W.C. Varones has been covering the Pacific View fiasco, and the recent commitment by the City of Encinitas to pay $10 million for it (even though the school district only asked $9.5 million).
Here is his most recent post about the community activists who supported the city’s purchase, but wondered if the $10M price was what they had in mind:
http://encinitasundercover.blogspot.com/2014/04/did-750-people-really-want-city-council.html
For a town that just blew an estimated $80 million to acquire, finance, and build a park next to the freeway, this additional expenditure will strain the coffers. But being a solutions kind of guy, I thought I’d outline an idea that could make everyone happy without losing $10 million of the taxpayers money:
Here is a comment from W.C.’s blog post that describes the history:
This entire fiasco goes back 20 years: the district trustees attended a seminar on how to turn ‘surplus’ district property into dollars. After identifying the sale of PV as their choice for district ”surplus’, the first thing they did was change the attendance boundaries to make it appear to laymen that the school attendance was plummeting. When Supt. Doug couldn’t close a deal, they retired him and went with Supt. Lane: they helped Lane out with a ‘developer’ consultant named Dee Snow whose husband, Bill Snow was on the Planning Commission: they also has Patrick Murphy and Peder Norby assigned to make a ‘deal’ happen: yes, Murphy and Norby were working for the City of Encinitas to help EUSD get around The Naylor Act and it was a reporter from the UT who had covered the Naylor Act being used in Del Mar who first brought the Naylor Act up in her news coverage.
Click here for full comment:
Dalager, who was Mayor at this time didn’t want any money being spent on PV that could be better spent on the Hall Property: hence the involvement of Norby and Murphy; so he and Stocks cooked up a plan to park city vehicles on the playing fields of the ‘surplus’ school that negated the Naylor Act.
Meanwhile, Houlihan and Barth were working with EUSD to negate the Naylor Act and ‘up-zone’ the property. It didn’t happen so Supt. Lane was given the heave-ho along with an angry Dee Snow. Oh, side-note, who led the EUSD committee to claim that PV was surplus? Leichstag’s Jim Farley.
Meanwhile, EUSD is out $3 mil so far in operation fees in trying to up-zone the property.
So, the EUSD Trustees double-down and after a lengthy Google-Search, they find a Supt. in Ojai that specializes in selling ‘Surplus’ school property and hire him. Supt. Tim. One step ahead of tar and feathers.
For 4 years Tim throws everything but the kitchen sink into the process until he seizes upon a last-ditch effort, a ‘faux’ auction.
Tick, tick, tick… and then the couch-potato that missed the limelighthe grew accustomed to from ‘saving’ our zip-code sees an opportunity for self-agrandizement and puts up a webite to ‘Save’ PV: several of the city council break almost every conceivable local and state law about back-room deals and Voila, Tony Kranz believes the long-con from Supt. Tim and panics, directing the city manager to agree to $10 mil in Magic Beans, wrongly assuming that the three of them (Kranz, Barth and Shaffer) will be greeted as ‘heroes’ rather than zeroes. You know what happens when you ‘assume’.
Few people disagree with the actual purchase of the property: that was evaluated and valued at $1.98 mil in 2009: who knows who’s brother-in-law appraised the toxic mess of PV at $7 mil, but no developer in their right mind was going to step up two weeks ago and offer $9.5 much less $10 mil.
The most painful joke is that almost the moment the ink is dry on this agreement for $10 mil: Supt, Tim is going to announce another Proposition to tax Encinitas property owners with another bond: crying poor-mouth. The most annoying part is that there is literally no prevailing authority to appeal the EUSD Trustees’ decisions: one of them lives in Lakeside and was recently the President of their local rotary. What? You assumed you had to live in Encinitas to serve as a trustee? See ‘assume’ above.
The city of Encinitas is only as strong as its weakest link: and this affair has clarified who and what that is, for all to see and recognize.
But hey, as long as we as a people are satisfied concentrating on spending a fortune to grow ‘organic’ vegetables on school property rather than try and stanch the plummeting skills of EUSD’s students: we will reap what we sow.
Roll away the stone.
I don’t know about your idea Jim. Seems like that school parcel is pretty steep with retaining walls on three sides. Your house parcels may have an issue with street access. Did you take elevation into consideration in your plan?
Yes, nothing a D-8 can’t fix.
A staggered site would help a little with privacy or if implemented the horseshoe might spin 180 degrees for better access to the community lot.
Selling part of the real estate should be one of the choices, but watch – the city council will make it all or nothing.
Hi Jim. Longtime on-again-off-again reader and fan of your blog. Also a big fan of the park and looking forward to it opening. Question: when people ask how much a house costs, do you include the financing costs in your answer? Or how much it costs to maintain every year, especially when that cost is still unknown? No? Then why do so when talking about the park. The park cost approximately $40mil for the land purchase and the construction. It is a few persistent and vocal park-haters on Encinitas Undercover who quote the $80mil price. It is because of the neighbor’s opposition to the park that even after its constructed, it still won’t get used to its potential and thus won’t serve the city as well as it should considering the cost. It will still have no lighted fields and so fall and winter sports will still be limited to daylight hours. That it won’t have at least one lighted field is what really blows.
That’s insulting.
Yes I talk about the total cost of homeonwership. And homeownership is a voluntary choice.
The Encinitas taxpayers were sold out by its councilmembers, who were unscrupulous at best. It is the snaky path they took to procure the park that makes people cringe, and if it is obvious that it will be under-utilized, then why did they persist?
How do they spend $40 million and not get a lighted field? The location is terrible – and at best it is a Cardiff park, with very few taxpayers who live east of I-5 and north of Encinitas Blvd. using it.
Thanks for the link!
Actually, the locals’ complaint about the sports park is kind of the opposite. The Cardiff neighbors don’t want the noise and traffic, and the Encinitas taxpayers don’t want to pay the full tab for regional (i.e. Carlsbad leagues) sports fields.