Busted

We have aleady posted the fact that Stocks is putting up campaign signs early.

But now, a Coast News videographer filmed Mayor Jerome Stocks and Councilman Mark Muir illegally placing signs on Friday night themselves. This is what the Encinitas law regarding signs says that no signs can be put up before 30 days to the election. That would be Sunday, October 7.

Typical of Jerome Stocks in the video below, he attempts to intimidate the man filming and demand information as though the man filming is doing something wrong.  Caught red handed he completely acts like he is the victim of aggression.

How dare anyone expect Jerome Stocks to answer to any law or challenge to his (illegal) behavior?

It is difficult to stand up to power and privilege and Joe is a hero.  Thank You very much.  We are distributing this because some don't have online access.  Those who do, give them some link love and traffic at Coast News.

Stay tuned.  We haven't heard the last of this by any means.

Oh, and Mark - about your little truth problem with "I'm not running with Jerome."  Busted.

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. 

Myths Encinitas

This Monday's edition is from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, with thirty-five years of community strengthening research behind them. Fact sheet presented in full. This refutes the myths our mayor and the council majority and all city planning has bought and promoted as fiscal strength. It can't undo the reality of a Wal-Mart opening this week, but it can change some thinking for our fiscal planning with a new council after November.

Five Myths About Big-Box Retail

MYTH: Big-Box Stores Create Jobs

FACT: Studies by independent economists show that big-box stores eliminate more retail jobs than they create.

A recent study examined 3,094 counties across the U.S., tracking the arrival of new Wal-Mart stores between 1977 and 2002. The study, conducted by Univ. of California economist David Neumark, found that opening a Wal-Mart store led to a net loss of 150 retail jobs on average, suggesting that a new Wal-Mart job replaces approximately 1.4 workers at other stores. (The Effects of Wal-Mart on Local Labor Markets, January 2007).

The reason for the overall decline is that a new Wal-Mart store does not increase the amount of money that residents have to spend. Sales gains at these stores are invariably mirrored by a drop in revenue at existing businesses, which then must down-size or close. The job losses are larger than the gains because Wal-Mart accomplishes the same volume of sales with fewer employees.

Although similar studies have not been done of other big-box retailers, it's likely that they also have either a negative or no impact on employment because the underlying dynamics (i.e., no increases in consumer spending) are the same.

MYTH: Big-Box Stores Boost Tax Revenue

FACT: The tax benefits of big-box stores are negated by the cost of providing public services to these developments and declining tax revenue from existing commercial districts.

Big-box development creates substantial public costs. These sprawling stores are not efficient users of public infrastructure. Compared to traditional, compact business districts, they require longer roads, more road maintenance, additional miles of utilities, and more fire and police time.

One case study in Barnstable, Mass., found that the annual cost of providing city services to traditional downtown and neighborhood business districts was $786 per 1,000 square feet. Big-box stores were 30% more costly, requiring $1,023 in services per 1,000 sq. ft. (Tischler & Associates, Fiscal Impact Analysis of Residential and Nonresidential Land Use Prototypes, prepared for the Town of Barnstable, Jul. 1, 2002.)

In addition to incurring new costs, cities that approve big-box development often experience a decline in property and sales A project of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance tax revenue from existing neighborhood and downtown business districts, as well as older shopping centers. As these areas lose sales and experience vacancies, the value of property declines and with it, the property tax revenue. Sales tax revenue also falls. One study of 116 cities in California found that, in all but two cases, the presence of a big-box store did not correspond to increased sales tax revenue. (Bay Area Economic Forum, Supercenters and the Transformation of the Bay Area Grocery Industry: Issues,Trends, and Impacts, 2004, 74-81)

MYTH: Big-Box Stores Grow the Economy

FACT: Trading independent retailers for big-box chains shrinks the volume of activity in the local economy.

For every $100 they receive in revenue, locally owned businesses hire more local workers, purchase more goods and services from other local businesses, and contribute more to local charities than their big-box counterparts. When chains displace local businesses, it results in an overall loss of economic activity, not a gain.

A 2004 study conducted in Chicago analyzed ten locally owned restaurants, retail stores, and service providers and compared them with chains competing in the same categories. The study concluded that every $100 spent at one of the independent businesses created $68 in additional economic activity in the city, while spending the same amount at a chain only generated $43 worth of local impact. (Civic Economics, The Andersonville Study of Retail Economics, 2004.)

One of the main reasons for the difference was that the local retailers bought more goods and services from other local businesses. They did their banking at a local bank. They hired local accountants, web designers, and other professionals. They turned to a local print shop for their printing, and they advertised in local publications. The chains had almost no need for these local services and spent relatively little in the city.

A consequence of this is that even modest shifts in the mix of local and non-local businesses in a community can have significant economic ramifications. A case study in Kent County, Michigan, estimates that the region would gain 1,600 new jobs, $140 million in new economic activity, and $53 million in additional payroll if residents shifted 10% of their spending from chains to local businesses. A shift in the opposite direction — more spending at chains — would cause equivalent economic losses. (Civic Economics, Local Works: Examining the Impact of Local Business on the Western Michigan Economy, 2008.)

MYTH: Big-Box Stores Bring Competition and Consumer Choice

FACT: Big-box stores often displace numerous small and mid-sized stores, leaving fewer shopping options and less competition. 

An average Wal-Mart or Target supercenter is nearly four football fields in size (190,000 square feet) and captures about $80 million a year in spending. To understand how large that is, consider that it would take 35,000 people making 25% of all of their retail purchases, from groceries to appliances, at that one Wal-Mart store. To take another example, the average 120,000-square-foot Lowe's captures $35 million a year in sales. That's equal to the total hardware/building materials spending power of 37,000 people.

Most communities, even fast-growing ones, cannot absorb a store of this scale without sizable revenue losses to existing businesses, including both locally owned stores and competing supermarkets and shopping centers. Part of the reason these companies build such large stores is that they leave little room in the market for other businesses. As competing stores close, residents are left with fewer choices. Many towns and neighborhoods now depend on a single big-box store for many types of goods, virtually eliminating competition. Once they attain a dominant share of the market, these retailers may raise prices. One study compared the cost of 54 grocery items at 11 Wal-Mart supercenters in Nebraska and found that the total varied by more than 13 percent. Some of the stores with the highest prices were in areas that lacked competing grocery stores.
(Hometown Merchants Association, Impact of Supercenters on Nebraska Economy, April 2004.)

A growing number of communities are deciding that a better way to ensure competition is to have numerous small and mid-sized stores, rather than one giant superstore. One way to achieve this is to place a cap on the size of stores (for more on this see our Store Size Cap Policy Kit at bigboxtoolkit.com).

MYTH: Big-Box Stores are the Only Option

FACT: More cities and towns are saying no to additional big-box development and finding better ways to grow by creating and expanding local businesses.

Nearly 300 communities have rejected big-box proposals in the last few years, and many have adopted policies that restrict or prohibit this type of development altogether.

Far from impeding growth, these policies often attract new small businesses investment as entrepreneurs seek out viable locations. Communities can spur more small business development by revitalizing their neighborhood and downtown commercial districts, launching programs to train and finance new entrepreneurs, and developing a strong Buy Local campaign to encourage more public support for locally owned businesses.

(For more information on these strategies, see the Building Alternatives to Big Boxes section at bigboxtoolkit.com.) This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing

Encinitas Walmart slipped in through the back door.  The official date is June 13th.  Local citizens, budding activists all, kept up their pursuit of information and were given false or partial information from city planning staff over and over.  Speakers at city council meetings would voice concerns and ask about rumors at oral communications.   Patrick Murphy would repeat his usual denials that nothing was going on with Walmart. Don't you believe it.

The Walmartization of America Redux: How the Relentless Drive for Cheap Stuff Undermines Our Economy, Bankrupts Our Soul, and Pillages the Planet by John Atcheson states,

"In his excellent documentary, Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price, Robert Greenwald carefully documents how Walmart’s giant box stores lower wages across the entire retail sector, impose high social and economic costs on the states and communities in which they operate, and destroy local businesses."

When it was altogether clear last September that Walmart officials and city planners had done an end run around public opinion and open government precepts, Teresa Barth spoke openly about the weaknesses within the General Plan that would allow for this kind of action being considered legal because it is re-use not new construction.

Teresa Barth's words and the critics of Walmart don't argue the increasing economic insecurity. The point is to be truthful about what we are really paying for cheap things. There are similarities it seems between this Oscar Wilde quote of people "knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing" and "just because it's legal doesn't make it right." Both entail loss of humanity, the loss of soul.

Myths Encinitas

Encinitas traffic engineers, traffic consultants like Austin-Foust, traffic commissioners, Mayor Stocks (especially in his role as SANDAG chairman), Jim Bond, crony friends and many in the community of Encinitas keep perpetuating the myths about automobile-centric supremacy as the only transportation approach for a robust economy.

This is a myth.  Today's post will feature a  Streetfilms video sharing information from over 100's of studies done around the world about livable cities.

Despite the automobile's 100 year reign and all the great things each and every one of us may have enjoyed with our drivers licensed entree into the US auto-centric 20th century, it will ultimately be viewed by history as a mistake for two reasons (discussed within this film):

1. Traffic undermines the livability of the city. 
2. The auto does a poor job of moving people in a dense urban environment.

This isn't to say there is no place, no function for the automobile.  That would be silly.  It is simply not the sacred gift to humanity that it is touted to be, especially in the Western US in the decades that lie ahead of us.  The time of rethinking has begun and decades overdue.

But, someone who has studied this in depth will take over here in a  Streetfilms video. Even though Encinitas is a tiny dot compared to New York City.  This living laboratory of all that traffic can be is worthy of our attention.

"For more than 100 years New York City government policy has prioritized the needs of the automobile over the needs of any other mode of transport. Working under the faulty assumption that more car traffic would improve business, planners and engineers have systematically made our streets more dangerous and less livable. As a result, even the idea that a street could truly be a “place” – a shared space for human interaction and play – has been almost completely destroyed."

This website is on our Encinitas traffic engineers should be forced to use as a tutorial until they lose the 1950's traffic myths.   Streetfilms has . . .

"done over 450 Streetfilms in nearly 6 years!  We've been a lot of places. We've explored a lot of ideas. We've interviewed the top world experts in the transportation & livable streets realm."

Update: 3:20 pm The correct video has been embedded.  Apologies for the oversight.

Beware Polarizing

Don’t let anyone tell you there is only one way or only two ways of viewing something going on in our fair city (not even bloggers). People arrive at their worldviews through their experiences and information sources and the ever publicized 'gut.' Seldom are things simply black and white because we live in a sea of greys.

In order to build real community for Encinitas, these disparate worldviews need to be addressed if we are to connect the dots of really large issues of living our lives and local government issues. It could take years if we did it with real leadership and community involvement. For now we’ll need to seek where we can find alignments for some immediate sense of victory and hope.

One thing has aligned our community and gives us immediate hopeful anticipation. That's a fervent belief that our Mayor Stocks and this majority rule needs to end with this 2012 election. Encinitas Undercover blog, tongue in cheek called this Jerome Stocks unites Encinitas showing the growing number of cars with the Dump Stocks bumper stickers.

Less clear cut has been the General Plan Update process. ERAC (erase) in particular has been a hotbed of divisive energy from the deliberately accusatory onset. Everything about the forming, the application process without proper vetting or criteria, the completely non-transparent, non-public approach to member selection, the ‘volunteer’ facilitator running all of the ERAC meetings (and upcoming open houses, workshops) and the dubious weight that will be given any ‘findings’ of this group sends to the council majority should give us pause.  These are clear warning signs that the process, the motives and the goals demand scrutiny and conversations, lots of communication and more disclosure.

 

Bridging differences is extremely hard work. For those more interested in being elected than in governing it gets much simpler - especially with a great deal of outside funding. This is important because it has always been the offensive moves of this council majority to pit neighbor against neighbor, business against environment, community against community to create division. In the past the big discord delivery system was the Hall Property. Via distortion, omission and outright lies throughout his campaign, Stocks painted his election opponents as anti-sports, anti-park. His majority council member colleagues did the same. In past campaigns he also claimed anti-business and improper FPPC smears against Maggie Houlihan. Fear, division and claiming success for others' accomplishments have worked well for the mayor.

Wednesday night, April 18 Stocks has scheduled a state of the city speech. I suspect we’ll see what will provide the 2012 official gimmick with its capacity for creating polarity and distrust for his campaign assault. I predict GPU, with ERAC (erase) specifically as the savior for all prosperity. You can be sure the unfunded pension liability will not be addressed honestly. Expect blaming for screw ups, great photos and fantasy deadlines for, Hall Property, Moonlight, Santa Fe underpass and Leucadia Streetscape. Oh, maybe he'll figure a way to shoehorn his greenishness with his electric car, home solar panels; plus he'll claim the future electric charging station and farmers market as his self-promoted green badge.

Let’s not let the Stocks campaign propaganda talking points or the General Plan Update misinformation, including nationally funded conspiracy theories, our local provocateurs or our divisive deputy mayor split our communities. What could be more divisive than having each open house pick where the big density numbers should be located? That begs for people to revert to their worst natures. I hope that we can show this council majority and the city staff and facilitator Norby that we want a united community, despite our different worldviews and our varied community characteristics.

Yelling at New Encinitas Citizen: Walmart & Strip Clubs