A View on Pacific View

California Code - Section 65852.9 is relied upon, but not directly quoted in the Writ of Mandate for which EUSD has applied to the Superior Court, attempting to force Encinitas Council to rezone the Pacific View site for residential redevelopment.  This specific code utilizes an “if, and then,” scenario, providing that “b)If all of the public entities enumerated in Section 17489 of the Education Code decline a school district's offer to sell or lease school property pursuant to Article 5 (commencing with Section 17485 of Chapter 4 of Part 10.5 of the Education Code), the city or county having zoning jurisdiction over the property shall, upon request of the school district, zone the schoolsite as defined in Section 39392 of the Education Code, consistent with the provisions of the applicable general and specific plans and compatible with the uses of property surrounding the schoolsite.”   Nowhere is it specified that the zoning must be identical to contiguous properties.   This code pre-supposes that some sites are zoned specifically for school use.  Pacific View’s current zoning is compatible with “uses of property surrounding the schoolsite.”

Further, the district never performed an independent appraisal of the property, and so never complied with the clear requirements of Educational Code.  That code also provides that if eight years prior to a surplus school property’s being offered for lease or sale, the site was used, in part, for playing fields (After Pacific View was closed, it was leased to the City for a temporary public works yard.), then the Naylor Act does apply, and 30% of surplus property shall be offered to the applicable public entities according to its original cost, adjusted for inflation (Pacific View’s site was donated), for as little as 25% on the dollar of the APPRAISED value.  Superintendents Devoir, King and now Baird have all attempted to skirt this requirement, refusing to honor the intent of the Legislature, or the wishes of the community.

Superintendent Tim Baird appears to have had a [community resource liquidation] agenda before he came to be Superintendent of EUSD.  An article, “Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave, When First We Practice to Deceive” can be read, through an Ojai, CA publication, “The View” published in July 2009:  http://www.ojaiskatepark.com/pdfs/viewskateparkstory.pdf

Some excerpts follow:

" .  .  . But whispers turned to a roar and with the stated goal of turning centrally located Chaparral school into a strip/shopping mall for financial profit.  They have obviously conspired to do everything they can do to NOT get the Skate Park completed, as promised.

. . . City Manager Jere Kersnar had to be reminded by local private citizen and State Farm Insurance Agent, Bob Daddi, that there were legal liability/workmens comp provisions already in place on the state books which would enable volunteering citizens to exercise their get-it-done spirit and contribute their free labors to a city/non-profit coop project to Get-it-Done.

. . . Tim Baird, Ojai Unified’s former Superintendent, recently ducked out of Ojai for a higher paying superintendent job with Encinitas Union School District (EUSD) near San Diego, educating elementary aged youth.  Reportedly he now takes home a salary of over $200,000 annually there, at least $65,000 above what he had been making in Ojai.

Baird showed his true Ojai “community” spirit when he abandoned his sleepy little stepping stone of Ojai.  Under Baird’s self-promoting tutelage, the Ojai district has already spent well over $60,000 in scarce educational (and public) funds, on attorney fees toward his unrealized pet strip/mall development project."

Certainly Baird appears duplicitous relative to Ojai development plans by that school district, and now, with respect to pushing his development agenda within EUSD.  Was his development propensity why he was hired here?  Why is he being paid much more in Encinitas than in Ojai, despite EUSD's budgetary challenges?   And why are administrators paid so much when teachers are being laid off?  Why did Baird state that the $44 million dollar school bond could not go to teachers’ salaries, implying that money from the Pacific View site could, which is NOT TRUE, according to DEMA?

Glenn Sabine, Encinitas City Attorney, has quoted code, out of context, which DOES NOT SPECIFICALLY SUPPORT EUSD’s legal claims.  We hope some other firm defends against this action, which only Mayor Bond voted, in closed session, NOT to defend, despite numerous council meetings where public speakers insisted the donated site should remain for community use.  The plans advocated by DEMA seem practical and are welcomed by a consensus of the community.


Lynn and Russell Marr, Leucadia


LB Burning Questions: Will Mark Muir take the same "ethical" route to dodge this issue as Kristin Gaspar. Will he also claim to be unable to get up to speed on issues that began before they were on council? Will it make Kristin look really really bad if Muir jumps right in and votes on Pacific View matters? Does Muir have some of those other secret conflicts of interest that Gaspar does? Muir certainly has a novel situation with his wife on the board of the EUSD.