NEWPORT BEACH : City Manager Gets Retirement Roast

Longtime friends and colleagues came out to remember and poke fun at the 35-year career of Newport Beach City Manager Robert L. Wynn at a roast Wednesday night, with the biggest laughs coming from jokes about his inability to balance a checkbook and his habit of deferring to staff members.

“Have you ever noticed that when the City Council asks the city manager for an opinion, he refers it to the staff?” said longtime resident and council watchdog Les Steppensen. “We’ve fought the Balboa Bay Club, we’ve fought all these things, and we don’t even know what this man is thinking about any of it.”

Said lifeguard chief Ken Jacobsen: “This guy’s in charge of a ($89) million budget, and his wife won’t even trust him with the checkbook.”

Councilwoman Evelyn Hart, who posed as a character named Swami Hart for the night, answered a range of Johnny Carson-as-”Karnak”-style questions about the city manager. “Short skirts, a balanced budget, chocolate. These are things Bob Wynn does appreciate.”

And Mayor Phil Sansone joked that the city may need to consider floating bonds to pay for Wynn’s accumulated time off when he retires.

The roast, sponsored by Speak Up Newport, a local group that recognizes the community leaders, drew about 75 people at Villa Nova restaurant in Newport Beach. The group also presented Wynn with its Sunshine Award for “outstanding leadership and dedication” to the city.

Wynn, who sat in the second row with his wife, Gayle, and son, Steve, took a few minutes at the end of the affair to make a few retaliatory stabs of his own at the jesters.

As for cracks about his duck-like walk, Wynn replied: “If you walk this way, you can move to the left and the right. It’s true I serve at the pleasure of the City Council. What they please, I do.”

He also poked fun at himself, mocking the importance of his long service to the city. “When I submitted my resignation, I told council it would probably take five people to replace me,” said Wynn, “and they responded that they were thinking about abolishing my post.”

Wynn, who has served as city manager for 20 years, plans to retire in December. He is the second-longest-serving city manager in Orange County.