OPINION
SEASIDECOURIER.COM — AUGUST 2014
13
COMMENTARY
Failing Encinitas taxpayers - again Thomas K.
Arnold
Seaside Courier
I
t boggles the mind, truly. In government, you rarely get the chance for a do-over. You live with your mistakes. But when the Encinitas City Council was presented with the rare opportunity to renegotiate its sky-high purchase price for the abandoned Pacific View Elementary School site in light of a new “due diligence” report that found serious problems with the property – including a huge sinkhole, buildings loaded with asbestos and soil contaminated with petroleum – the council majority stubbornly stuck to its guns and refused to even consider asking the school district for a break. That makes absolutely no sense. If you agree to buy a house for a certain amount of money and a subsequent inspection finds a crack in the foundation or a leak in the roof, you’re going to go back to the owner and renegotiate the price – unless there are other potential buyers lined up and you’re afraid of losing the house. That’s hardly the case with Pacific View, which the city never should have purchased in the first place, much less for $10 million – money the city doesn’t have, particularly in light of costly infrastructure repairs that need to be addressed sooner rather than later. Not only was the purchase price twice what the city initially offered, it was also higher than the most optimistic projection school officials were hoping to get for the property through an auction. Talk of putting the property up for bid triggered a small but vocal public protest to keep the property out of the hands of developers and preserve it forever and ever as a park – prompting the council majority to step in at the last minute with a ridiculous offer that undoubtedly made school officials giddy with delight. But public pressure should
never be the primary influencer on public policy. And in this case, the council made a costly mistake, buying what critics warned was a white elephant with taxpayer money the city didn’t have. As we noted at the time, the city of Encinitas’ operating budget for the current year forecasts a tiny surplus of just $2.6 million, about a fourth of what it will cost the city just to buy the school site. Turning the property into a park will cost many millions more – and now comes a “due diligence” report that finds serious problems with the site. The buildings are infested with asbestos, which the city needs to clean up. There’s a big sinkhole on the property. The soil is contaminated with petroleum. And 10 percent of the land is unusable because of an adjacent access road to homes. If the city couldn’t outright rescind its offer, the least it could do was head back to the negotiating table, as Mayor Kristin Gaspar and Councilman Mark Muir suggested. But the ruling trio of Teresa Barth, Tony Kranz and Lisa Shaffer would have none of that, and instead voted to push through with a bond sale - seeking $13 million for the school purchase and construction of a lifeguard tower at Moonlight Beach - with no price reduction. This bond sale will cost Encinitas up to $750,000 a year for the next 30 years, or a total of $22.5 million. Meanwhile, deferred infrastructure maintenance – such as fixing potholes and cracked sidewalks – is going to cost the city at least $25 million, according to a report that came to the council just before the March vote to buy Pacific View. That report triggered talk among council members of putting a major sales-tax increase on the ballot. But hey, tax-and-spend appears to be a mantra for some politicians. Give the people what they think they want now – and let the next generation of leaders deal with the wreckage that’s inevitably going to follow.
CARTOON Editorial / Opinion
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