Encinitas May Give City Seal a New Look : Aesthetics: Officials are tired of taking abuse over the myriad images in the city’s logo. Especially that horse.

Marlon Brando would not be amused.

The city of Encinitas is sponsoring a $500 contest to design a new city seal because officials believe that the existing logo, featuring such images as a sea gull, sunset, poinsettia and prominent horse’s head, is too cluttered.

None of the images, however--each of which represents an aspect of life in the city--has taken more shots than the horse, which, along with the others, adorns city stationery, business cards and public vehicles.

Said Councilwoman Gail Hano: “It’s like ‘The Godfather’ all over again.”

She was referring to a scene in both the book, written by Mario Puzo, and the movie, starring Brando, in which mobsters leave a bloodied horse’s head in the bed of a Hollywood producer who would not cooperate with their dictates.

Councilwoman Anne Omsted said she has grown tired of hearing the jokes and snide remarks about the seal. Especially the horse.

“Frankly, it bothers me that people associate Encinitas with a stupid movie,” she said. “We’re a decent, law-abiding community and we just don’t need people associating us with ‘The Godfather.’

“I’ve heard the comments about Encinitas and the amusing movie image. And if someone says that to my face, who knows what they’re saying to others.”

City Council members argue that now is the perfect time to change the seal, which was the result of another public contest conducted shortly after the city incorporated in 1986.

This fall, city officials are moving into a new civic center complex near downtown. With a new address, they say, the city stationery will need alterations.

Officials have solicited suggestions from a handful of local artists and others to either design a new seal or simplify the old one--with the winner receiving $500 for the effort.

“It’s the perfect opportunity to make the change. Never again will we run out of letterhead simultaneously,” Omsted said. “But more than that, this is a vision thing. Companies like Coca-Cola spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to upgrade their image.

“We’re just a little city but we’ve got an image to uphold, too. And we’re only spending $500 to do it.”

Initially, however, the city staff had suggested that council authorize $7,500 to hire a consultant to design a new logo--until local activist Pat Rudolph suggested the city hold a contest and take advantage of local artistic talent.

Rudolph said most residents are in agreement that the seal needs some kind of overhaul--but at the proper cost.

“I love horses more than I do people, but that horse’s head just juts right out--it’s just totally out of context,” she said. “But we’re supposed to be so gigantically poor. There’s lots of other things the city needs to be concerned about. So to spend a lot of money on this thing is just a dumb idea.”

While she backs the design change, Hano said she doesn’t want the city to leap into spending money to wipe the horse’s image off city-owned trucks and other places now adorned by the logo.

“If you’re looking to change all the vehicles and badges right off the bat, that will run into thousands and thousands of dollars,” she said. “I’m not into that. I say do it as each truck runs out. When you buy a new one, slap on the new seal.”

But at least one resident is no fan of the new wave in seal design. Former Councilwoman Marjorie Gaines was instrumental in adding the horse’s image to the seal.

“It’s like this was some important issue to them,” she said of the present council. “It’s just one council trying to undo what the one before it had done. It’s petty and it’s silly--the product of a petty mind.”

But Mayor Maura Wiegand explained that, along with the problem of the horse, the present seal just has too many elements.

“I’ve counted them--there’s 11 different elements, counting the grass, cliffs, wave, sun lines in the sky,” she said. “When the seal is reproduced, you can’t even tell what it is. It just doesn’t function as a design form.”

And another thing, city officials argue: The horse population in Olivenhain, the community represented by the horse, has dropped in recent years--making the image obsolete.

“The area just isn’t as rural as it used to be,” Hano said. “It’s time for something new.”

Meanwhile, as the suggestions begin to roll in, city officials are dreaming of a new logo that accurately captures the new Encinitas.

“I think that anything will be an improvement,” Hano said. “I mean, the present seal has a sea gull. I don’t want a sea gull as the city bird. Give me a heron or a gnatcatcher, but not a sea gull.”