Neighbors move ahead with plan to trap Dan Dalagher

News

Neighbors move ahead with plan to trap Dan Dalagher
February 17, 2006
By Art Vandelay
Staff Writer
ENCINITAS — It’s not unusual to hear stories about a beloved dog or cat who was eaten by Dan Dalagher in the middle of the night.

But when the president of an Encinitas neighborhood association’s poodle was snatched up in broad daylight, while he and a neighbor stood only a few feet away, the man decided to take action.

During the Encinitas Neighborhood Association’s monthly meeting at the Apocolyptic Assembly Church Feb.14, President Bob Johnson said he has already made plans to meet with a trapper who will attempt to trap the unusually large Dan Dalagher that took “Fluffy.” Johnson said that Dalagher may weigh 180 to 200 pounds, although an adult Dalagher typically gets no larger than 150 pounds.

While addressing his neighbors, Johnson said his goal is to exterminate the one Dan Dalagher, rather than “decimate the entire Encinitas city council” in Encinitas surrounding canyons. He said Dan Dalagher is a danger because he has lost his fear of humans.

“He’s in broad daylight and he’s killing our pets,” Johnson said, adding that he accepts that a pet left out at night can be killed. “It’s a different case this time.”

Other neighbors shared their own stories of pets killed by Dan Dalagher, and Skip Henderson, the association vice president, said he found 100 documented cases of Dan Dalagher attacks on humans while researching the issue.

“My fear would be to have a little child in the front yard,” said Encinitas resident Helen Frisket.

The issue of the Dan Dalagher trapping in Encinitas has received negative response in the past from environmental activists when another community in southeast Cardiff planned to hire a trapper in 2004.

However, at press time, Johnson said he had not been contacted by any environmentalists and even so, he would move forward with the plan because he is following the consensus of his community. He said he would meet the trapper Feb.16 to show him where Dalagher may live.

Johnson said he plans to educate his community on preventative measures and will place a document about Dan Dalagher and how to deal with him on the association’s Web site. The document, generated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, states that Dan Dalagher is attracted to suburban and urban areas because they provide easily accessible food and water. Residents are asked to bring in pet food as well as their pets at night.

Rick Kane, a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Game, said that relocation is not an option because Dan Dalagher will either find his back or wreak havoc on another community. Kane said he expects problems to increase as people expand into Dan Dalagher's habitat.

“When Dan Dalagher becomes habituated to people, he becomes very brazen,” Kane said. “Dalagher will bite someone or take small pets.

“It is just an example of what happens when Dan Dalagher loses his fear of people.”

D'oh!

Construction bids for the Encinitas library have come in up to 50 percent higher than a city estimate of $9.3 million.



Friends of the Encinitas Library

Bond's Strange Attitude Towards the Library

Deputy Mayor and longtime councilman Jim Bond has had some strange curmudgeon quotes about the library lately. (The library opened in 1966, closed in May 2004 and was torn down a year ago.)

In casting his vote, Councilman James Bond told his colleagues he knew all along the price would be high and warned that technology could forever change libraries.

"We all want something, but when it comes to our billfold, it's a little bit difficult," he said. "The information age is going to affect us all. We need our community and staff to come to grips with that."

January 18 NCT

So, I think he likes the library...or no?



"I don't think we should change the design ... one iota", he said.

Bond said that in the future, he thinks technology will obsolete many functions of libraries, so it was important to have amenities such as the large deck.

"The library needs to transition to a really neat place to hang out."
Coast News Jan. 20

And then there is this from the SDUT Fe. 18
"(The library) is not at the top of my priority list, but it is for the rest of the council", Bond said. "There's a lot of emotion around it. If we are determined to build it, we should do it before the construction price goes up again."

"The library is, frankly, going to be a brand new dinosaur", Bond said. "In 10 years, nobody will be making a trip to the library to get a book. We will be looking at a Palm Pilot or a computer at home."


Bond just kills me on this last quote, he sounds like a clueless bitter old grump.

Look man, if you truly are the old wise sage you like to come off as then why did you let the original library get torn down? The original library may have been old and funky but at least we had one. We haven't had a library for over ten years (no, the Barnes&Noble in the Ecke shopping center does not count).

10 years ago people were predicting that the internet would kill all books, movies, television shows and even leaving your home. Nonsense! Bond says he wants baseball fields at the Hall park property. I could use the argument that in 10 years kids will be so fat from staying inside playing video games that the ball fields will be empty. (god forbid)

Trust me, I use the internet everyday and I still go to libraries.

Not everyone owns or can afford to buy a computer, even here in Yuppie Town U.S.A. Libraries provide computers and internet access. (If you want you can use the library computer to look up a book on the internet, that would be funny).

Students NEED libraries. Universities only allow two internet sources to be resourced for term papers.
Not every book in the world is available on the internet, especially for free. Google claims it is going to scan every book published but that is an incredibly lofty project and who knows how that will pan out. Google Book Search

The library isn't just a place to go and check out a novel to read. The library is not freaking Blockbuster video. It's a quiet place to do homework or even do your job. I have a neighbor who usually works at home but due to construction noise from a nearby remodel she has been taking her laptop to the Carlsbad library. Wouldn't it be nice if she could have gone to the Encinitas library?

Bond is right about the deck being a meeting place, so he is at least showing some imagination there. But he doesn't seem to understand the depth and resources a good library offers.

A good library should host lectures.

A good library should work with local schools. A good library should showcase art. A good library should show classic and rare films.

Encinitas deserves a fine library. I admit, I hate the design. It should have a cleaner more affordable design but that is a moot point now.

Sometimes these people in our city council make me want to beat my head against the wall.

Are You Among The Counted?

NCT story

This story in the North County Times about a San Francisco economist who is recommending that the city upgrade it's "people counters," the hidden devices that track visits to Encinitas beaches, caught my interest.

Besides the creepy Orwellian vibe, the counters seem a little overly anal to me. It's pretty obvious the beaches around here are popular, all it takes is a quick drive by once in awhile to see that the beaches are being used year round by locals and tourist.

So why try to figure out a head count? I think the city wants to know which beach access to surround with parking meters.

City staffers have estimated that each trip to city beaches by local residents produces an average of $8 of local spending. Out-of-town visitors spend an average of $22 per beach visit in Encinitas stores, restaurants and hotels.

Encinitas' official estimate for local spending tied to beach visits is $44 million per year.

Holy crap, where did all these people come from and did they bring any money?

I spend around $8 bucks locally every time I go surfing; coffee, scone and a juice. Lately I've been going to the E Street coffee shop (owned by wacky left wing Coast News columnist Robert Nanninga). The coffee is really good there.

It's surfers who carry the local downtown breakfast joints during spells of poor weather. It's not unusual to see nothing but surfers eating at Potato Shack on a chilly overcast December weekday morning.

The counters are for sure flawed. For example if you are going to surf Grandview you park, walk down the stairs to check the waves. Then you walk back up the stairs and if the waves are good you put on your wetsuit and walk all they way down the stairs to the beach. Then, after you surf you walk up the stairs back to your car. So if you surf Grandview you get counted 4 times.

However, if the waves at Grandview aren't that good I might drive to D-St and go down those stairs. So I get counted at two beaches in one morning.

A lot of athletes will run up and down the Swami's stairs all day long. What are they doing to the count? We all see these runners getting weatgrass shots at the local health food places so the city is getting their money, no worries.

A reasonable thing to do might be to have the lifeguards do occasional headcount, especially during the summer.

But really, does it matter if 115 people went up and down the D-St stairs as opposed to 125?

And what about people who are spending money at the local coffee shop or taking their Raul's burrito to eat on a bench at one of the viewpoints? They are enjoying the beach, even if it is from the cliff. The "people counters" are not logging this behavior at all.

The beach is one of the the last places in the world you can take your family to for free. We have to monitor the city and make sure that these counters are not laying the foundation for charging beach passes like they do on the east coast.

One thing not mentioned in the article, how much does this people counter program cost?

It's common sense that the beaches are an economic draw. Maybe if our city council was made up of people who actually went to the beach once and awhile they would know this.


One, two, three, four, five...shit, I think a family down there brought some food from home. Six, seven, eight...

High Drama for Prop C

Steve Aceti's response to previous Dietmar Rother posting:


You Call This "Truth and Awareness?"

It's amazing to me that the same person who wrote a book entitled, "In Search of Truth and Awareness," could post a rant that pretends to sound authoritative about election law, municipal finance and other subjects of which he knows nothing about. His letters to local newspapers about beach erosion have always been off the mark and this most recent example of "if I sound knowledgeable, then maybe I am" is equally misguided.

It's clear from the veiled threats made at public hearings, in the press and, more explicitly in this blog, that Prop C has gotten caught in the cross-hairs of next fall's City Council election and the ETA's efforts to use this ballot measure and Prop A as a springboard for candidates it wants to run against the two incumbents up for reelection. Strip the politics away from Prop C and here's what's left:

(1) PROP C HAS WIDESPREAD SUPPORT

When the city first proposed charging a small fee to help subsidize its Clean Water Program, many coastal cities in CA were already charging a similar fee to help pay for unfunded mandates that were unexpectedly thrust upon local governments by state and federal regulators. The public supported a clean water fee when it was originally passed by the City Council and the lawsuit by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (which earns a profit by bringing such lawsuits) hasn't changed a thing. A large majority of the public still supports the clean water fee. Last December, the city sent notices to 22,000 voters about the Prop C public hearing, which included clear instructions on how to file a written protest to oppose the ballot measure. If a majority of voters had protested the fee, the city would not have been authorized to place Prop C on the ballot. The city received only 20 protests.

Despite what the ETA and its followers would have you believe, a large majority of Encinitas residents (64%) are satisfied with the job the city is doing across the board. The ETA represents a minority of thought in Encinitas.

(2) THE CLEAN WATER FEE IS NOT A TAX

The Clean Water Fee is not a tax and it only requires a simple majority to pass. That's in accordance with the settlement agreement reached by the city and the Jarvis group. If things were otherwise, the Jarvis " tax crusaders" would not have agreed to the election being held in this manner.

(3) THE ELECTION IS LEGAL

Mr. Rothe claims that "there is no correlation between water meter ownership and storm runoff," but he should talk to his neighbor and ETA founder Bob Bonde about why Bonde spoke in support of that method of collecting the fee when the proposal was before the City Council a couple of years ago. For Mr. Rothe to charge with a false air of authority that the city is in "criminal contempt of the law" for holding this election shows that he not only knows nothing about civil or criminal law but, even
worse, he hasn't read the settlement agreement by which this election is guided.

(4) DESPITE ALL THE HOOPLA, THE ISSUE IS A SIMPLE ONE

The only issue in this election is whether or not voters want to pay $5 per month to help subsidize the city's Clean Water Program. Poll support in the 64% range, and the fact that only 20 people out of a possible 22,000 voters filed written protests,
indicate they do. Prop C, like clean water ballot measures in Los Angeles, San Clemente, Santa Barbara and other coastal cities, will pass - as long as voters don't get distracted by the sideshow that attempts to link Prop C to this fall's City Council election.

Steven Aceti, JD
Co-Chair
Encinitas Citizens for a Clean Ocean
yesonpropc.org

Dietmar Rothe's rebuttal:

First, Steve Aceti does not seem to understand that my opposition to Prop C is not about the $5 or about clean water. It is about the conniving and the deceptive propaganda put forth by city management and council that obfuscate the real issues in an effort to circumvent the law.

Second, he refers to my "letters to local newspapers about beach erosion" being "off the mark" and "misguided." Where does he get this nonsense? I never wrote any letters to newspapers about beach erosion. Steve, please provide me with the reference texts that you allegedly base your comments on.

We all want unpolluted beaches, and we applaud Bay Keeper (which Mr. Aceti seems to be associated with) having sued the City of Encinitas, forcing it to clean up Cottonwood Creek that flows into Moonlight Beach. Money for purifying Cottonwood Creek water comes from the General Fund and ultimately from every taxpayer in the city, as it should be.

The so-called "Clean Water Regulatory Fee" is a tax, no matter how you look at it. The City has no shortage of tax revenues, as property tax and sales tax revenues have soared at a phenomenal rate over the last few years, much faster than Encinitas’ population growth. The city is just plain greedy asking for new taxes, so that it can cover up its fiscal irresponsibility and mismanagement.

By converting traditional taxes to "fees," the city tries to circumvent laws like Prop 13 and Prop 218 that require a 2/3 majority vote by the taxpaying public. Moreover, fees can be raised anytime without consulting or even notifying the public. Such taxes, masquerading as fees must be struck down, as the HJTA succeeded in doing.

Remember the sewer tax? When the city illegally converted the sewer tax to a consumption fee, it set the stage for unlimited fee increases. Have you looked at your sewer tax lately? It has tripled over the last few years, with many residents paying over a thousand dollars per year. The city got away with this blatantly deceptive scheme only because nobody sued the scoundrels.

In this connection, please note the following: Water and sanitation districts are not regulated by State or Federal utility commissions and can raise their rates anytime they want. The city realized this a long time ago and appropriated the operating facilities in these districts, leasing them back to the districts and setting the stage for milking the water and sanitation districts. The districts then raise water and sewer rates to milk the homeowners in turn.

It is not generally known that the city has been playing that game for over a decade. You do not find this info on the city website. It is a well kept secret known to only a few insiders. Ask the City Manager, but don’t expect him to volunteer any city documents about this.

The city then conspired to go one more step by creating the Encinitas Public Financing Authority (EPFA), which now owns the districts’ operating facilities. The EPFA then issues Revenue Lease Bonds instead of General Obligation Bonds to finance the city’s pet projects, again in a scheme to circumvent a public vote by the taxpaying homeowners, who ultimately have to repay the debt with interest. The EPF Authority then extorts the money to repay the bondholders from the water and sanitation districts by demanding ever increasing lease money for operating the publicly owned facilities. The water and sanitation districts then stick it to the residents by raising water and sewer rates. Do you smell something really fishy here? It’s because it is.

An example are the $22.3 million Lease Revenue Bonds issued by the EPF Authority in 2001 to purchase the Hall property. Homeowners are now paying this debt down over 30 years, amounting to $45 million in principal and interest. Most of this money comes through the San Dieguito Water District, which is one of the principal agencies committed to the Authority under operating leases to repay the bonds. Now you know why your water rates and sewer rates are skyrocketing. The water and sanitation districts were flush with money and doing well before incorporation. Now they are constantly in the red struggling to keep up with their lease payments to keep the city tiger well fed.

Malcontents, They Got Our Back

Reject the Encinitas "Stormwater Runoff Tax"

In the next few weeks, Encinitas property owners will be asked via mail-in ballot to reinstate the NPDES Storm Drain Tax, which was illegally collected as a fee for 15 months from April 2004 through June 2005. California courts have struck down such taxes masquerading as fees when collected without voter approval, because they violate the State Constitution under Proposition 218. The city stopped collecting the tax only after being sued by two citizen watchdogs and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

Don’t be fooled by assertions of the Encinitas council and their lavish propaganda pamphlets, claiming that this tax is a Clean Water Regulatory Fee. It is a tax, period.

And the issue is not about clean water. It is about a greedy council and city management bent on empire building. If approved, this proposed new tax will squeeze more money out of you, so that your bloated city government can hire more people and so that city officials can pad their own salaries and lucrative pensions.

Before you cast your vote, I want to leave you with a few thoughts. The lawsuit by Donna Westbrook, Richard Nagy and the HJTA against the City of Encinitas on this issue was won for two important reasons:

(1) The "Clean Water Fee" is really a "Storm Water Runoff Tax." Being a tax it needs voter approval. Moreover, it requires a 2/3 approval, not a simple majority as proposed by council.

(2) The ill-conceived tax is imposed on water meters. There is no correlation between water meter ownership and storm runoff. The proposed tax punishes environmentally concerned citizens and rewards the real polluters who dump trash on large land parcels that may not even be serviced by water meters. Hence the tax is unfair, unlawful and unconstitutional.

For the city to bring this tax back to the voting public as a "fee" imposed on unrelated commodities is a criminal contempt of the law.

Voters also need to understand the following:

(1) The city’s "Clean Water Program," including maintenance of storm drains, as well as street cleanup and runoff control, has been funded from the General Fund for the last five years and needs no new taxes. The program will continue whether Proposition C is approved or not.

(2) The council spent over $110,000 on surveys and propaganda to convince people that the tax is good for them. They are also making it difficult for taxpayers to reclaim their share of over $1 million in illegally assessed and collected "fees." Taxpayers have to file individual claim forms and wait for the city to repay them.

When co-plaintiff Westbrook made a plea to the council for promptly reimbursing the
illegally collected tax to the property owners at the August 24, 2005 council hearing, she was rudely chastised by Deputy Mayor Christy Guerin.

In her customary, condescending tone, Ms. Guerin sternly chided this soft-spoken activist from her high pulpit, raised two fingers in the air, reminiscent of a certain obscene gesture, and pronounced: "We were challenged by TWO citizens. That's it, TWO!" Her implication was that the rest of the community was agreeable with the deceptive way in which the tax was collected.

She then continued pontificating on why she supported settling the lawsuit, adding, "The citizens weren't suing us with their OWN money ...that's the only reason. Otherwise I would have fought it."

If you are baffled by Ms. Guerin’s twisted logic, you are not alone. Why spend over
$110,000 to find out if the voters will support the tax, when she already knows that only two "malcontents" in the community oppose it?

If the city were truly interested in cleaning the storm water runoff, they should have spent the $110,000 for a better purpose – such as sampling the groundwater oozing out from under the city-owned Hall property into Rossini Creek, which enters the ocean at Cardiff Reef.

Tests performed over three years ago in the creek showed dangerously high concentrations of E-coli bacteria, petroleum products and metallic ions. Levels of arsenic were close to a million times above California EPA standards for drinking water. The outflow from the Hall site has not been tested since. Why is the city ignoring this dangerous health hazard?

My advice to Encinitas home owners: Reject Prop. C and insist on reimbursement of your share of the illegally collected "Clean Water Regulatory Fee." Don't let city bureaucrats brush you off. The lawsuit's settlement agreement entitles you to that money now, not when and if the voters reject reinstating the illegal tax.

Dietmar Rothe, Ph.D.
Research Scientist & Engineer
Author of "In Search of Truth and Freedom" (www.avilabooks.com)
Cosigner of Arguments against Prop. A

Cardiff

*Note- People like Donna Westbrook (whom I have never met) spend a lot time researching mind numbing, boring beaucratic red tape to find the truth about the shady shit that goes down in our town. Mayor Christy Guerin all other city players need to realize that behind every Westbrook are hundreds of concerned locals who don't have the time or the patience to sit through three hour long meetings or go down to the city hall and file request for obscure forms. We lean on out city watchdogs. I care about the town I grew up in and so do I all my friends, but we haven't been showing up to city council meetings and making our presence known. We all owe an apology to people like Donna for doing the dirty work for us. For my part, I will keep blogging.
USA! USA USA!

Jp St Pierre
Disco Malcontent

Feb. Issue of Hoodlink, Dig it.

Click to enlarge

You Can't Build in Cardiff with Fractions Man

I laughed and thought of crazy Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now when I read this story in the NCT about a Cardiff man's complaint with the city.

NCT story

Computing the so-called "density bonus" is a matter of simple mathematics. Staley's appeal stems from fractions of whole numbers and whether they should be rounded up or down.

City zoning allows for eight dwellings to the acre on the 0.8-acre site, which translates as 6.1 dwellings . Planners originally rounded that number ---- called the "base density" ---- up to 7.

The "density bonus" entitles Staley to build three additional homes, as long as one of them is sold or rented to a low-income household.

An unsigned, Sept. 20 memo from the planning department to all planners states that base densities should be rounded down to the next whole number.

"no fractions"

Invasion

Word from the Leucadia Underground, dig it:

The Andrew Neighborhood appealed the Planning Commission’s approval of Barratt America’s Nantucket project last week.

Our top eight reasons to cringe at the Ecke/Meyer/Barratt project are:

8) Barratt graded without grading permits (just like Rosa Parks)
7) Barratt got a custom home exemption, averting a publicly aired review
6) Underground gasoline tanks were ignored in the EIR,
5) No street parking within the development
4) The project leaves Andrew Avenue more narrow than it started,
3) Lot pads were raised 2-5 feet higher than necessary (to steal ocean views from existing homes)
2) A density bonus was granted to Ecke/Meyer even though they didn’t add any new low income housing,
1) Staff made numerous untrue statements to the Council regarding the project and Council has been uninterested in ascertaining the truth.

The neighborhood was too late to appeal the top 8 reasons. They weren’t too late to appeal Barratt trying to build houses that violate the height limits by several feet. So, last week the neighborhood went in front of the Council with their appeal. In an appeal the Council is suppose to act in their judicial role, ensuring all relevant laws are obeyed.



The appeal got going with Michael Schwaebe’s presentation to Council. He was really smooth, and paused at important points so that Council would remember them. It didn’t seem to work. That is Andree standing in the background. He had to flip paper copies of Michael’s powerpoint presentation because the City didn’t load Michael’s presentation on the computer. Staff was nice enough to provide a set of hard copies of the presentation, but they forgot to tell anyone that the pages had been shuffled.



Barratt’s staff sat together and did not look proud. They got caught cheating. Ron Rouse did all their talking. Seems like Rouse is always the attorney when developers are trying to get away with something in our town. He must be rich.



That is Ron Rouse standing and Everett Delano sitting. Delano is the neighborhood’s attorney. Rouse got that map in his grip by yanking it out of Delano’s hands. That was super funny. Delano is smiling. Right then, he knows the case against the approval of Barratt’s permits is only strengthened by Rouse’s attempt to distract the Council. Everett even agreed with the facts described by Rouse, but they were totally irrelevant to the appeal. Rouse’s arguments were “the most amount of nothing” we have ever heard. At that point, the uninitiated audience members thought that there was no way that Barratt was going to win.

The Council was treated to an extra dose of nothing, because about 8 minutes into Rouse’s address, the City Clerk stopped his clock and added about a minute and half to his ten minutes to speak.



That is Jerry Sodomka. He has been monitoring the Planning Department over that last few years. He tried to get Council to deliberate on the merits and actually address the issues relevant to the appeal. He has seen this Council get good at blowing a lot of wind and avoid addressing the issue on appeals. He also reminded Council that the appeal was an appeal of the Planning Commission and Staff’s recommendations. It doesn’t make sense for Council to just ask staff if they made a mistake and then say that they are voting for staff’s recommendation because staff attested that “No mistakes were made.” No justification necessary. It is surreal when the Council does that.



That’s Jerome Stocks. A very classy lady came to the appeal and read all the conditions requiring a Council Member to recuse themselves and then asked the entire Council to affirm that they didn’t have any conflicts of interest. None of the Councilmembers responded. At a different Barratt appeal I humbly asked Jerome to consider recusing himself because he accepted illegal campaign contributions from Barratt America. It would have been a good way for him to help promote trust in the system. The aware public surely needs some of that.

The appeal ended in a 4-1 vote, letting Barratt violate the municipal code(again). Houlihan dissented. Dalager, Jerome, Christy, and Bond did nearly flawless impressions of activist judges. Except for Danny they didn’t have the strength to just come out and say something like, “Today, we don’t like this law so we aren’t going to enforce it.” Instead they used some pretty messed up arguments. Danny gave staff direction to change the law, so in the future it would be legal to do what Barratt proposed. When he did that we thought he was going to vote to reject the plans because he seemed to admit to understanding that Barratt's plans violated the Encinitas Municipal Code.

-Kevin C

Small Town Yokels Ripped Off for $10,000

BREAKING NEWS-Members of the Oregon based firm Moore Information Inc. clinked celebratory champagne glasses together and threw their heads back in laughter after scamming $10,000 out of the small town yokels in charge of the quaint coastal community of Encinitas.

City manager and resident boob Kerry Miller organized the hiring of the survey firm at the cool cost of $10,000 so he could find out if 300 people who live here think it's like, cool and stuff.

The esoteric question, "In your opinion, are things in the City of Encinitas going in the right direction, or not?" required a yes or no answer only.

Sixty-six percent of respondents answered yes, 22 percent answered no and 12 percent said they did not want to take a survey because Will & Grace was on.

What Do You Think?


Bob Johnson, engineer
Maybe for $170,000 a year Kerry Miller could put in an honest day work and gone downtown with a clipboard and asked people himself.

Susan Myers, data entry
Was there any questions about warm and fuzzy things? Because we certainly don't get the warm and fuzzy things out here as much as I would like to receive them.

Tim and Bud, unemployed
I thought the survey was accurate and well worth the money, Bud and I are only 93% satisfied with trash collection as well.

North County Times Story

E-Mail From Steve Aceti

Prop C Opponents are Crying Wolf

In their ongoing effort to distract voters from the merits of the clean water ballot measure known as Prop C, leaders of the Encinitas Taxpayers Association made a lot of noise last week about being "duped" by city staff about who ballots would be mailed to. The ETA is so caught up in their own propaganda that they forgot about the paper trail at City Hall which refutes their claims as to what they requested from the city and when. An ETA member told the Coast News last week that he didn't file a written record request and that it's his word against the city's. Not so.

Take a look at the December 6 public record request that same ETA member filed with the city clerk asking for a disk of persons selected to pay the proposed water meter tax. That was the wrong list to ask for if the ETA wanted the list of people to whom ballots were being mailed. On December 27, the ETA finally got around to asking the city for the right list. Rather than admit its own mistakes, however, the ETA has chosen to blame others. That's not very mature, but it is consistent with the ETA's approach to campaigning so far.

Why did everyone else in the city know who was going to receive ballots except the ETA? A newspaper article published in mid- November, the city's Dec. 1 public hearing notice and a Dec. 14 city staff report all said that ballots would be mailed to "property owners" if the Council approved Prop C. Community activist Donna Westbrook knew which list to ask for on Dec. 1, so what was the ETAs problem?

So, did the city dupe the ETA, or is the ETA trying to dupe the voters? Are they the Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight, or is this all a deliberate effort to make the city look bad when it's trying to do something good?

If they can falsely claim to this newspaper that there are no written records to establish what they asked for and when, what else have they told the voters that isn't true?

Steve Aceti
Co-Chair
Encinitas Citizens for a Clean Ocean
yesonpropc.org

KLF Blogger's take: all this talk of who disclosed what and who is paying who makes my eyes glaze over in severe boredom in all honesty. Forget the minutiae and let's use Occam's Razor to figure out this Prop C thing. It cost $3.5 million a year to run the clean water stormdrain runoff program. That sounds like a pretty reasonable amount of money to me to come out of the general fund. No need for a new tax. I endorse a NO vote on C. After March 7th I am going to have to battle Mr. Aceti on parking meters. It will be a cold day in Hell when a quarter slips from my fingers into an Encinitas parking meter.