Barbara Cobb is the President of the Cardiff Town Council. She is right on with this letter to Encinitas city manager Kerry Miller.
Kerry,
I read the S.D. Union-Tribune piece by Angela Lau on Saturday and I find your comments really outrageous. Threatening to turn off street lights because there is not enough money. Now really, Kerry.
When it serves your purposes (raises, increases in benefits and pensions), the city is healthy and there is plenty of money pouring in.
When it does not serve your purposes, you threaten to turn off lights because there is not enough money.
You can't have it both ways. There is plenty of money for your raises, etc. (big bucks) but not enough money for street lights (little bucks) so we must again be taxed. Not enough money for storm drain maintenance either so we must again be taxed.
There are so many examples of city waste but since you are currently concerned about the Landscape and Lighting Fund, let's look at just one small example of waste. The redo of Santa Fe Dr. is typical. This story came from a city employee. Reportedly, the small dirt areas on Santa Fe will be city landscaped, watered and maintained by the city - estimated at $48,000 for the yearly upkeep. Why doesn't the city simply put in the sidewalks and let the property owners take care of whatever dirt strip is left - like neighborhoods do all over the city ??
Instead of taxing us over and over and over again, how about a little belt tightening - like people all over this city are doing because of higher taxes.
Barbara
What a great letter! I hope Barbara sent it to the council as well. Am I the only one that is suspect of the timing of this article, just before the vote to attempt to raise our taxes again. Kerry is clever and came just short of saying that a no on C vote will force him to cut some city service. I wonder if he lives within a budget at home, or just asks for a raise as he needs more clothes or a new car. Angela Lau fell right into the city media strategy. She should know better.
ReplyDeleteYes, great letter. Kerry Miller got two raises last year. He is not keeping city spending in check. He makes more money than Bonnie Dumanis, District Attorney, and more, on the books, than our dishonored former Congressman, Duke Cunningham.
ReplyDeleteThe entire city is supported by us taxpayers. The reality is that we are being taxed and "fee'd" to death. City wants more staff, bigger pensions. No problemo. Just add on new fees, or double the ones already in place. I hope that Council is not planning on going to Japan again on our taxpayer dollar this year. Unless our sister city wants to sponsor us for another joke 10K (or whatever it was) over there.
The city gets lots of bucks from sales tax, property tax, and fees. We did not need to raise fees. We need to decrease govt. corruption, decrease consultants, make those on the gravy wagon work hard, or go to another city.
Like the landscaping proposed fee, which was defeated, the currently proposed storm drain maintenance fee, misrepresented as "clean water fee," should be weighted. Those homes and businesses that generate more run-off should be required to pay more. To divide this cost equally among all who own a home is not fair or legal according to recent precedent. These fees are required to be applied according to use. Thank God City Council and Manager could not get away with doing that before, or that would have passed. If this new "fee" does pass, it should be immediately challenged, in court. We hope, that after their prior success, the Jarvis Taxpayer Association would follow through, and make sure we are not cheated again.
Everyone should be entitled to that $70.00 refund, now. We should not have to wait for the vote. The City is not supposed to campaign. We taxpayers paid for the consulting firms. Now City will not release mailing lists so Encinitas Taxpayers Association can mail out flyers! More unethical conduct.
We need an elected, dedicated City Attorney, willing to ferret out the pork and the lies. Right now Enc. Inc. is a corrupt govt. corporation.
Vote No on C! Vote out incumbents next November.
You guy aren't being very fair. Maybe Miller has a good response.
ReplyDeleteAnyone want to email miller and ask him to send his response to JP?
I have e-mailed Kerry Miller. He just mouths back what city attorneys tell him to say. He will no longer speak to us, or take phone calls.
ReplyDeleteAnyone here willing to e-mail Kerry? Please try. I would love to get his side on his recent raise, need for raising fees, highly paid consultants.
Kerry Miller came from Tahoe, right? Why did he leave there? Maybe NCT or Coast News could do an interview with him, as they did with Christy Guerin, which was quite revealing, by the way.
Kerry Miller needs to take more control. He needs to make some observable attempts to tighten belts. Of course that is not what Council wants right now. He has been with us how long? How much will he make when he retires? I just cringe when I think of the "impact" of his recent raises, and the city attorneys' raises, Sabine & Morrison. These guys are all hired guns. They are not elected and now serve Council and staff, not the people, who do not want to be charged more and more for their fat benefit packages.
We need another Boston Tea Party. Dump the incumbents in the drink. Elect a City Attorney. Make City Manager manage the staff, get the most for our dollars, not hire everything out to overpaid consultants. Listen to what the voters are telling you!!!
The money woes of South Lake Tahoe.
ReplyDeletewww.tahoedailytribune.com/article/20060113/Opinion/101130049/-1/OPINION
Hey, I checked out the South Tahoe link. Oh my gosh!!!
ReplyDeleteKerry Miller, our big spending manager, just got another fat raise, plus benefits totaling over $176,000.00 per annum, two raises in one year!
City Attorneys, on contract too, got similar significant raises. Except Sabine & Morrison get paid, astronomically, for being on retainer, to various cities, by the hour. It is obvious the more they litigate, the more money they rake in, win or lose, at the taxpayer's expense.
Here is what Tahoe Daily Tribune says, in part about that town's search for another city manager, again, after previous manager wanted out after only two years. Miller seems to have left quite a mess with the redevelopment organization he worked to initiate in South Tahoe.
"Assistant City Manager Sue Schlerf has acted on an interim basis at the top job. She wouldn't say Tuesday whether she's applied for the position.
Schlerf has been put into the position before. The last time she filled the role was when Kerry Miller left in October 1999 to take a lateral job in Encinitas, Calif. . . The city manager's starting salary is $108,144 a year."
No one appears to be able to clean up the mess made by poor management in South Lake Tahoe. Now, in Encinitas, we are paying $70,000.00 year (including fat perks) more for another city manager's mess which, in the long run, will surely prove to reap the same disastrous results of poor fiscal planning and restraint.
Kerry may look like a nice guy, nice smile. But he left a troubled city in his wake, up north. Plus Miller has been inaccessible to us. And he doesn't take control of litigious City Attorneys who are charging the taxpayers a bundle.
Plus Kerry Miller favored starting another RDA here. That's right folks. We need a change in direction. City Council and its hired guns should not be allowed to run roughshod over the people. They are not judge, jury and executioner.
Guerin is big bad sister. Bye, bye, Christy, you are history!