Bad government: the gift that keeps on giving

Many of the policies of the Blakespear and Kranz councils will continue costing the city money long after they're gone. They created a new full-time staff position for a manager of the homeless, making the city responsible for something that had always been the county's job, for example.

And Blakespear's bike obstacles, which she was warned about vociferously by the bicycling community, have already been the cause of dozens of bicycle accidents and two fatalities, which will certainly cost the city millions in legal damages.

One of the more absurd, and still significant, costs of previous bad ideas is the frequently needed removal of sand from the bike lanes. Since the early days of the Coast Highway, the sea breeze and the drafts of passing cars had kept the highway and bike lanes free of large build-ups of sand. Blakespear's bike obstacles, however, trap the sand so that it piles up in the bike lanes and must be removed by crews at least weekly, and often even more frequently by a local's observation.

The city initially got a bike-lane-sized Sand Zamboni for the job, but lately it's apparently either out of service or otherwise inadequate for the job, so crews manually hose down the bike lane from a tanker truck. All the way to Solana Beach.

What a waste of city resources. No wonder Kranz wanted a sales tax increase so badly!