Pacific View saved from greedheads?

This sounds like a good deal all around.

NC Times:

School trustees in Encinitas took a step Wednesday toward selling the Pacific View site to a nonprofit group that wants to turn it into a community arts center.

The Encinitas Union School District Board of Trustees agreed to allow Superintendent Tim Baird to begin negotiations with the San Diego-based group Art Pulse.

If the deal goes through, it would end years of speculation and public conflict about how the oceanview property should be used, which peaked in October, when the district sued the city over zoning for the site.

Baird said Wednesday the city would drop the suit if negotiations with Art Pulse are successful.
April Game, executive director of Art Pulse, said she is "beyond optimistic" about the sale.

Here's Art Pulse.  Yeah, it's a little New York - La Jolla hipster doofus, but it would be a hell of a lot better than high-density condos.

Crime Capers

Fortunately, we've got more silly stories than serious crimes in Encinitas. A couple this week:

Encinitas schools on lockdown over homeless guy not on campus with toy gun:

Four Encinitas schools were briefly locked down Thursday as a precaution after reports that a man in the area was possibly armed with a gun.

San Dieguito Academy high school, Ocean Knolls Elementary, Oak Crest Junior High and St. John’s School were put on lockdown just before 9 a.m., sheriff’s Lt. Jeff Maxin said.

A code enforcement officer spotted the man in a transient camp in a canyon off Melba Road, Maxin said.

Deputies later located the man and found that he had a toy gun, Maxin said. He said the lockdown was lifted about 9:25 a.m.

Who knew there was a transient camp off Melba?

And somebody made a wrong turn onto the train tracks Tuesday night:

Authorities said a crash in Encinitas in which a freight train smashed into a car on railroad tracks may have been alcohol-related.

No one was injured in the crash, which occurred near E Street and South Vulcan Avenue about 10:45 p.m. Tuesday, said San Diego County sheriff's Sgt. Robin Lawrence.

Witnesses told investigators people inside the car got out and fled the area before the crash, Lawrence said.

"It is suspected this incident was DUI-related,'' the sergeant said in a statement. Sign up for FOX5 Breaking News alerts

There was major damage to the car and minor to moderate damage to the freight train, he said.

Toxic Dust Warning

From the inbox, along with a note that the city and/or SDG&E have already been digging and kicking up toxic dust for weeks: Hall Park Toxic Dust

EUSD Debt-for-iPads Scam Update

Last year, we discussed the Encinitas Union School District's plan to use 30-year debt to fund iPads for 4th graders.

Well, the 30-year debt has been issued and the iPads have been purchased and distributed. Sources tell Encinitas Undercover that the iPads are a big hit with the kids, so much that many kids now prefer playing Angry Birds over playground games and social interaction with their peers.

And in today's LA Times, columnist Michael Hiltzik discusses the technology scam.

"The media you use make no difference at all to learning," says Richard E. Clark, director of the Center for Cognitive Technology at USC. "Not one dang bit. And the evidence has been around for more than 50 years."

Almost every generation has been subjected in its formative years to some "groundbreaking" pedagogical technology. In the '60s and '70s, "instructional TV was going to revolutionize everything," recalls Thomas C. Reeves, an instructional technology expert at the University of Georgia. "But the notion that a good teacher would be just as effective on videotape is not the case."

Many would-be educational innovators treat technology as an end-all and be-all, making no effort to figure out how to integrate it into the classroom. "Computers, in and of themselves, do very little to aid learning," Gavriel Salomon of the University of Haifa and David Perkins of Harvard observed in 1996. Placing them in the classroom "does not automatically inspire teachers to rethink their teaching or students to adopt new modes of learning."

Click on over to read the whole thing, but it comes down to two points:

1) It's the content and the teacher that matter, not the medium. Better a good teacher with a chalkboard than a program on an iPad.

2) Technology purchases are pushed by the corporations like Apple who profit from them.

Encinitas homeowners who just got 30 years of debt to pay off, you've been had.

Radiation leak at San Onofre

After Fukushima, I'm not so comfortable having that thing just up the coast. You know they're storing dangerous spent fuel rods there because the politicians can't agree to put them deep underground in Nevada?

Here's the latest:

After an unplanned, precautionary shutdown of a reactor at the San Onofre nuclear plant Tuesday, a plant spokesman said Wednesday that a possible leak in one of the reactor’s steam generator tubes could have resulted in a tiny release of radioactive material into the atmosphere.

[...]

While the nuclear operator – Southern California Edison – says that only a tiny amount was released, and would pose no health problems, that’s what operators always say after a nuclear accident.

Encinitas featured in really bad student fiction at Quinnipiac University

Most people have never heard of Quinnipiac University.  Or if they have, it's because Quinnipiac runs political polls that are sometimes quoted in the press. I'm pretty sure it's somewhere in the Eastern half of the United States, because it's got one of those Eastern-sounding Native American names.

But someone at Quinnipiac has heard of Encinitas.  Meet "Peter the Nihilist" by "Buford Harris":

Peter's parents died on the day of his high school graduation. 

"Such a terrible sight we have not seen since that tiger escaped the San Diego Zoo and tragically found its way into Mr. Jacobson and his deli section at Albertson's," said the Encinitas Gazette the next day.

"I never got my Big Mac," said Peter.

The whole event shook the stereotypical cliff top town of Encinitas to its overpriced, and frankly all too sensitive, core. Events were held, wakes were attended, and memorial speeches were given, none of which were attended by Peter. Probably the most notable of these events was held by Mrs. Goldstein and Mrs. Sanberg, along with the rest of the D street MADD club, who organized a highly intrusive, and disappointingly low quality, bake sale in memory of Peter's parents the very next day.

Don't quit your day job, Buford. And if any people here are thinking of sending their kids to the creative writing program at Quinnipiac...

Lisa Shaffer on the General Plan Update fiasco

What a cluster^&%$. It's hard to tell how much of the mess is actual incompetence vs. feigned incompetence to force the desired outcome.

Lisa Shaffer nails it in Patch.

The City of Encinitas is preparing an “update” of its General Plan to bring it into conformity with regional and state mandates. Concerns about both substance and process abound from the community. Disarray within the City Council and between the Council and City Manager and planning staff are wasting time and money and further frustrating the alleged objective of meaningful public engagement in the process.

[...]

Even with the recommendation for more public meetings, there is a lack of clarity and a waste of time and money. Staff prepared an informative brochure to send out city-wide notifying people of the meetings. However, both Council and the public were unhappy with the draft and sent the staff back for a substantial revision, incurring more staff time and expense and delaying the planned meetings.

Who is calling the shots here? I have serious concerns about a process that seems out of control. With agenda items appearing and then being withdrawn, staff reports that don’t reflect reality, a clear lack of clarity between the Council and the planning staff, it seems that time and money are being wasted, and interested citizens are increasingly frustrated because they have ideas and preferences but no consistent and meaningful way to be heard. The people need a transparent process for engagement, and a vote of all the people before a final plan is adopted.

Shaffer is exactly right. The GP Update meetings were a farce and a scam where residents' input was ignored and perverted to support the development plans of the staff and the million-dollar outside consultants. Just Say No.