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.