Shaffer flip-flops on Encinitas' financial health

In February of this year, we praised Council Member Lisa Shaffer for being the first city insider to admit that the city was in bad financial condition. Shaffer wrote at the time:

One issue I feel strongly about is pavement management - we have chronically underfunded road maintenance, and unfortunately, the draft CIP budget did not offer any improvements. We have been spending about $1.3 million/year and it would take about $2.8 million/year to maintain a constant quality level and prevent continued decline (which only leads to more expensive repairs later).

But now that it is election season and Kristin Gaspar has raised the same issue, Shaffer has done a complete 180. Shaffer's latest newsletter:

Despite the reality that there is more money than previously expected, Kristin Gaspar still claimed that we cannot afford Pacific View because we are underfunding "core services." It's just not true. We put more money into road maintenance than ever, fully funded our reserves, and have a healthy capital improvement fund.

"We put more money into road maintenance than ever." More money being the $2.8 million that you said in February was necessary to prevent continued decline? Or quite a bit less than that? We recall the final budget figure being $2.0 million, or less than half the necessary increase. Please correct us if we are wrong.

What's worse is the multi-year backlog of street safety improvements. As Al Rodbell pointed out in his recent resignation from the Traffic and Public Safety Commission, the city has many street safety improvement projects waiting to be done simply because of a lack of funds. Will children have to be killed before this city council makes it a priority to spend the necessary funds for neighborhood traffic calming and improvements at dangerous intersections?

And if Encinitas is in such fine financial shape, why did Shaffer and her friends try to hire propagandist Catherine Lew of Lew Edwards to push a sales tax increase?

Encinitas Beacon has more:

At this week's council meeting resident Mark Wisniewski dramatically highlighted Encinitas inability to maintain basic services. During a 3 minute address, he showed the pride of the communities he visited this summer, by showing photographs of well-tended public parks and gardens, he described as "community and civic pride" with "grounds cultivated and very few weeds".

With seriousness he showed a photo of Cottonwood Creek Park and the Veteran Memorial that he described as "barren soil and weeds" He showed a picture of the Memorial plaque that reads "the unfinished walls of the memorial represent the unfinished lives of those who perished in the line of duty" and his last photo showed a tattered and neglected flag flying over the memorial. He then donated a new flag to the city, so Encinitas might possess civic pride.

In her weekly newsletter council member Shaffer chose not to thank Mr. Wisniewski for his gift but to instead promote her endorsed candidates for office and to claim city finances are in good shape. While she is entitled to her opinions, the facts about the city's finances paint a different story.

Encinitas is $47 million behind in road repairs, and at this week's council meeting yet another resident asked the council when the city would fix his road. The city is $6 million behind in building maintenance and Mr. Wisniewski might find it of interest to know that money that might have been used to maintain the memorial was taken by Ms. Shaffer and Mr. Kranz to plug finance holes. Then there is the $7 million the council took from funded projects like rail crossings and open-space aquisitions with no plan to pay it back.

Funny what election season does to politicians' perspectives.