City to dump another $1 million into abandoned school, hire social media propagandist

 Wow! They sure are flush with cash down at City Hall!

Union-Tribune:

Encinitas should pay for renovation work at the long-closed Pacific View property, hire a communications specialist and focus on two housing-related issues in the coming year, City Council members agreed last month.

[...]

The council’s fourth item on the top priorities list was improving the city’s online presence by hiring a communication specialist. Blakespear said other cities do a better job than Encinitas in regularly communicating online with residents.

“We can mobilize for things that are urgent, but we don’t have a consistent presence,” she said.

Kranz noted that the city did have a communications specialist some years ago, but her efforts sparked controversy.

Marlena Medford was hired by former city manager Gus Vina in late 2013. She established the city’s Facebook page, Twitter and Instagram accounts and won two state awards for excellence in communications, but one of her innovative communication efforts --- the use of the e-townhall system called PeakDemocracy to collect comments on a proposed citywide housing planning document --- generated huge controversy in Encinitas.

The Peak Democracy and Pacific View boondoggles were two of the most amusing episodes of city council incompetence in recent memory. Take a stroll through the archives here:

Peak Democracy

Pacific View

City releases proposed high density standards

Let's go to 3 stories and 38 feet high!

While the map page of the document is left blank, two maps discussed in February are here and here. The "ready-made" map was designed by staff, while the "build-your-own" map was designed using input from the discredited and defunct Peak Democracy site.

Odds & Ends

Stuff we've been remiss in not mentioning yet:

- Encinitas terminates Peak Democracy: 4-1 vote.  Shaffer voted to keep Peak Democracy, despite its numerous well-documented and irreparable flaws, reportedly because staff likes it, and Shaffer trusts staff.

- Council, Sabine disagree on BIA lawsuit: Blakespear said that the council and city attorney disagreed on the case, which would explain why the council replaced Sabine with outside attorneys.  Presumably, Sabine wanted to surrender to the BIA on some issues that the council wanted to contest.  It looks like a good move by the council as Shaffer's recent newsletter reports, "I was impressed by the outside counsel and think they will be a great asset as we move forward with all of our housing-related work."

- Yesterday's mid-afternoon Pacific View subcommittee meeting: anybody take time out from work to attend?

But give us a break. Our coverage of these issues would still be "excellent" by Encinitas City Council standards, right?

2/25/15 City Council meeting open thread

The current city council has continued prior councils' practice of not providing written summary minutes of council discussion, but only "action minutes" which state the outcomes. Encinitas Undercover will provide a forum for observers to record what occurs at each council meeting.

Please use the comments to record your observations.

Items of interest:

- mid-year budget review - the re-launch of Joe Mosca's political career. - cancellation of Peak Democracy web poll software contract - SANDAG update on Coastal Rail Trail (complete through Solana Beach, non-existent in Encinitas)

Al Rodbell in Coast News on Peak Democracy

As amazed as we are at the silliness and technological amateurishness of the city's Peak Democracy web forum, we often lose sight of how nefarious the idea behind the software is.  Peak Democracy is designed to create the appearance of public participation while allowing insiders to control the debate.

Thanks to Al Rodbell for reminding us in the Coast News.

1/21/15 City Council meeting open thread.

The current city council has continued prior councils' practice of not providing written summary minutes of council discussion, but only "action minutes" which state the outcomes. Encinitas Undercover will provide a forum for observers to record what occurs at each council meeting.

Please use the comments to record your observations.

Items of interest tonight:

1) Review of the city's Housing Element "outreach" program which includes staff having created the target property map before "public outreach" began, and said map having been circulated by insiders at an invite-only meeting for likely upzone windfall millionaires.

And don't forget the other part of the "outreach:" the city's laughably amateur Peak Democracy online forum software.

2) The Kranz-Blakespear proposal to require appellants to go to mediation before having appeals heard by the council.


9 PM: Sounds from the comments as if the Blakespear proposal is turning into quite a fiasco.  Here is former council candidate Julie Graboi's submission on the issue.

Coast News on Peak Democracy sham

"Peak Democracy" is the online forum software purchased for Encinitas last year by a vote of Teresa Barth, Tony Kranz, and Lisa Shaffer (Mark Muir and Kristin Gaspar opposed) at the suggestion of former city manager Gus Vina. Residents at the time voiced concerns about the purchase, citing its dubious reliability as an honest gauge of public opinion.

Back in October, Encinitas Undercover revealed that Encinitas' Peak Democracy site was chock full o' fictional TV and movie characters. Now, the Coast News reports further:

The Coast News filed a public records request seeking the physical addresses used by the users when they registered with the site, as well as the IP addresses of the computers used to register the accounts. The city took several weeks to fulfill the requests after vetting it through its legal team.

Two of the four addresses were the home addresses of current Councilwoman Lisa Shaffer and former Councilman Jerome Stocks, both of whom said they had no idea who was using their addresses and that they were not involved with the posts.

Stocks said he would “take any and all legal remedies” against whoever used his address, but was also critical of the eTown Hall system.

“This just underscores some of the issues I have with the system,” Stocks said. “How do you really know who is posting on the site if you can just make up a name and use someone else’s address?”

The other two addresses were to local residents who said they did not participate in the forum.

The IP addresses traced back to the County of San Diego’s public library system, though it is the universal IP address for the entire system, meaning the people could have made that post from any of the county’s libraries.

Sadly, the city continues to insist that this thoroughly discredited software will be the primary means of gathering public input for the all-important Housing Element Update, which will have serious impacts on high-density development and traffic jams along our already crowded El Camino Real and Encinitas Boulevard corridors. As Council Member Lisa Shaffer wrote in her September 25 newsletter:

Furthermore, input will be received via eTownHall, not on cards or paper maps with dots or orally while sitting around tables. Everyone will be able to see displays and ask questions of staff, and then, either at the community meeting or whenever they choose, they can go to eTownHall and record their input. All the input from everyone will be captured and available to any and all who want to see it.

Sure, everyone will be able to see all the input. But we'll have no idea how much of the input is from fake accounts created to push special interests' agendas. With millions of dollars in upzoning windfalls at stake, it would be ridiculously easy for any developer to hire a few high school kids to create dozens of fake accounts to create the appearance of public support.

Kranz offers open dialogue on Housing Element Update

Residents have expressed concern about many aspects of the city's public outreach on the Housing Element Update: staff's pre-determined upzoning sites, the invite-only Upzoning for Fun and Profit party, the poorly-attended city workshops, the extremely dubious Peak Democracy survey site.

Council Member Tony Kranz has heard those concerns and is hosting a public forum to discuss the Housing Element Update.

Moonshot Mike loses election, wins soda tax; Peak Democracy wants (and gets) Al Rodbell's opinion

Moonshot Mike Cohen, the eccentric Berkeley politician who sold his Peak Democracy blog service to Encinitas, appears to have lost his bid for a Berkeley council seat.  Some small consolation may be that the soda tax he endorsed has passed.  Yes, having long been known as a focal point of free speech and civil liberties, Berkeley is now concerned with telling people what (not) to drink.

Meanwhile, Mike's blog service has run into some trouble in Encinitas, mainly in that is has been exposed as a complete joke and rife with potential for fraud and abuse.  But a little thing like that would never stop our city leaders from charging full speed ahead.

Take it away, Al Rodbell.  Way away.

Encinitas' Peak Democracy site is chock full o' fictional TV and movie characters

Earlier this week we brought you the story of how flimsy and vulnerable to manipulation the city's new "public input" vehicle, Peak Democracy, is.  Encinitas council members names were showing up as verified Vallejo residents offering their opinions on Vallejo's Peak Democracy site.

But the abuse isn't limited to the Vallejo site.  Here on Encinitas' Peak Democracy site, we found some unusual characters.

Here's Old Encinitas resident Derek Smalls saying, "Thank you to Teresa Barth, Tony Kranz, and Lisa Shaffer for purchasing Pacific View!  What a jewel!"



We couldn't find any Encinitas listing for Derek Smalls, but it does happen to be the name of the bass player from Spinal Tap.

Here's James Darmody from New Encinitas, who writes, "I would like to thank our excellent city council, particularly Deputy Mayor Tony Kranz, for having the foresight to see that Pacific View can be a tremendous arts cent and a legacy for our children."



We were unable to locate Mr. Darmody of Encinitas; however, that is the name of a character in Boardwalk Empire.

Other fictional characters pop up without praising the council.  Here's "Arthur Vandelay," a running pseudonym gag from Seinfeld.



And here's Vernon Wormer, the Dean from Animal House, suggesting that Encinitas purchase antiquities from Greece, Italy and Egypt.



Any comment on this, Dean Wormer?



True, Dean Wormer, but it's good enough for Encinitas!

If it weren't so serious that Encinitas is actually going to use this tool as the primary vehicle for public input on the housing element update, it would be funny.

Peak Democracy: what a great tool for manipulating collecting public opinion!

Peak Idiocracy: verified Vallejo residents weigh in on Vallejo public policy

You may recall that this past spring, the council majority (Barth, Kranz, and Shaffer, with Muir and Gaspar opposed) followed Gus Vina's recommendation to spend city funds to buy silly blog software called "Peak Democracy" from eccentric Berkeley politician Mike "Moonshot" Cohen.

Residents at the time implored the council not to purchase the software which was rife with potential for abuse, but the majority would not deny Vina his toy.

Six months or so into the great Peak Democracy experiment, all we've got for our money is two absurd polls. The first freaked dog owners out with the question, “How important is it for off-leash dog hours to remain at Encinitas Viewpoint, Orpheus and Sun Vista parks once the new dedicated two-acre off-leash dog park is open at Encinitas Community Park?” This seemed to imply that staff were considering cutting local dog park hours and making everyone drive their dogs to the Hall Park instead. Fortunately, it seems it was just space filler so they could say they were doing something with the new software.

The second trivial question was about the arts, a multiple choice question "What's your favorite type of public art?" The choices were "interactive art," "mosaic," "mural," "sculpture," and, bizarrely, "LED installation." We hope that Encinitas Arts Director Jim Gilliam wasn't involved in writing this inane question that views the medium as the most important aspect of art.

But now the council is considering moving beyond irrelevant time-wasting internet polls, to using Peak Democracy as the primary vehicle for public input on the extremely important Housing Element Update.  They'll use it to decide which properties to upzone, resulting in multi-million-dollar windfalls for some lucky property owners.

How is Peak Democracy working in other cities that have been using it longer?  Let's see how verified Vallejo residents Tony Kranz, Lisa Shaffer, and Teresa Barth used Peak Democracy to give input on Vallejo public policy.

 





Great idea, Teresa!

Peak Democracy has a feature that distinguishes residents as "inside Vallejo" as opposed to random out-of-town commenters.  Somehow, these three computer whizzes were able to persuade Peak Democracy that they were legitimate Vallejo residents.

How will we know which, if any, Encinitas opinions on Peak Democracy are real people if we are to use Peak Democracy as the primary tool for alleged "public input" on the Housing Element?

Fortunately, we can't think of any reason why property owners looking for a multi-million-dollar upzoning windfall would bother to spend a few bucks hiring teenagers to create fake online accounts to push upzoning in their direction.  Can you?

More D-grade work from city consultants?

From the Inbox:

Dear Council Members and Cabinet Members,

Last night I attended a workshop that Parks and Recreation hosted which seems to be a justification for raising fees on citizens, if the heading "service and fee study," the first line of the announcement is to be believed. I spoke with presenters Al and Chris, who identify themselves as consultants in the field of recreation.

I disagree that the presentation that was given by Green Play should be considered a consulting activity. First of all, the council has stated that they do not want for Department Directors to bring in consultants. Moreover, what was presented at the meeting was a boiler plate set of forms that does not meet the threshold of a true consulting service since one of the managing partners, Chris, mentioned that they use the same instruments everywhere. This would indicate that they are vendors selling the same package over and over--not actual consultants who offer very specific and usually case-sensitive solutions to difficult problems.

Green Play presenters identified their documents and groupings as a "process," a "methodology," and a "study," yet they disagreed with me when I and another attendee pointed out that there was terrible bias in the design of the presentation since attendees did not represent a valid survey sample of Encinitas residents. They seemed to do an outreach to people who went to the senior center, yet I only found out about it because I saw an announcement at City Hall. They said that they were interested in studying all of the recreation services the city offered, but the people in the meeting were only a narrow sampling of people who might use recreation services yet did not know about this meeting. Because the outreach was limited to people who were at the City during particular times, most citizens were not aware of these meetings.

The presenters said that their goal was to start "a conversation" and "raise awareness" about issues without creating a reliable way to capture information or to define their terms. They claimed that they were not trying to do valid studies yet identified their information gathering as "a study." I asked them for a list of protocols, and they said that they trained Parks and Recreation staff yet did not have anything in writing. Why is that? One of the hallmarks of actual consulting work is that the rules of how a formal activity like the one I attended is performed need to be written so that others can understand what took place and evaluate the results.

Why does the City continue to hire firms that produce poor results, or no valid results at all as in this case? I find it hard to believe that the council would approve this program with the unhappy history of consultants that we have had in the past.

Below is an article about a sports park that is named as one of Green Play's clients. Please stop wasting our money on this and other recently hired consultants for the Housing Element update. There are ample residents who would DONATE their skills and work collaboratively with staff to design and process valid studies that would not only save money, but would more accurately capture the will of Encinitas citizens. The stated goals and outcomes that the presenters sought in these meetings were not met since they are not measurable or valid.

I am very sorry to say this, but based on what I saw, whatever you paid them was too much. It looks like the city wants to raise fees on residents, and this is the real reason that you have brought these people in.

Sincerely,

Julie Graboi

http://avlne.ws/1tTrQuW

Check the link at the bottom of Graboi's e-mail. Asheville is building a $5.4 million sports park and is planning to fund it by hosting paid-attendance regional sports tournaments and selling beer. Our park cost many tens of millions to build. What's Green Play's plan to pay for that?

And if the city is telling us that the Peak Democracy blog is the only acceptable tool to gather public input for the Housing Element, why wouldn't it be appropriate to use it to collect opinions on park fees?

UPDATE: Green Play's fees to the city for running five very small meetings for a handful of people? $17,503.50.

Conversations with Gus

Wherein Traffic and Public Safety Commissioner Al Rodbell is ordered not to use his title when expressing his opinion.

We're pretty sure nobody confused Al Rodbell's opinion on Peak Democracy for an official Traffic and Safety Commission statement.

Achtung!

We wonder if Vina has similarly ordered Teresa Barth and Lisa Shaffer not to use their Council Member titles in their newsletters, which are -- shockingly -- not official statements of city policy.

Mayor Poll

Fact Thrower brings up lots of legitimate points in the comments about the records of candidates.

But in a world of limited and imperfect choices, what are you going to do?

Please vote in the poll in the left sidebar below, and leave your comments here.

UPDATE: OK, not sure what the problem is with Blogger polls. Let's try SurveyMonkey.

And yes, I know SurveyMonkey is as insecure and manipulable as the city's idiotic new Peak Democracy software. So you're on your honor to vote only once.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Not sure how to display the write-ins, but here's the count so far:

Julie Graboi 5
Catherine Blakespear 2
Al Rodbell 2
Bill Rodewald 1
Sheila 1
Donna (if Julie isn't running for mayor) 1
Michael Vilkin 1
Richard Dreyfuss 1
Judge Brandenburg 1
Leucadia Strange Thing 1
Gus Vina 1
"As yet undeclared" 1

Al Rodbell on Peak Democracy

We recently added local resident Al Rodbell's thoughtful blog to the blogroll at left.

Mr. Rodbell responded with the following. We agree with Mr. Rodbell's concerns about the Peak Democracy blog purchased by the city council. It is at best a worthless toy, at worst an easily manipulated tool for city insiders and special interest groups to create the illusion of public support for their pet projects.

As for the weak mayor and weak council issue that Mr. Rodbell raises, we agree that the council has been little more than a rubber stamp for City Manager Gus Vina's plans, but we see this as a failure of leadership of the current council, not as a structural problem. Vina serves at the pleasure of the council. His failures and deceptions are theirs. Vina only controls the council because they have abdicated their oversight responsibility.  If the council had the intellectual capacity and the will to challenge Vina, they could.

But let us not bloviate on. Take it away, Al:

Greetings.  Thanks for posting my article Al Rodbell's Blog "Peak Democracy" implementation update as of April

Much of my writing and actions at the council on this issue have been written at different times -- from initial gut reaction, actually better described as revulsion, towards this program; then after further research, and finally now reaching a more comprehensive broader view. There is less anger at the President of the company, Mike Cohen, than focus at our defective city governmental system that allows those such as he to exploit it.

The article in my web site that you feature, the "April update," only briefly described the chain of events that was sparked during by a conversation with one of our most informed citizen advocates who described that initial council meeting. I have now appended links of details, including several articles that critique Peak Democracy, ironically from two opposite directions. One, a short column claiming that Mr. Cohen is not true to his "populist" credentials, that in reality the program is designed to help city hall deflect movements such as Prop A. The other longer one published in "Dissent Magazine" is much deeper, and concludes after tracing the gestation of this commercial entity from a citizen based movement in Berkeley, that such easy-access populism will result in the loss of those few who actually show up at meetings and put their emotional well-being on the line by challenging simplistic damaging council actions.

While seemingly contradictory, they both point out to me how Peak Democracy will exacerbate our problems. Yet, in making my case against a company, I realize that what has to be seriously evaluated is the structure of the City Manager system of local government, which entails part time citizen council members. Our council takes all the heat without concomitant authority- so irrespective of certain bad choices that have been made by them that deserve condemnation, a confrontational tone between council majority and voters is often inevitable.

The upcoming election for Mayor is, upon reflection, an example of both defects of Peak Democracy. It was created by direct democracy's baby, Proposition K, but the public voted on their illusion of what "mayor" means, and not the reality based on our city manager system. Right now the Mayor, while possessing no executive branch authority, does have this indirectly by being the representative of the majority faction, which in the aggregate can discharge a City Manager at will. (It's like the power of a Majority leader or Speaker of the House) This this will no longer necessarily be the case when s/he is independently elected. So, what the public did, based on the assumption that an elected mayor would have more authority, allowed the possibility that s/he will have even less.

I had written the above before the vote on Prop K, but it was only read by a few on my website and those on my personal email list. Elections are populist events, the one time when those few who make great efforts at a legislative body have the same single vote as those who are voting with no real understanding of what each candidate stands for, as I myself do when voting for for county and school board offices.

Describing defects in any complex system such as city government is easy, arriving at preferable, yet possible, solutions is a whole different kettle of fish. So, while I'll continue to try to gather support for derailing the implementation of Peak Democracy, enabling the council to confront Mr. Cohen on the exaggerations of his "salesmanship" -- which should result in cancellation of the contract for the services; this should be an occasion to consider a broader restructuring. If this means adopting a Charter city system, this certainly should be explored. One thing I'm convinced of is while there is no system of government at any level that is bulletproof, just trying to achieve something close can be a useful exercise.

Moonshots

The guy who sold the Peak Democracy program to Gus Vina is running for City Council himself in Berkeley.

He's got some big, unorthodox ideas he calls "moonshots": self-driving golf cart taxis, electronic surveillance systems, etc. Many of the ideas would not be as relevant to Encinitas as we don't (yet) have Berkeley's terrible traffic, parking, and crime problems.

But his decibel-monitoring system gave us one idea that could be useful in Encinitas. How about decibel monitors on 2nd Street that are programmed to cut off the power to Union when noise reaches a certain level?

Communications Plan

The city's new Communications Director has unveiled the Communications Plan.  There are two key new systems: OpenGov, which promises to give the public access to city financial data; and Peak Democracy, an online opinion-gathering tool.

If OpenGov delivers as promised, it will be an important and long-overdue step toward transparency.  For example, Mayor Barth stated in last week's newsletter that the city had already budgeted for five years of 10% annual increases in pension costs.  But to our knowledge, no five-year operating budget has ever been shown to the public, nor could we find any such document online.  If the city actually has a plan to pay for pensions as well as the Hall Park operations and debt service, that would be most welcome news indeed!

As for Peak Democracy, it claims to fairly engage the public by creating an online forum that requires commenters to be authenticated.  We suspect that its use will be dominated, just as council meetings are, by special interests and a handful of activists.  Online surveys get filled out primarily by people on mass e-mail lists when an issue comes up that affects their particular interest.  And the council's interest in knowing what the public wants would be more credible if the council hadn't spent the last year doing the exact opposite of what the public clearly and vocally wanted on so many issues: Desert Rose, Prop A, retaining Sabine, pronouncing Vina "excellent," hiring an expensive new Communications Director...