In a matter of days the year will end. The new year is a campaign year. We have past elections in Encinitas to warn us of the ugliness to come. For the council watchers, activists, community advocates this isn’t a big surprise. Week after week we witness humiliations, spin and a low ethical bar in the current city council. All is cloaked in the practiced decorum of Roberts Rule of Order. We watch, we see. The Encinitas machine will use tactics seemingly immune to shame and adept at projection and deflecting.
What we’ll continue to try to do is insist that citizens do matter. We want to feel the love. Respect, dialog and an effort to listen, to learn and solve problems to utilize our input or expertise; this all matters. We are in a depression for some though many register it holding as a recession; but wealth accumulation, private ownership, economics, price tags simply can’t be the only criteria with relevance in city government or citizen participation. Crisis demands financial accountability and more. Diversity and dissent are often messy and complicated so reminders of compassion need repetition and reinforcement. Consider embracing, championing the few who are willing to stand up to the crony machine.
Let’s use the winter to take a moment and do the preparation of coming together as people with ethics. It takes a pillage . . . so many more people are seeing the council doubling down on total control by again working to humiliate Teresa Barth by silencing her and ignoring her as a desired Mayor, naming an insider (Mark Muir) to Maggie Houlihan’s council seat following her death.
We want you to see for yourselves. Do not take anyone’s word for it. Watch the clips, watch full length meetings, go to the meetings. Be a new face at the speaker’s podium or in the audience. This an appeal to the underlying values that govern society and how we relate to one another.
A mentality that trashes people trashes the planet. Those who belittle human resources devalue environmental resources. The opposite of mean spirited is the effort to open hearts to the people of this community. Love Jerome Stocks, Jim Bond, Kristin Gaspar and Mark Muir as personal friends if you know them. But, demand that they serve the public good, follow the mission of the city’s General Plan. It’s also their duty to be accountable to us – all of us – as our public servants.
