ERAC = The Big Lie

What makes ERAC, Element Review Advisory Committee, the big lie is the premise that this is a citizen participation group.  This is a hand picked group to bring the council majority the alternatives to housing and land use preferred by the financial backers they represent.

This is business under the guise of public participation. And the formation of this group has nothing to do with the legislative directives to update the General Plan to reflect the sustainability criteria for economic, resource, climate and other future stresses on our community.

This is politics.  Everything Jerome Stocks does is about politics of winning.  And governing?  You must spend many hours reviewing city council minutes and archived videos to find actions in support of the public good versus someone's profits or personal property rights. The entire offensive move of blowing up the General Plan Update is fairly obvious if you track the history. From the consultant interview committee, to the General Plan Advisory Committee (GPAC) selection and presence at the many public workshops, there are layers of half-truths and flip-flopping declarations.

From the very beginning Stocks has maintained his position of plausible deniability by staying far away from involvement at the local level and uttering next to nothing of his deeply embedded position within the SANDAG plans as a member, then as chair, when at the end of each city council meeting he'd give glib, condescending or unsubstantial reports if he reported at all.

"Plausible Deniability - A condition in which a subject can safely and believably deny knowledge of any particular truth that may exist because the subject is deliberately made unaware of said truth so as to benefit or shield the subject from any responsibility associated through the knowledge of such truth."

Three months ago Mayor Stocks made it clear he is looking at ERAC for the alternatives that best serve his interests.  Despite any previous language of just another arm or citizen outreach, the group was designed to serve the council majority.

As with the original inflammatory rhetoric Stocks used last September to blow up the General Plan Update, his arguments are specious.  There is no logic.  Any complaints could have, should have been handled within the contracted process.  Citizens were given false choices when there were solutions at hand.  The need for ERAC was and is a lie.  Everything about it is a lie.  Citizens who have dutifully attended every meeting and schooled themselves know it is a lie.  ERAC is Encinitas newest, biggest lie created for political capital.

This week the ERAC facilitator Peder Norby's contract is on the agenda.  Norby is a vitally important scapegoat for Stocks et al.  Whether Peder Norby is your best friend or he eats kittens for breakfast, he is clearly serving the agenda laid out by those in charge.  He should go. 

We all still have our facts, our research, our issues and our feelings for our community.  We need to find the real answers and solutions, but to trust the mayor or the council majority to provide this is a big mistake.  They made the problem, they can't fix it.  And, they don't intend to fix it anyway.  Do we have a park yet on the Hall property?

Note: The big lie does not mean that there are no citizens sitting in earnest on this committee.  This is by no means mean as personal attack on individuals.  Even Stocks best friends my believe they are right in their opinions.  What is critical is the silencing of any dissent outside of the majority favored views and goals.  That isn't citizen participation, it's manufactured consent and it's a big lie.