Stress in Encinitas

We have owned a condominium in Leucadia for 15 years and this is our first letter to any newspaper. We are concerned about the future of our community, which before 1986 was a relaxed, pleasant beach town where everyone wanted to live. Post-incorporation, it has become a stressed-out, wasteful, bureaucratic nightmare people want to move out of.

No matter who we elect and what exalted promises they make, our tax dollars continue to be squandered. Instead of being directed toward the public good, our money goes to promoting an inappropriately large bureaucracy smacking of an empire-building public administrator whose ambitions are supported by a naive council wanting only to be loved. Our money goes also toward the on-going litigation of squabbles all over Encinitas, in part brought about by the poor legal advice of our city attorney. It goes to all those consultants who, given the already quite adequate though pampered staff, shouldn’t be necessary. Given the marginal performance at city hall, however, perhaps it is the wiser choice to bring in contract professionals to do their jobs.

Until moments before this summer’s filing, Councilwomen Gail Hano and Pam Slater regularly favored big spending such as the opportunistic, ill-conceived “Safe Route to School,” a public works boondoggle in our rural-flavored neighborhood that with all costs factored in, must be costing Encinitas taxpayers nearly $1 million. This $1 million should have been used to pave Rainbow Ridge Road at the east perimeter of Capri School--in a disgraceful state--or repair those hundreds of very large and dangerous potholes and dips on heavily traveled Vulcan Avenue, etc.

We need to elect knowledgeable, experienced council members with the fortitude and determination to make real changes at the administrative, judicial and legislative levels in Encinitas.

PATRICK and DORIS WORDEN, Leucadia