San Diego Reader:
With opening day of the 2015 Encinitas Little League baseball on March 7, until last week, the league wasn’t sure it would hear “play ball” this year. And this may be the last year they are allowed to play at the Magdalena Ecke YMCA's baseball complex — fields they’ve used for 25 years.The Reader chalks this up to bad faith on the part of the YMCA, but simple incompetence and negligence on the part of city staff and the City Council. We're not so sure about that. City Manager Gus Vina never struck us as a bumbling fool but as a shrewd operator doing things out of the public eye for his own reasons (e.g. hiding the fact that he had hired Rutan & Tucker and covering up the city's Rossini Creek environmental violations). And the fact that the Council still hasn't held Parks and Rec Director Lisa Rudloff accountable for the debacle lends credence to the theory that there is more than simple incompetence behind the giveaway.
The league that produced an all-star team — which was one win away from making it to the 2014 Little League World Series — and the City of Encinitas both thought they were entering into a standard ten-year agreement with the Y for its four-diamond complex. The YMCA owns the property; the city leases and pays for field improvements. But the Y threw a curve ball.
Perhaps any undisclosed "benefit" quietly trailed Vina north?
ReplyDeleteCould the E-3 group be having any influence on this change of policy that has come down regarding the use of the ball fields? Why has this longstanding tradition come to an end?
ReplyDeleteThere is something fishy going on here. What prompted this change and why now?
When the truth comes out and it will, the stuff will hit the fan and all those to blame will be looking for cover.
Lisa Rudloff is paid $160,000 per year, and she hired consultants Green Play for over $60,000 to come in and evaluate how much more they can charge participants who want to use parks and recreation resources.
ReplyDeleteI would be in favor of getting rid of Rudloff and the consultants and keeping prices for people, particularly kids, who use the parks the same!
$160K to outsource your responsibilities? For a city of 60,000, city heads are too numerous and over-paid. Notice how "fiscal-conservative" Gaspar never touches administrative bloat? Rename the city Titanicintas.
Delete$60,000? Why can't her department research and evaluate for themselves? This is as bad as Murphy and Planning.
ReplyDeleteCan't anyone do the jobs they are so well paid to do without farming everything they can out to expensive outside consultants? Is vina still here? Sure sounds like the same old, same old crap is continuing unabated.
Keeping the same staff and cutting off the head of the slimey snake results in no change whatsoever. What will it take to truly change the way our departments [mis] function?
Occupy, occupy, occupy our city hall and clean out the deadheads sliding by with substandard performance.
Who else gets a performance review? The department heads, their assistants, all the underling lemmings that follow them?
Stop funding these outside consultants! Return to the past limits of $10,000 for hiring these sycophants without direct city council oversight and approval and public comment.
The City Attorney's office should be reviewing all contracts that have significant public impacts. And yes, we should return to past limits of $10,000 for Council oversight, as well.
DeletePerhaps contracts over $10,000 should require two readings for approval, like our ordinances, so that there could be ACTUAL public hearings, without the first "hearing" being part of a Consent Calendar, "mass approval."
I very much doubt most Council Members read Consent Calendar individual agenda reports, in detail. It's all they can do, and some of them, admittedly cannot keep up, to try to read the entire staff/contractor reports for regular agenda items.
Let me get this, we just paid oodles of dollars for fields for kids to play ball at new park and lost an equal amount of YMCA playing fields? Don't we have a city attorney to review documents?
DeleteKranz knew about the clause before the Council voted. Why did he sit silent? He has a part to play, too. Wonder what his interest in the deal is.
ReplyDeleteThey all knew. Kranz is sucking up to Ecke and company. Gaspar and Muir sucking up to others on the board. Don't know about Shaffer. There is gain for all of the 3 I just mentioned.
ReplyDeleteAgree. Follow the money...and recall.
DeleteShaffer is the council mushroom.
DeleteThey keep her in the dark and feed her bullshit.
Shame on this city council for letting this happen. They sit for hours at a meeting talking about small trite things and let this slip by?
DeleteThey obviously did not read the material or listened to the city manager. As we know now, what a mistake they have made.
Shame, shame, shame. Do not vote these people back into office.
Not obvious they did not read the material! Kranz himself said he knew beforehand. Again: what is the personal gain? It shouldn't be that hard to figure out.
DeleteiT's to push the lighting in the new park because little league will need them. Get ready for a bright future neighbors.
ReplyDeleteIf the new Hall Park is allowed to have those abominable 90' lights, the designation of a community park will be lost forever and a regional sports complex will become the appropriate term for this park.
ReplyDeleteDon't let it happen. Those who support the light towers will be forever stained by any action that allows lighted fields to come into being. Save Our Park as it presently is.
Any further pursuit of lighting those fields will only serve to create resistance to any future political aspirations they may have. Come 2016, any who support lighting this park will pay the price and be shown the door unceremoniously. Well maybe it will be a ceremony, as we vote you out of here. Think about it. Is it worth the ire of this community to set this action in motion?
Gaspar has said she wants the 90 foot lights.
DeleteSuch arrogance! There are a great many people in the community who want lighted fields at the park. The small group of NIMBYS in opposition won't have the numbers to do shit at the ballot box.
ReplyDeleteProbably just the opposite. The original Godbe Survey the city did in 2000 showed only around 15% in favor of a regional sports park and 85% in favor of a passive use park or open space. Demographic changes in the last 15 years have reinforced that balance or shifted it more to the passive use side.
DeleteThe arrogance is on the side of sports enthusiasts. It's an $80 million park that will continue to suck money out of the budget for the next 20 years to repay bonds, money that could be used for road repair and pension obligations.
The park is under the jurisdiction of the Coastal Commission. Last time CC staff weighed in on the lights, they were called "problematic."
It's a big hurdle to get over.
Yes, the public should get to vote on the light structures, as they are being pushed at 90 ft, three times over the 30 ft. high Prop A limit. Alert citizens should make sure that there isn't any exception for 90 ft. light standards manipulated into the housing element update that will go on the ballot. If there is any attempt to combine the light height issue with the ballot measure(s) re updating our housing element, that is just one more reason to vote no on any version of the HEU. Better to battle it out in court, if we have to. The firm hired to deal with the Building Association lawsuit may be good, but we need someone new at the helm of the City Attorney's office who respects Council's direction and who better understands open government law, and her or his responsibility to advise Council on all contract negotiations or renegotiations.
DeleteIt's sad to think that our City has so many skeletons in its closet that Council feels obliged to hang on to a corrupt City Attorney. And the City Attorney should inform Council that there is a conflict with having the head of Human Resources, Courtney Barratt, negotiate on behalf the City with the union representative for the Public Employees' Union. There is a conflict because the salaries and benefits of the cabinet/heads of department/executive officers are directly tied to any raises given to employees represented by the union.
Also, it has become fairly well known, by "insiders" that Planning Director Jeff Murphy has had a questionable relationship with Courtney Barrett. And it's indisputable that Glenn Sabine had an inappropriate relationship with the former Director of Finance, which led to a conflict, then, before she quit, after being paid for her maternity leave for "stress."
Sabine covers up his own conflicts of interest, how can he advise Council of the conflicts between various heads of department, conflicts which lead to decisions that are not objective and unbiased?
Don't forget that Kerry Miller, the former City Manager, also had a love affair with Sabine's new wife. What tangled webs they weave at City hall.
DeleteBreaking news: City to pay $430,000 fine for illegal discharges into Rossini Creek from Hall property park:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.utsandiego.com/news/2015/mar/06/tp-encinitas-to-pay-430k-fine-for-stormwater/
Here's the letter from the city to city to the Water Board and the SEP (Supplemental Environmental Project) to be done in the San Elijo Lagoon:
http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/sandiego/water_issues/programs/compliance/docs/acls/r9_2013_0152/City_of_Encinitas_ACL_Settlement_and_SEP_Proposal.pdf
To 9:36pm, pure baloney. Putting this to a vote will clear your mind and it will have to be put to a vote. The negatives so far outweigh any positives. That goes for any of our elected representatives that favor this so wrong move. This is supposed to be a community park for the community.
ReplyDeleteArrogance, not so much, as having a park for the community compared to the regional sports complex that you support.
This will never pass the muster with an informed and interested public come time to vote.
If you lived next to the Hall Park you might feel differently. There were renditions a year or two ago of what the lighted park would like and it does not belong in our community. A few of those projections coming back will win this community over with organizing against light towers ever going in.
Someday someone will want to put something atrocious next to your backyard that destroys whatever ambience you enjoyed and lets see how you like it.
Ever enjoy the simple beauty of gazing at the stars on a clear evening night? That will be history for many if the lights are permitted and not just those on Rubenstein. All those across the 5 looking west will see nothing but lights. Sun setting into the ocean and green flashes, bye bye.
YMCAgate!
ReplyDelete