In January, Donald McPherson, an Encinitas property owner and retiree, requested copies of communications between the Portofino development team and city officials. But according to the lawsuit he filed last week in San Diego County Superior Court, the city made two missteps. It produced records for a different hotel project, and the ones related to the Portofino inexplicably ended at May 2018.
City officials insisted that no further correspondence existed, but McPherson and his attorney, Felix Tinkov, who specializes in public records law, found that explanation odd. (Disclosure: Tinkov also represents Voice of San Diego in public records disputes.) The hotel designs had been reintroduced in September 2018 after an 18-month delay gave the owner more time to negotiate with his unhappy neighbors, according to the Coast News.
Those designs are going before the city’s planning commission Thursday and included in the hundreds of pages of documents for the meeting are communications dated late 2018 and early 2019 — which McPherson had requested but never received.
Tinkov told all this to a judge Monday. They agreed to talk privately outside the courtroom and report back in a few weeks.
Although it wasn’t their intention at the outset, McPherson and Tinkov are now taking aim at something much bigger than the Portofino. They’re targeting a policy in Encinitas that gives officials the authority to delete emails within 30 days, arguing that it obstructs the ability of regular folks to know what their government is doing.
“It seems to be the norm around here, but it’s wrong,” Tinkov said. “I told them, ‘You guys have been playing with fire for years.’”
Encinitas City Attorney Glenn Sabine and Mayor Catherine Blakespear both declined my requests for interviews.
Thursday, April 18, 2019
City caught hiding documents, maintains aggressive destruction policy; Blakespear refuses comment
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It is about time for the city's machinations to come out of the darkness.
ReplyDeleteA little sunshine is long overdue.
What will they do?
I hope the voters will remember this and so many others like it next year when we have a chance to vote in a new majority.
This city deserves Blakespear. Oddballs and misfits dictate the vote in Encinitas, and she is what you get.
DeleteBlakespear and her council cronies break the Brown Act all the time. There is no transparency, only council secrets.
ReplyDeleteBoth complete failures.
ReplyDeleteRecall Blakespear!
ReplyDeleteOver-riding the people's vote in itself should prompt a RECALL!
ReplyDeleteWhy is the city hiding their history?
ReplyDeleteThis is a massive yellow flag.
What sort of warped thinking believes that secrecy- in the public sector - is warranted? What needs to be hidden?
What is hidden? Their insider accommodations of the special interest sector. They have "wink-wink-nod-nod" arrangements, with reciprocal 'rewards'.
DeleteThats what you get when your Mayor and City Council support a shitty City Manager. Brust is the worst in So. Ca and everyone knows it. Yet we are stuck with her until Blakespear is removed.
ReplyDeleteThe city manager has stopped any paper trail in reporting what is happening with the $30 million plus Streetscape development. For council meetings City staff write up agenda reports for the Mayor, council, and public. This isn’t happening with the progress of Streetscape. Now at the council meetings only an oral report is given close to the end of the meeting.
ReplyDeleteSounds like the city's little escapades with "missing" documents and their penchant for violating code got the Portofino developers a continued Planning Commission meeting.
ReplyDeleteBelieve the developers willing to ruin the adjacent neighborhood are the Swell real estate dudes. Not so swell, after all. or too swift.
Plus Gilmer having the worst haircut in human history.
ReplyDeleteThe city' IT department has set up everyone's email account to automatically delete all emails from the user's after 30 days. After 60 days, the emails are permanently deleted. All of the city staff and council members know this. The majority of senior staff at city hall are shady and insincere.
ReplyDeleteThis is only one aspect of the multi-tiered ass-covering operation. Hard copies are systematically removed and hidden from the public until they eventually disappear as well as emails.
DeleteWhenever there is a mistake that can be hidden, it is the fault of "staff." Whenever there is a mistake that can be traced to a single person, that person will basically say, "tough shit, I got away with it already. I can't be held to account because there are laws protecting me since I am a government employee."
This attitude and these poor standards reward people for poor performance and bad behavior. Any other workplace people would be fired, but not the City of Encinitas.
I contacted Phil Cotton about Dan Dalager's childish behavior and his snarky comments about women at city council meetings especially within earshot. I wrote Cotton and my Emails were erased and no one ever got back to me.
ReplyDeleteDalager was hilarious to watch, especially during "debates" during the last cycle where he attempted to get reelected. This was after he had been exposed for taking bribes for his council vote. He looked like a deer in the headlights and babbled semi-incoherently; some of the audience reminded him of his "gifts' and he really froze up! I think Stocks was his 'brain', as he didn't seem to have any of his own.
DeleteHow does Dalager look next to Kranz? am thinking of the Dalablabber comparison.
Delete