A Vote of Confidence for Beleaguered Encinitas

Stand back. I’m going to commit heresy.

I’m going to suggest that the Encinitas City Council has done a commendable job in trying to cope with the vexing, probably unsolvable problem of Latino migrants living in illegal encampments near “affluent” housing.

It’s not that I think the council is doing the right thing. I’ve lived in Encinitas since 1981 and I’m still not sure what the right thing is.

After all, journalists are not paid to solve problems but only to point them out--in the manner of a motorist honking at a traffic jam.

Remember that Encinitas as a city is only 4 years old. Before 1986, its role model for local government was the Board of Supervisors; that’s like trying to learn basketball from watching the league’s most inept team.

A few years ago I asked a political consultant to assess the performance of a freshly elected San Diego council member.

“Not bad so far,” he said, “but let’s see how he handles his first real crisis.”

By crisis the consultant meant a volatile “vote-determinative” issue, with passions inflamed on opposing sides, lawsuits at the ready, the press demanding action and no answers in sight.

By those standards, the Encinitas council has been in a state of crisis since the day it formed. The result has been a rolling seminar on self-governance.

While Del Mar discusses how to retain Amtrak service, and Rancho Santa Fe squabbles over a playing field, Encinitas has had to deal with a problem whose origins are in the grinding poverty of the Third World.

It strikes me that the Encinitas council has managed, sometimes rather fitfully, to hew to a rather moderate, deliberative approach, surprisingly so given the clamor by both homeowners and advocates for the migrants.

You need only look to Orange County for extreme approaches: Sanctuary from the Border Patrol in one area, ordering sheriff’s deputies to arrest migrants in another.

There have been cases of Encinitas council members playing to the crowd (or to the editorial pages), of being obstinate, and of seeming to be interested primarily in squelching an opponent. All of this and a yard more.

When these qualities disappear, we’ll know we’ve achieved government by robot. The style has been awkward, but the substance has been careful.

The council called for landowners to clean up the illegal camps, but it also opened a hiring hall for those migrants who are in the country legally.

Recently the divided council hired unarmed security guards for a plot of public land, but it also said some camps may be allowed on private property if basic sanitation can be provided.

Not that any of this will work. It may actually make things worse for all concerned.

But moderation under political pressure should be worth a few points.

Part of the pressure comes from fending off allegations of racism. Smarter observers than I have noted that an easy accusation whenever Anglos start talking about crime is that they’re overreacting and probably racist.

Let’s be honest about it: The press is on the prowl for racism in Encinitas.

The problem comes in gathering evidence. The language used by Encinitas homeowners and council members is classic NIMBY, not racial.

If there is unspoken racism in the hearts of council members and my fellow homeowners, I don’t feel I’m qualified to diagnose it, and I don’t know any journalists who are qualified.

The Encinitas Blade-Citizen, honking at the traffic jam, editorialized that Encinitas is getting a racist reputation. It didn’t address whether such a reputation is justified or just a slur.

The Encinitas Coast-Dispatch, also critical of the council in the past, reviewed much of the same evidence and complimented the citizenry and council on maintaining civility under duress.

Maybe the Coast-Dispatch editorial writer is a heretic, too.

Tough Taskmaster

The (Escondido) Times Advocate was one of three runners-up last week for a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism for its coverage of an Escondido mailman’s homicidal rampage and then follow-up stories on mismanagement and onerous working conditions at the Post Office.

Editor Richard Petersen was pleased but wanted to keep his eyes on the real prize.

There was no champagne in the newsroom. No bubbly until the T-A actually wins a Pulitzer, Petersen said.