TREES: The NCTD cut down a bunch of beautiful old growth trees in Leucadia, link.
QUALITY OF LIFE: The NCTD does nothing to beautify it's scorched earth dead zone in Leucadia,
COASTER: While I support the Coaster and ride it often, the train horns are overly loud and the Coaster kicks up huge plums of dust in the Leucadia dead zone that leaves a layer of grim over the coast highway corridor. Breathe deep, that dusty air is some quality air pollution.
COASTER COPS: If you live east of Vulcan Ave in Leucadia and want to walk to the Pannikan to get a cup of coffee you cannot cross the train tracks. You are too stupid to look both ways for the train and cross safely on your own. If you attempt this you will be fined $200 by the Coaster Cops who cruise the tracks in a gas guzzling SUV. It's better that you get into your car and drive to the Pannikan even though as the crow flies you only live 1/4 mile away. Yes, the NCTD is all about saving gas and getting cars off the road!
SPRINTER: The Sprinter is a $478 million giant taxpayer boondoggle which won it a Golden Fleece award.
BUS: The NCTD bus stops are horrible. Most of them don't have benches, but even the ones with benches are craptacular. The bus stops are notorious for not having schedules.
Now you can't take your bike on the train! news link What is the point of the NCTD? Why didn't the NCTD design their cars to accommodate bikes? What the hell are you supposed to go once you get to the Coaster station? Walk? Take the bus (that probably doesn't go where you need to be and has no schedule posted)? Take a taxi? Arrgh!!!
SHEFFO URGES NCTD BOARD TO POSTPONE HIRING NEW EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR UNTIL AFTER NOV
J.P. – You missed the parts about: (1) They are resisting giving up 9 feet of scorched earth for streetscape. (2) They do not slow the train enough through Leucadia as they do in other populated areas such as Del Mar and San Clemente. (3) They provide easy access to death with no 24-hour cooling off period. (4) They allow loud freight trains ALL NIGHT LONG. (5) They Own operate almost–always nearly empty full-sized busses when some sort of van would surly do the job.(6) They are a BIG BULLY.
ReplyDeleteTheir mission statement should say provide comfortable jobs for our employees. Nothing else matters.
Jerome Stocks hates Leucadians. Jerome Stocks runs the NCTD. The NCTD hates Leucadia.
ReplyDeleteJ.P. you also failed to mention Jerome Stocks has been the Encinitas representative on the NCTD board for the last 6 years and Christi Guerin's alternative the 2 years previous.
ReplyDeleteSeems Jerome Stocks hates Leucadia too.
Here's the part I love!
ReplyDeleteSO NCTD wins a Golden Fleece award for the financial boondoggle that is the Sprinter. It esentially blew up NCTD with firings, resignations, and turmoil.
Amazing.
So who do they hire to right the ship? Ray Patchett.
Ray is the guy that orchestrated the 2nd place prize, the Grand Fleece. which is a $70 million dollar golf curse (intentional misspelling)in Carlsbad. I kid you not, I could not make this up or write a more perverse script!
This is the guy that was smart enough to build a 15 million dollar golf curse for $70 million. I'm sure he will do great things for NCTD!
Really can it get any worse? Did the board say we need some fiscal restraint so lets see who else is on the fleece award list?
Is it an illness or a perversion that we are compelled to waste taxpayer money?
Man, we need some sanity around here.
And ditto all J.P.s comments
The great mangement skills of Ray Patchett, by the way Ray is an avid golfer!
ReplyDeleteMETRO FLEECE:
City of Carlsbad - Carlsbad Municipal Golf Course
Two decades and $63.3 million later, the City of Carlsbad finally unveiled its long-awaited golf course to the public. Even though most golf courses cost anywhere between $10 - $25 million, the Crossings at Carlsbad has the distinct honor of being known as one of the most expensive municipal golf course projects in the history of the United States. The 400-acre Crossings experienced a number of delays and cost overruns along the way, including ten course redesigns and a $24,000 fine from the state Regional Water Quality Control Board for insufficient permits. Fore!
Patchett got hired because he is on the insiders list because he will be a tool. The guy can't get a job in the private sector after such a public boondoogle. So hiring Patchett means that Jerome and Co. can manipulate they guy.
ReplyDeleteSmooth move Jerome
Patchet doesn't need a job. He get $220k plus a year for life. Its called the govenment tit. Your nice big tit that is gushing milk money
ReplyDeletefriends... only vote for city counsel members who will support ending the NCTD reign of hate...
ReplyDeleteLet's make it a campaign issue.
Every thing wrong with Encinitas is tied to Jerome Stocks.
ReplyDeleteBig debt for trophy projects, deteriorating conditions of NCTD right-of-way, developer deals that cost the public dearly, huge increase in staff costs over his tenure, and always supporting developers which cause more traffic for us.
bob, you already have my vote!
ReplyDeleteSomeone made a good comment under a Nanninga topic. It said we don't want ideologues for council.
ReplyDeleteThat means we need to get rid of Houlihan and Dalager.
Jerome is not an ideologue he is an self serving opportunist.
Bond and Barth are principled.
Nanninga threatens to be an ideologue and is questionably partisan.
Collier???
Doug Long thinks his old friend Dalager is doing a great job.
Joe Sheffo sure looks like an ideologue.
The Judge???
Nanninga is questionably partisan?
ReplyDeleteHow can one be partisan is an non partisan office?
Please explain.
As for the ideologue charge, according to Oxfords an ideologue is "a therorist, visionary."
I could easily be considered an ideologue.
A long term journalist with the Coast News, Observations from the edge certainly qualifies for environmental theory.
As for the visionary part, let's just say I'm well read, pro nature, and future focused.
Questionably partisan?
How so?
All politicians are partisan, in my view.
ReplyDeleteJudges and council members are supposedly non-partisan, in this city and countrywide, with respect to judges. However, we all know that judges “take sides,” according to who appointed them. Look at Gore v. Bush. The Supreme Court split along party lines and we got, in 2000, a president not elected by the will of the people, and with very questionable Electoral College votes.
Jerome Stocks is a big spending, corrupt, Republican. He had Randy Duke Cunningham listed as his number one supporter on his last term campaign flier. The flier prominently showed an unauthorized “Photoshop cut out” of Jerome shaking Arnold’s hand. You couldn’t see the background, or know when the photo was shot.
I would hope that those whom we elect to replace our current Council Members would be visionaries. I don’t see James Bond as being all that “principled” lately. He knows its time for him to step down, and we are glad.
In Bill Arballo’s “Eye on the Coast Column in this week’s Coast News, under “NCTD appoints interim director, he says:
“Former C’bad City Manager Ray Patchett, who retired last Sept., has been hired as NCTD interim director until a permanent selection is made . . . Patchett is regarded as a tightfisted money manager.”
I like Arballo’s former suggestion, that the NCTD be taken over by the County Board of Supervisors, to trim administrative expenses, and also to make this more representative of whom the people actually elect to make important decisions, to set priorities according to public needs.
My Webster's New World Dictionary defines "visionary" as one who has visions, or impractical ideas, so be careful what you wish for.
ReplyDeleteRachelle is in.
ReplyDeleteAs far as Encinitas future.
If we want positive future we will vote out Jerome Stocks.
I can answer "How can one be partisan in a nonpartisan office?"
ReplyDeleteIt is "non-partisan " only because the parties don't get to select the candidates. It doesn't mean that party affiliation is absent or that Jerome and Maggie don't have loyalties to a party. A nonpartisan has loyalties only to the people.
The election is nonpartisan but the officeholder decides if she/he will be partisan.
Everyone knows that Jerome is a Republican and Maggie is a Democrat.
Rachelle Collier has the endorsements of both the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters.
ReplyDeleteStocks, Dalager, Houlihan and Bond should all get the boot this November.
ReplyDeleteI'm voting for Sheffo, Naninga, and Collier.
The NCTD bus system is useless.
ReplyDeleteThe buses are totally unpredictable--they come early, they come late, sometimes they don't come at all, and they cannot be relied upon for Coaster connections.
The posted schedules have errors.
The fare boxes often don't work.
Bringing a baby and stroller onto a bus is almost impossible.
The only good thing about NCTD busses is that the drivers are usually very friendly and helpful.
I saw a full-sized bus this morning, during prime commute time, heading north through downtown on Coast HWY 101. It was completely empty. (Usually I see a small number of riders.) How does driving empty busses around solve any congestion, pollution, budget or energy problems? I wish they would operate size-appropriate vehicles.
ReplyDeleteSmaller, need oriented, buses would not only conserve resources, reduce pollution, and ease congestion, it would also encourage mass transit ridership.
ReplyDeleteEast- west bus service is needed to link encinitas residents to the Coaster/Sprinter/Trolley/Amatrak system.
GPS, wireless technologies, and the Internet could revolutionize bus transportation. Unfortunately, it sounds like the NCTD is too financially strapped to invest in innovative infrastructure.
ReplyDeleteNCTD can barely sell Coaster tickets by credit card. It's been months since the new ticket machines were installed, and they still can't sell tickets by debit card (even when it is in their financial interest to do so).
So I guess we can't expect credit card fare boxes or 'real-time GPS bus tracking over a wireless device' anytime soon.
Smart technology wisely applied would be a change for the better.
ReplyDeleteIt's time for change.
Yes time for a change, which includes electing people with a VISION for a better future.
ReplyDeleteVisionary does not necessarily mean "having impractical ideas," anon. That's only one definition, and not the first definition, either.
NCTD has not been effective, and Jerome Stocks is tied to its failures.
ideolouge- an advocate of a particular ideology.
ReplyDeleteideology- a body of ideas characteristic of a person,group,culture,or political party.
There is no productive/constructive place in local Encinitas politics for ideolouges. This is what you have had in the status quo and you complain about in this blog. Self serving closed mindedness. Ideolouges have preconceived and pre established agendas both right and left. Truely progressive local politics needs open minded pragmatists that deal issue by issue based upon the the merits or not of each issue to their constituencies. Political pragmatists listen open mindedly to their constituents and represent their interests issue by issue. Pragmatists must be very intelligent and quick on their feet. That leaves the council encumbents out. Vote Pragmatist !!!