Uncle Sam, Lady Liberty and bike riding chickens

Don't forget to check out the local 4th of July parade on Neptune today at 4 pm.

Sand Circles

First sighting. June 23.
Second sighting. July 1.

Less Flushing=More Traffic

KPBS: Water Authority Challenges Residents to Save 20 Gal
The last two years have been dry ones in San Diego. In fact, this past rainy season has brought our region less than four inches of precipitation. In a normal year, we'd get about ten inches. Add to that the fact that the Colorado River Valley has been going through a drought and the Sierra snowpack is depleted, and you could have some trouble. Those, after all, are the places where most of our water comes from.

So far, the trouble with water supply doesn't mean any real limits on the amount of water local residents are allowed to use. But next year, local farmers are fully expecting to be hit with substantial restrictions. In the meantime, the San Diego County Water Authority is asking local residents to cut back their water use by 10 percent. They call it the "20-Gallon Challenge" because cutting 10 percent means every person reduces his or her daily use by 20 gallons. How do you save 20 gallons a day?

NCT Letter to the Editor: Where's the water shortage?
Once again, SoCal water officials are asking us to conserve. May I please see a show of hands from all the local city councils that plan to temporarily stop issuing new building permits due to the water shortage? Oceanside? Vista? San Diego? Seeing none, how about a tally from all the local water districts? Which districts are putting a hold on future letters of water availability given out to the development industry? Fallbrook Public Utility? Carlsbad Municipal? Rincon del Diablo? No hands? I guess we don't really have a water shortage then, do we?

Surely the taxpayer-owned water districts would never think about asking existing ratepayers to conserve water just so they can support massive future housing developments? The same ratepayers who pay their salaries and built the water infrastructure? Naw, they would never do that. Would they? I'm now going to go flush my toilet for no reason. Because I can, and I pay for every drop.

Ken Harrison
Cardiff-by-the-Sea

Doomed?

Everyone has been asking Dan Dalager why the business is closing. Dalager said the demographics and economics of Encinitas have changed from a place where agriculture was important and gardening services had their headquarters.

Leucadia blog: Dalager closes shop to hunt squirrels.

Keep Leucadia Trashy

The following was sent to JP a couple days ago.

At the Encinitas City Council meeting on 6/27/07 the Parks & Rec staff acknowledged that on busy weekends, holiday weekends and summer days the trash cans at our beaches are overflowing. Go to Moonlight Beach on a Sunday morning and the trash is oozing all over and the seagulls are picking through it, spreading it even further afield. It has been like this for years. Here is a photo from 2002. Not July 4th weekend, but June 16th 2002.
Here are recommendations in the 2002 Blue Ribbon Environment Committee report: “Increase the number of trashcans and/or frequency of collection at Moonlight Beach. During peak use periods the trashcans are filled to overflowing. Currently these overflowing trashcans are left overnight, resulting in the scattering of litter by seagulls and other wildlife before the trash is collected in the morning. A final, late day trash collection should be instituted, rather than, or in addition to, the current early morning trash collection… In addition, the number of trash cans could be increased during peak use periods and reduced during low use periods.” And there is an entire recommendation on Public Recycling that includes suggestions for the beaches. Okay, so they did start recycling at Moonlight Beach and other parks – it is those blue metal trash cans with a dinky recycling section on top.

They look like this:
I wonder if people are even aware that is for recycling –the signage is awful. People are generally lazy about recycling, so we need to encourage people and have good signage and a lot of obvious bins. And the capacity is very small - any volume of people and those things are overflowing.

So here we are in 2007 (that is FIVE years later) and the Parks and Rec folks propose to try and reduce the trash from 4th of July holiday beachgoers. They have some signs and two kinds of plastic bags – one for trash and one for recycling. The idea as far as I understand it is that people take bags when they arrive, fill them up while they are there, and when they leave deposit them into trash cans or recycling receptacles (are there any besides those little top sections on the blue metal cans?...because a bag certainly won’t fit in there). If cans are full, which of course they will be, people should deposit their bags on the ground next to the cans. Well, yes that is better than just trash and recycling items placed directly on the ground, but how about this for an idea? INCREASE the NUMBER of trash cans and put out some DECENT SIZED recycling receptacles, and INCREASE THE FREQUENCY of pickups during busy periods.

A visit to Moonlight Beach this morning shows that there are FOUR blue metal trash cans with recycling on top for the whole beach area (2 of these are against the food kiosk and one is at the volleyball courts, that leaves ONE for the entire sandy beach area!). There are quite a few other just trash cans at the beach. There are also 3 of these trash/recycling cans around the playground and two in the lawn area going east from the playground).

Yes, I know it would cost more to provide more trash and recycling receptacles and to increase the frequency of pick-ups – but don’t you think keeping our beaches clean and keeping trash out of the ocean is worth it? Encinitas is all about the beaches and the ocean - it is our jewel. When pressed at the City Council meeting by Houlihan and Barth about expanding the proposed July 4th plastic bag recycling program to other beaches (like Beacons, which often has overflowing trash cans) and to other times of year, Parks and Rec said that, well, “We’ll play it by ear and see how it goes.” What is there to figure out? Isn’t keeping trash off the beach and out of the ocean a no brainer? Isn’t increasing recycling and reducing our waste a no brainer? I just don’t get it.


Some recycling receptacles are not that expensive.
How about this? The City could even sell advertising on them and MAKE money.

Jesse Giessow

Art Training Ground

Third grader Jake McConlogue understands Leucadia. That is his work above. Check out the kid in the illustration. He has a huge smile and is knee deep in the Pacific. He knows where to be. Jake, who is a generation away from driving, already understands the central impacting geographic features of Leucadia are the transportation corridors. The 101, the railroad and Interstate 5, parallel the Pacific.

Here is one from Jim McConlogue. He gets it too.

Western Encinitas, and especially Leucadia, is flooded with artists. Why is that?

Killing 2 birds with 3 stones

Encinitas approves $10,425 for survey; Questionnaire will not include question about beach smoking ban

By: ADAM KAYE - Staff Writer

ENCINITAS -- The City Council voted 3-2 Wednesday to spend $10,425 for a community opinion survey amid calls from speakers that the survey include a query about a beach smoking ban.

Councilwomen Teresa Barth and Maggie Houlihan sided with representatives from the American Lung Association, Surfrider Foundation, and anti-drug groups in asking that the survey quiz respondents on whether smoking should be banned at Encinitas beaches.

Mayor James Bond and Councilmen Dan Dalager and Jerome Stocks voted to leave the 31-question survey as an Oregon-based firm, Moore Information Inc., had prepared it ---- without the question on a beach smoking ban.

The same council bloc in 2004 voted down a smoking ban proposal. Stocks is pushing to put a beach smoking ban measure on the 2008 ballot.

"The topic on hand is not smoking on the beach," Stocks said. "The topic before us is are we going to do a citizen satisfaction survey which measures how people like or dislike the services or amenities the city provides. I will never vote to have a survey that takes a pulse of the public on pet political projects and issues."


The yuppie orphans who hang out at Moonlight Beach and enjoy smoking will not be happy with a smoking ban.

In 2003, neighboring Solana Beach enacted a beach smoking ban, and since then, all cities on the north coast, with the exception of Encinitas, have adopted similar bans. Smokers also can legally light up at state-controlled beaches in Carlsbad. The county of San Diego prohibits smoking in its parks.

Barth, who served on a subcommittee with Stocks to develop the survey, said that posing the smoking question would be well worth adding an additional $225 to its cost.

"I see it not as a political issue but rather as a quality-of-life issue," she said. "Our primary, top recreational activity in our community is our beaches and I want to know how our citizens feel about that."

Debra Kelley of the local chapter of the American Lung Association told the council that her organization would pay the $225 to add the question.

She noted that Oceanside, one of 13 jurisdictions in the county to enact smoking bans, consulted with constituents by placing a survey question on their water bills.

Dalager told his colleagues he did not want the survey to become an opinion poll.

Bond said that most of the state's shoreline -- including many Encinitas beaches -- is under state control and that the Legislature should be responsible for enacting a smoking ban.

A healthy lifestyle means smoking and diet Pepsi.

In 2005, an Encinitas survey by the same company revealed overall satisfaction with city services but room for improvement with road conditions and information delivery to the public.

Moore Information randomly polled 300 residents who said they were 18 or older. The survey's sampling error was plus or minus 6 percent.

A majority of respondents said the beaches and the weather were what they liked best about living in the city.

-- Contact staff writer Adam Kaye at (760) 901-4074 or akaye@nctimes.com.

Leucadia Blog: Burning Questions about the Beach Smoking Ban

Leucadia Blog: The Surveys Usefulness is Dubious

*note-The subjects in the photos all pitched their cigarette butts on the pavement and not the proper receptacles.

New Farmer's Market Signage

Morgan Mallory did not give up his cause and now we have several signs around town telling people about our growing Farmer's Market.

Every Sunday
10:00 AM - 2:00 PM
Paul Ecke Central School
(Corner of Vulcan and Union Streets)

I believe that our Farmer's Market is certified organic.

Encinitas, Too Cool for the Cool?

Voice of San Diego story about Encinitas artist making our town groovy for yuppies and then getting driven out by high rents. There is no mention of the 80k a year Arts Director.

Encinitas, Too Cool for the Cool
By SUSAN GRANT Voice Staff Writer

Monday, June 25, 2007 | Downtown Encinitas can’t be accused of lacking creative flavor. From the mosaic tile trash cans lining the streets to the gold-and-blue domed Self-Realization Fellowship Temple that twinkles with thousands of lights during the winter holidays, the town is filled with color and flair.

"There’s an artist of some kind behind every other door around here," said Barbara Milé, an Encinitas native and former city art commissioner.

The revitalization of the downtown area over the last decade has brought business and tourism to the area. Boutique clothing shops, gardening supply stores and hair salons now fill the city’s downtown area.

However, that boom has also raised rent to the point that the community artists are having a hard time affording gallery space in the very area they helped define. "It works against us in a way because when the town is revitalized, the rent goes up," said local artist Donna Butnik.

Aesthetic and structural improvements made to the downtown area of old Encinitas are part of a revitalization program run by the Downtown Encinitas MainStreet Association. More than $23 million went toward the development of new shopping centers, streetscape renovations and art-specific programs such as the Arts Alive street banners. In 2004, DEMA received a Great American Main Street Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The association was praised for having "successfully harnessed the community’s artistic spirit to develop an arts niche."

Since 1997, the rate for a commercial space in the popular shopping center The Lumberyard has doubled from $1.50 a square foot to about $3.

Read the whole article here.


Encinitas Commission for the Arts


Encinitas artist are being outsourced to slave children in China who can produce art much cheaper and faster.

Partly Cloudy Traffic Forecast

The traffic report presented to the city council this week gave a partly cloudy forecast for Encinitas traffic. The forecast was based on very optimistic projections for I5 traffic flow in 2030. The city's consultant, who worked very closely with city staff, said that a lot of the city's traffic problems would be alleviated once "freeway avoidance" traffic (a.k.a cut-through) got back on the freeway and off our streets. They said that was going to happen by 2030 because the I5 expansion will be complete by then.

Turns out that there might not be any sun in our forecast. Two days after the city's administration tried to slide the traffic report past the public the North County Times reported on a study that SANDAG just released. From that article,

"On the coast, solo commute times would improve [in 2030]. The trip from Oceanside to downtown San Diego would shrink slightly, from 76 minutes to 70.

As for car-pool trips down I-5, those would improve significantly, from the current average of 69 minutes to 48 minutes, the plan states. The typical transit trip would go from 93 minutes to 77."

SANDAG'S 2030 Level of Service Projection

Folks, if San Diego's population continues to boom cut-through traffic is not going to vanish in our lifetime. Jerome Stocks must have know that there was an inconsistency between the city's traffic report and SANDAG's study. Stocks is on the council traffic study subcommittee and he sits on SANDAG.

Leucadia Blog: Traffic Discussions

Rezones and Traffic Discussions this week at City Hall

The Planning Commission is meeting Thursday evening, June 21 to discuss several rezones that may interest you. Read the NCT.com story for full details:
Encinitas plan amendments would change law of land

And, tonight at the city council meeting there will be a discussion about our new, frustrating gridlock we are experiencing. We've had hints of this gridlock coming for the last five years but it is now finally becoming an all day/everyday event. Many of you readers warned about this gridlock for years and years but were brushed off as paranoid chicken littles by the powers that be.

The Leucadia 101 Mainstreet Association will be making a plea to the city council tonight to please do something about the increasingly dangerous and dysfunctional Leucadia coast highway corridor, aka The Gauntlet.

NBCsandiego.com story (with video) about traffic and the city council meeting story video


2005 photo of southbound morning traffic gridlocked all the way past Grandview St on the Leucadia coast highway.

Leucadia Blog: Six roundabouts are proposed on Rancho Santa Fe Road

Six roundabouts are proposed on Rancho Santa Fe Road

ENCINITAS -- A traffic plan headed to the City Council on Wednesday proposes stoplights, signals and roundabouts to relieve the congestion that clogs Rancho Santa Fe Road every work day.

"I've been a longtime proponent of getting Rancho Santa Fe Road fixed," Mayor James Bond said Monday. "It's broken right now."

The traffic study examines Rancho Santa Fe Road in the Olivenhain community and several other thoroughfares.

The study concludes that most roads can meet the demands future development will place upon them through 2030.

In addition to fixes for Rancho Santa Fe Road, the traffic plan calls for widening segments of Encinitas Boulevard. Freeway ramps also would require upgrades.

No action is scheduled for the meeting that will be held at 6 p.m. Wednesday at 505 S. Vulcan Ave.

Read the rest of Adam Kaye's NCT.com story:

Traffic plan heads to Encinitas council

In addition to Rancho Santa Fe Road, the city is considering roundabout controls at freeway interchanges, the report states.

Some of the city's busiest roads should be widened, the report states. The roads include:

# El Camino Real, six lanes from Encinitas Boulevard to Manchester Avenue.

# Manchester Avenue, six lanes from El Camino Real to Interstate 5.

# Encinitas Boulevard, eight lanes from Interstate 5 to Saxony Road.

# Encinitas Boulevard, six lanes from Saxony Road to Balour Drive.

# Encinitas Boulevard, six lanes from Via Cantebria to El Camino Real.

# Encinitas Boulevard, six lanes from El Camino Real to Village Square.

# Olivenhain Road, six lanes from El Camino Real to Amargosa Street.

# Olivenhain Road, six lanes from Amargosa to Rancho Santa Fe Road.

# La Costa Avenue, four lanes from Interstate 5 to North Coast Highway 101.

The city in 2003 commissioned Santa Ana-based Austin-Fourst Associates Inc. to prepare the study. Many of the traffic counts it contains were taken that year. To date, the city has paid $132,154 for the document.

Does this city have roundabout fever or what?

Rods & Woodies begins this week

click poster for large view

Psycho Dolphin Killers on the Loose

SDUT story

Clues sought to shooting deaths of four dolphins

By Terry Rodgers
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

10:47 a.m. June 15, 2007

OCEANSIDE – Someone shot and killed four dolphins off the North County coast, and federal authorities are offering a $2,500 reward for any information about who did it.

The bodies of four long-beaked common dolphins were discovered between May 29 and June 5 at various locations between Carlsbad state Beach and Oceanside Harbor.

The dolphins appeared to have been dead for no more than a week. A fifth dolphin carcass was also found but authorities don't know how it died.

Their carcasses were taken to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration facility in La Jolla for analysis.

Intentional killings of dolphins are rare along U.S. coastlines, said Mark Oswell, an enforcement agent for the National Marine Fisheries Service

“We get about one report per year of this type of incident for the entire country,” he said. “To have five dolphins turn up dead like this in a short time span is pretty unusual.”

Fisheries investigators ask anyone with information about the shootings to call (619) 557-5494 or (800) 853-1964.

Intentionally killing a dolphin can result in a fine of as much as $20,000 and possible jail time.

This is an extremely disturbing story. My guess is redneck fisherman who didn't like competing with dolphins for yellowtail tuna.