Encinitas school squabble on LA's John and Ken Show

Los Angeles' highest-rated radio talk show, KFI's John and Ken Show, covered the Capri - Paul Ecke dual-language kerfuffle.

Podcast here. Start at about 27:30.

Capri - Ecke Elementary bilingual kerfuffle

Elementary school families are going completely ape-doo-doo over possible bilingual program changes at Capri and Paul Ecke Central elementary schools. A preliminary meeting tonight brought significant consternation.

Encinitas Ranch Walmart to open this summer

NC Times:

"We're planning early summer of this year, so in just a few more months," spokeswoman Delia Garcia said as she discussed the future store's opening day.

The new store is going into the Encinitas Ranch shopping center just west of Leucadia Boulevard's intersection with El Camino Real.

The home buyers in Encinitas Ranch never got the new elementary school they were promised, but perhaps a shiny new Walmart will be some consolation.

New Encinitas spared; Cardiff, Leucadia brace for high-density development

Thanks to the well-organized New Encinitas Resistance Front (NERF), the awful Housing Element of the General Plan Update was killed Wednesday night. And the Berkeley consultant who looted Encinitas for $1 million was told not to come back.

Unfortunately, the council appears committed to pitting Encinitas neighborhoods against each other in a death match to determine who gets their neighborhood ruined with high-density development.  And the crazy thing is that none of this is necessary.

The whole development mandate is based on obviously bogus population growth projections from SANDAG. Yet our Machiavellian city council, one of them a SANDAGger himself, appear determined to keep using bogus numbers to claim that over-development is mandated by the state and we have no control over what happens in our city.  What better way to deflect voter anger and ensure re-election than turn Encinitans against each other?

Garbage-in, garbage-out.  Use realistic population numbers and give us a General Plan Update we all can live with.

Morning glory

Encinitas sweeps opinion page of Coast News

We're apparently the only city in the Coast News' coverage area with a rotten city council majority. Or at least the only one with citizens concerned enough to speak out about it.

Every article on the local opinion page in Friday's edition was about bad Encinitas government -- and so was the cartoon.



Andrew Audet and Cyrus Kamada both write on the council majority's mayoral power grab. And Denise Martin writes on the fraudulent numbers from SANDAG that are being used to try to force high-density development on Encinitas through the General Plan Update. You can read all three on page four of this pdf.

In the cartoon, local artist Mary Fleener comments on problems at the fire department -- and firefighters' outrageous pay and pension package.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a city council whose dirty tricks we didn't have to read about every week? I don't know about all the cities in the Coast News' coverage area, but both of our coastal neighbors Solana Beach and Carlsbad have passed pension reform, while our union-owned council majority of Jerome Stocks, Kristin Gaspar, and Jim Bond (with Mark Muir MIA) just gave firefighters a contract with a pay raise and a guarantee of no pension reform for four more years.

Denise Martin Editorial on SANDAG's bogus population numbers

[EU note: reposted here because the Coast News does not have this online other than .pdf]

Numbers don’t add up when it comes to General Plan Update
by Denise Martin

A lot [sic, I think the Coast News omitted a lead-off question] when it involves the draft of General Plan Update 2035 — the official document guiding the growth of Encinitas for the next 25 years.

The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) is responsible for forecasting regional population growth, which Encinitas and other local governments use to decide how much new construction should be allowed in their towns. The Encinitas city planners, based on the SANDAG forecast, predicted that Encinitas’ population would increase 15.2 percent between 2010 and 2020.

This number — 15.2 per-cent — was used as the justi-fication in the General Plan Update to allow up-zoning that could result in the construction of 1,255 new apartments on El Camino Real, 847 on the Encinitas Blvd/Interstate 5, and another 280 apartments at the Santa Fe/I-5 Interchange.

Also included in the General Plan Update is changing current height restrictions (up to 40+ feet for grocery stores) and other exemptions that would lead to the citification of our town.

But the justification for all this building is fatally flawed because SANDAG’s estimate for population growth is outdated. Here’s a condensed version of a com-plicated situation.

SANDAG’s numbers were based on the 2008 California Department of Finance estimates, which were used to come up with 15.2 percent population growth. But the 2010 Census found the population of Encinitas increased only 2.6 percent between 2000 and 2010, and this slow growth will continue for years.

In fact, Beth Jarosz, senior demographer for SANDAG, made the following observations about San Diego County in a February 2012 article in The Union-Tribune: “Between 2000 and 2010, the 60-and-older population (in San Diego County) grew by 100,000 people. At the same time, the share of the region’s population under age 18 grew by only 1,000 people. With the first wave of the baby boomers turning 65 last year, we expect the region’s population to continue the aging trend in coming decades.

There are a number of other critical facts that the SANDAG forecast did not take into account: a major recession, an anemic economic recovery, high unemployment rates, a net migration out of California, and most important, declining birth rates. All these factors mean slower population growth for the foreseeable future.

So now that we know North County is likely to see low single-digit population growth for the coming decade — and not 15.2 percent — why still use numbers in the General Plan Update?

To continue promoting the General Plan Update in its current form makes no sense. Why scar the city with further developments if the numbers do not justify such aggressive growth?

If the Encinitas City Council is looking after the best interests of our town, they will rewrite the General Plan Update based on the most current census data and trends — and not on information that is seriously outdated. No household or business would make important decisions like this using such obsolete information.

We can still stop all this unjustified development. Visit SaveNewEncinitas.com and sign the petition to alter the General Plan Update.

Denise Martin is a new Encinitas resident.