Keith Curry, saying he “accused us of being Nixon-esque as he ‘followed the money’ and accused Team Newport of ‘repaying’ our campaign supporters.”

Stop the Dock Tax founder Bob McCaffrey did pump oodles of money into Team Newport’s campaign. So Curry’s observation isn’t outlandish. It’s almost too obvious.

Then Peotter amped up his remarks.

“Curry will not acknowledge that people can work together with a common interest,” he wrote. “Instead, after being rejected by the voters (in his bid for Assembly) in November, he has to try to put his spin on his ill-conceived tax increase to pay for his runaway spending and blame the voters.”

As a side note, calling them dock taxes is incorrect because they’re actually fees. That was a cool spin during campaign season, but that’s over, though you wouldn’t know it by Peotter’s email blast.

At the top of his blast was a bold red “Donate” link.

Click it and a form page pops up on his site, enabling a visitor to make a campaign donation, though it states he’s now an “incumbent.”

But there were other things in Peotter’s blast that raise questions.

Last October, I wrote about how various candidates were using the city’s official seal in their campaign literature even though Municipal Code 1.16.050 says no one can use it or a reproduction of it “without the express consent of the City Council.”

City Atty. Aaron Harp told me at the time, “The municipal code provisions related to the city seal, and use thereof, contain some ambiguity as to whether the municipal code prohibits the use of the city seal in campaign materials when the picture of the city seal is taken in a public place.”

Though I found the code language to be quite clear, Harp told me he thought it would be prudent to clear up the “ambiguity” by having the City Council reevaluate the code’s wording after the election.

After sending Peotter’s latest blast, which also included the seal, to Harp, he acknowledged our last conversation about the seal usage and wrote, “I will raise this issue with the mayor and city manager to see if we can get this on a future agenda to discuss this matter.”

Now that campaign season’s over, and Peotter is now a councilman, the use of the seal takes on a different connotation.

I receive weekly email blasts from elected officials that include county, state and city seals, but they’re content is strictly informational. They make no commentary, as Peotter’s does, and aren’t as biting.

But Peotter’s heading included more than just the seal. There was a cartoon of the infamous concrete “bunnies” outside of City Hall, as well as a fire ring.

Mayor Ed Selich, in his State of the City address Feb. 5, called for an end to the “cartoonish characterization” of the bunnies and the Civic Center, which critics have dubbed the Taj Mahal because of the expense of building it.

After seeing Peotter’s last blast, Selich stood by this statement.

And with regard to Peotter’s comments about Curry, the mayor called for diplomancy.

“In the almost 10 years I have been on the City Council, there have been disagreements on specific issues, but council members have been respectful of those whom they disagree with,” he said. “We took the votes and moved on.”

Selich said the city will be better served if all members continue to follow this practice.

In my Voice of OC column last week, I wrote about my impressions of the mayor’s dinner and the cocktail-hour gossip, which is always juicy.

Talk among some political insiders was that unless Peotter toned it down, Newport politics would start looking like Costa Mesa’s.

But Newport isn’t Costa Mesa.

There’s a certain level of decorum that Newport residents expect from their elected officials. Peotter’s email blast doesn’t reflect that.

I called him to talk about the seal issue, the snarky remarks about Curry and why he still needed donations, but he never called back.

BARBARA VENEZIA lives in Newport Beach. She can be reached at bvontv1@gmail.com.