Encinitas Officials Weary of Gripes

Warren Shafer says he’s no Wizard of Oz.

The Encinitas city manager bristles at the suggestion that he’s the little man with the larger-than-life voice, hidden behind the curtain and working the whistles, bells and pulleys for the supposedly all-powerful City Council.

Instead, he sees himself as a dutiful bureaucrat who’s grown tired of all the back-stabbers and armchair quarterbacks who question his every move, saying he’s the real political powerhouse around town, a conniving insider with the city’s decision-makers in his back pocket.

It’s King Warren, they say, and his loyal cast of City Council followers.

Shafer, a bookish man of 45 who has held the city manager’s job since Encinitas incorporated in 1986, says low blows come with the turf.

After all, his grandfather told him it would be like this.

“He always warned me this business would be tough,” Shafer said. “He said the job involved always saying no to somebody. And people don’t like to be told no. They get angry. I think that’s why a lot act the way they do.”

For Encinitas politicians and even city staff members like Shafer, these have been the unkindest days anyone can remember. All around the North County beach town, residents are lampooning their city’s leadership.

Shafer and several of his recent decisions--from the development of local parks and eminent-domain issues to the much-maligned purchase of a new City Hall--have become the bull’s-eye of many political targetings, the butt of jokes, the focus of anger.

And, if Shafer is indeed seen as the king, some of the citizenry is now calling for his head.

“Lord knows, we’re not asking for much,” said Pat Rudolph, a local activist and founder of the Cardiff Town Council, a political watchdog group. “Just get rid of Warren Shafer and cut the (121-strong) city staff by at least one fourth. That’s all.”

In an election year, when two council seats are up for grabs, no one is escaping the harsh bite of public criticism. Perhaps following trends in both Sacramento and Washington, local candidates hungry for attention are whipping voters into a pre-Election Day frenzy, often portraying local powers-that-be as unresponsive to citizen needs.

They say there is no shortage of City Hall snafus:

* Like when the city spent $12 million to purchase a 30-year-old building for a new City Hall complex, without first calculating the additional millions that would be needed for roof replacement, asbestos repair and fumigation.

* Like when the council voted to spend more than $100,000 on furniture for its new complex, including plush leather chairs for politicians and an $1,800 coffee table for the lobby.

* Like how the city spends hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on what some have called needless studies and consultants.

* Like eminent-domain issues such as the city’s “Safe Route to Schools” program in which it constructed sidewalks but eliminated much-needed parking.

* Like when the council gave Shafer power to allow several beachside homeowners to use riprap to shore up their homes but clutter a huge swath of public beach right of way.

Yes, people are talking about a revolution in Encinitas--at the gas station and the grocery stores, at the health spas and at the beach. Even in church.

“The talk is all over town,” Cardiff resident Bob Bonde said. “I’m a dog walker, and so, three times a day I’m out, hearing what’s on people’s minds. When you talk to people in Encinitas, the conversation inevitably ends up centering on what a mess this city is in and the people who are responsible for that.”

People are also writing letters to vent their spleens. In recent weeks, local newspapers have been filled with sarcasm from the pens and typewriters of local residents. Some of the missives have been personal attacks on local politicians. Others have blasted purported pet projects.

Still others have questioned the quality of life in the city of 55,000, expressing doubts about the direction that the current batch of politicians is leading the developing municipality that incorporated six years as ago as a way to take control away from the county bureaucrats who were calling the shots.

“It’s sad to see the changes happen in the place we all had such high hopes for,” said ex-Councilwoman Marjorie Gaines, a former public lightning rod who still gets calls at home from disenchanted citizens.

“When we first became a city, everyone had such a fresh and unbiased outlook,” she said. “The politicians weren’t interested in politics or in the political process. We all just wanted to build the best community that we could. Now all that has changed. The developers are moving in, as well as others with axes to grind.”

Some of the published letters are sad in tone, others downright angry.

“We have owned a condominium in Leucadia for 15 years and this is our first letter to any newspaper, (but) we feel we must now speak out for the record,” Patrick and Doris Worden wrote The Times. “We are concerned about the future of our community, which before 1986 was a relaxed, pleasant beach town everyone wanted to move to .

“Post-incorporation, it has become a stressed-out, wasteful, bureaucratic nightmare people want to move from . No matter whom we elect and what exalted promises they make, our tax dollars continue to be squandered.”

The letter goes on to swipe at Shafer.

“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 so genuinely supported by a naive council wanting only to be loved.”

Another letter, written by a man who has the same name as a council member, said he was tired of being attacked in public by people claiming he has failed to keep his campaign promises.

“The people who talk to me are not the community activists, since they would know the real John Davis,” wrote a man identifying himself as J. Davis. “They are just plain folks who feel they are not represented.”

Several Encinitas politicians say, however, that they smell a conspiracy in many of the letters.

Many are fakes, they claim, ghost-written by campaign election committees or other interested groups, but signed by local residents. Shafer, for example, said his office has tried to contact several letter writers to clarify a claim, only to discover that no such person lives at the published address.

“Many of these letters are orchestrated, there’s no doubt about that,” Gaines said. “If you’ve lived in this town long enough, it’s crystal clear from reading the letters that they’ve been edited, planted by some interest group. And you can usually tell which ones.

“This is normally a tactic reserved for bigger-city politics,” she said. “But now it’s come to Encinitas. And it turns my stomach.”

Councilwoman Gail Hano, who is running for reelection, has also been targeted in the letters-to-the-editor sections of local newspapers.

“Some of these letters,” she said, “at best they’re bizarre and at worst they’re off-base in a disturbed way. If someone is really concerned, it’s a lot easier to call City Hall and get answers than writing some letter.

“But some of these people don’t want the truth. Some of the letters are candidate plants. I don’t read the garbage. But my husband goes through them.”

One recent letter really upset her with its bitterness.

“If I do something wrong, something people don’t like, then, as an elected politician, I guess they’re entitled to take me to the carpet. But, when they make up wild stories, I just don’t want to read it. I’m getting letters from this woman. I don’t know who she is, but she really sounds bitter.”

Bonde, a Cardiff activist, says the letters reflect a groundswell of unrest by voters who are tired of being short-shrifted by their council. They have complaints about everything from the size of the city staff to the allegedly careless way the city hires consultants.

“We’ve spent the inheritance of this city not on the public good but on an over-bloated city staff,” he said. “We’ve squandered it on studies and attorneys and staff boondoggles.”

For his part, Shafer says studies show that Encinitas has one of the smallest staffs among California cities of its size. And, although city officials acknowledge that they do spend significantly on consultants, he claims they’re worth every penny.

As far as the new City Hall goes, Shafer says he wasn’t at all blindsided. Officials had counted all along on some hidden costs, he said, and had created a fund for just such purposes.

But spending isn’t the only problem the locals have with their leaders.

Many residents have complained of rude treatment in the council chambers during meetings, when politicians are supposedly quick to bang their gavels the second each three-minute public speech forum ends. Some citizens say the council doesn’t listen, anyway.

“The council is just not dealing in good faith with the people who live in this city,” said Encinitas resident John Stubstad, who says he has attended many meetings. “They don’t really want voter input, it’s all just too irritating for them.

“They close themselves off to make their little decisions without the annoying presence of the people who put them in office, preferring the hovering attention of city staffers.”

Councilwoman Anne Omsted, who is stepping down in November after six years in office, says she is tired of such talk from people she refers to as troublemakers.

“I don’t know,” she said of the critics, “if they just don’t have anything better to do with their lives.”

Omsted said the city has seen numerous successes since incorporation, such as better-maintained roads, more beach access, more police protection, more parks. And the city still has more than $7 million in budget reserves, she said.

If Encinitas were a company, she said, it would be one of the few operating in the black.

“You hear two different messages in this town,” Omsted said. “There’s the people I call the city groupies, who go around warning that the sky is falling, that the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket, beginning with Encinitas.

“And then there are the majority of people who are just thrilled to death to live here. So you tell me--who are you going to listen to?”

Omsted says she is also tired of the impression that the council is a rubber stamp for the wants of the city manager--especially the idea that she, without fail, would follow the advice of the city staff without her own consideration.

“That’s just another fantasy that people who are unhappy with our decisions would like to believe,” she said. “Anyone who comes to those meetings knows that the council doesn’t agree with Warren as much as people say.

“But, on the other hand, you don’t go out and hire a professional city manager and then disregard his advice on a regular basis. If the advice is good, I’m willing to listen, no matter where it comes from.”

Meanwhile, as the seeming tide of no confidence continues, Shafer attributes the ill will to a national trend of unhappiness with government at any level.

An Oceanside native and son of a Marine, Shafer said he was initially attracted to Encinitas because of its beauty and because people took pride in their politics. In the arena of community development, for example, Encinitas is the only city in the state with both a Planning Commission and individual community action boards to oversee development.

“To these people who always sit quietly until a decision is made and then jump up with usually uninformed criticism, I say: ‘What is your vision? What would you envision for the community? And why don’t you come forth with your ideas?’ ”

Standing at the brand-new access to Swami’s Beach--a project of which Shafer is particularly proud--he says he wants to see Encinitans work together so politics in his town won’t have the same nasty vitriol as Oceanside or Del Mar.

Until that day comes, though, Shafer says he won’t bother reading all those ugly and sometimes painful letters to the editor. That is, unless his mother calls.

“My mom still lives in Oceanside and she reads those letters,” he said. “Often, I have to explain to her about local politics. Still, she feels that a lot of my critics go over the line.

“And I tend to agree with her.”