Ironman faces true test in City Hall

Newport Beach Assistant City Manager Dave Kiff thinks he gets his best ideas on long-distance runs or on the seat of his bike, cruising up Pacific Coast Highway from Laguna Beach on his way to work at City Hall in the morning.

“I call them my ‘talk me out of this ideas,’ because I’m always asking people to talk me out of them,” Kiff said from his cluttered office earlier this week. A few plaques from Ironman triathlons featuring photographs of Kiff, 44, on his bike hang by the door on the whitewashed brick wall.

“Sometimes, people can’t talk me out of them,” he said.

During his 11 years working for the city, Kiff has worked on some of the community’s most volatile environmental and social issues, from dredging Upper Newport Bay to drug and alcohol rehabilitation homes in the city.

Now Newport Beach is betting on Kiff’s innovative ideas to find a new police chief, trim its budget and reform its employee pension system in a time of economic uncertainty when he takes over for retiring City Manager Homer Bludau next month.

“He was kind of the go-to guy whenever we needed something done in the city, and I believe he will be able to take those ideas and speed them more broadly among city staff as city manager,” Mayor Ed Selich said.

Kiff lives in Laguna Beach with his partner of 16 years, Tom Lochner, a Newport Beach doctor.

He and Lochner have already made an offer on a house in Newport Beach near Irvine Avenue. The couple have two mixed-breed dogs, Macey and Ben.

Kiff rescued 3-year-old Macey from the Newport Beach animal shelter. His partner found Ben 13 years ago begging for scraps on the streets of Los Angeles.

The city faces slumping sales tax revenues, a state government that will raid the city’s coffers for $6 million this year, and contract negotiations with city employee unions in the coming year.

Kiff, who characterizes himself as a fiscal conservative, says he wants to streamline the city’s budgeting process and take a critical look at city employee benefits packages.

“[In a recession], cities tend to lag on recovery. We will have consequences of the economic downturn even longer — it’s going to be a huge factor in our pension costs,” Kiff said.

One of Kiff’s first tasks once he takes over Sept. 12 will be searching for a new police chief after allegations of homophobia and favoritism rocked the Newport Beach Police Department over the past year.