Leucadians applaud state grant for rail underpass

U-T:

By Wednesday night, word had spread through the city’s Leucadia community about the city’s grant success. More than a dozen parents and students from Paul Ecke Central Elementary, plus William Morrison — vice president of the Leucadia 101 Main Street Association — appeared at the council meeting to give their thanks to Pruim, as well as other city employees and the council members.

“For the Paul Ecke community, this underpass means way more than connecting Vulcan (Avenue) and the 101,” Rebecca Conley, vice president of the PTA, told the council. “It means connecting the parents and the school. It means connecting the families and the kids and our community as a whole.”

The large grant, following on the heels of the Santa Fe underpass grant, comes despite Encinitas supposedly "losing out on infrastructure grant dollars" due to the last several councils having failed to pass a Housing Element Update.

Power failure across wide swath of Encinitas

Locals from the coast 101 area to Village Park are reporting a complete power failure that began around 1:45 pm today.

By about 2:07 pm, power was coming back on in some areas.

SDG&E's Twitter feed reports that the company was ordered to cut power by the state.

Encinitas celebrates California car culture

... with the annual Wavecrest Woodie Meet, where classic cars come from all over the West for the weekend to celebrate California's history of beach culture and the open road.



The City of Encinitas kindly reserves the whole Moonlight Beach parking lot for the event. Drive on down to Moonlight Beach this weekend and check out the classics!

9/16/15 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.

Planning Dept to keep on keepin' on improving

From the Inbox:

On tonight's agenda, Planning is going to launch their Continuous Improvement Plan.

ETHICAL & TRANSPARENT WORK

We conduct ourselves with honesty and integrity, live up to our commitments and openly

communicate our processes and actions to the public in order to promote trust.




2015-09-16 Item 11A - Development Services Continuous Improvement Information Item

Leucadians report return of summer gas smell

From the comments:

AnonymousSeptember 12, 2015 at 1:38 PM Heavy Duty gas smell in Leucadia today. What the hell is it?
AnonymousSeptember 12, 2015 at 1:43 PM
We just smelled it too.

This is a recurring summer phenomenon in North County, noticed again last month. We believe it's organic from the ocean, caused by the summer heat.

House cleaning begins: Planning Director Jeff Murphy out!

This from an EU source who has been consistently solid in the past.

Murphy is reportedly gone as of October 2, and will be taking a job with the City of San Diego.

Murphy was hired by former City Manager Gus Vina, and had a rocky relationship from the start with both the council and the public. The perpetually failed Housing Element Update was the responsibility of his department, and residents say Murphy's Planning Department often encouraged property owners to build denser developments out of character with their neighborhoods. The City Council famously ripped into Murphy in 2013 when he tried to replace the 4/5 majority rule for upzoning with a 3/5 simple majority.

Murphy was most recently responsible for the new full-time, pensioned code enforcement officer who did almost nothing to address the downtown problems but instead harassed a Cardiff bar that wasn't bothering anybody.

A longer, but surely incomplete, history of Murphy's travails can be found here.