“We used to have a much more open form of government than we have today,” Otting said. “When you go up for a public hearing and ask questions, they say ‘Next.’”
Otting began going to City Council meetings about 15 years ago lobbying for local businesses to be able to choose their garbage collection service — her husband owns a sanitation company. Over the years, she’s become something of a one-woman institution at City Hall, prefacing all of her comments at the podium in Council Chambers with a perfunctory “My name is Dolores Otting. I live in Newport Beach...”
The city began posting an online calendar of city meetings and offering city agendas at the public library after she suggested them, she said, to encourage the public to be more involved in city government.
If elected, Otting said she will push to have planning and harbor commissions’ meetings recorded and televised. She also wants to do away with many of the city’s ad hoc committees, which she says impede public access to government. More city business should be done in public and not in committees, regardless of whether it takes more time to get things done, she said.
“They are on a fast track in this city,” Otting said. “They go through the process of public hearings, but the heart of the city isn’t there.”
Otting’s opponent, Councilman Keith Curry, who she also ran against unsuccessfully in 2006, said Otting is a contrarian at heart, opposing many successful city initiatives from the podium in Council Chambers.
“Dolores has opposed every major accomplishment of the city in last three years,” Curry said.
