Only twenty business days were allowed for Requests For Proposals by non-profits. More time should have been allowed to solicit more proposals. Moreover, the proposals were to be from non-profits, NOT a non-profit operating in partnership with a for-profit developer, who would provide the actual escrow deposit and a large portion of the financing, to purchase, based on his buying off a portion of the land for twin-home, MULTIPLE UNIT DEVELOPMENT, NOT single family homes.

The reason the Art Pulse-DeWald proposal is being “pushed” by April Game and her supporters who don’t understand or care about the implications of privatization is because her organization supposedly had “cash on hand,” and deep pocket backers. While Art Pulse did have a large donor, Henry Moon, in the past, there’s no evidence he could provide more funding, and as Coast News points out, Art Pulse has been operating at a deficit since it was apparently formed as a “non-profit” in 2008. So Art Pulse’s financial stability was also exaggerated, another “switch.”

The RFP asked for proposals in the same zoning classification that the surplus school site now has, public/semi-public. It’s important that the donated land, our irreplaceable asset, and part of our community heritage, should remain in the public domain, by retaining the public/semi-public zoning. We don’t want the zoning to be changed to mixed use, under the pretense of creating an entirely new zoning classification, which would require a great deal of the City staff’s resources, processing an application for amending the General and Specific Plans, doing a complete Environmental Impact Report, appealable to the Coastal Commission, also determining if a public vote would be required.

While an Community Art Center could be a public benefit, it should be built, as envisioned by Council, particularly Maggie Houlihan and Teresa Barth in August of last year, about one month before Councilmember Maggie Houlihan’s tragic death, in the same public/semi-public zoning. Both Maggie and Councilmember Barth had also asked for an independent appraisal of the property, in part, so it could be determined if the Naylor Act did apply, tolling from when the school was initially closed down, in 2003, and leased to the City of Encinitas from 2003-2005 for a temporary public works yard.

When the City leased the land for a public works yard, making a parking lot over the playing fields, that was the time when EUSD should have formally declared the land surplus school property, when an appraisal should have been done, and 30% of the site, or .84 acre should have been offered for 25% of its appraised value FOR OPEN SPACE! Both EUSD and the City have skirted this issue, yet EUSD sued the city using a related part of our State Education Code, which says the City should rezone property so that it is compatible with or consistent with the zoning of surrounding properties.

The public/semi-public zoning WAS COMPATIBLE and consistent with surrounding properties in the current Specific Plan, as Maggie well understood. Further, she researched and determined that surrounding or adjacent does not necessarily mean contiguous. In other words, the property does not have to have identical zoning to residential properties bordering or touching the Pacific View site.

So there is a great deal of pretense going on in the current proposal. Should the zoning be changed and Art Pulse and/or DeWald drop out of Escrow, there would be no going back. Once the zoning is changed, EUSD could keep the $300,000 escrow deposit, take back the land, and get another developer to take on a new mixed use category development.

A mixed use zoning classification would allow the proposed single residential lots to be developed as a “strip mall” style development, with offices and retail stores, as already planned for the main structure(s) of the so-called mixed-use art center. If a new zoning category were set up to appease developers and please those putting short-term gain before the public’s long term interest in retaining an irreplaceable asset in the public domain, it would be a real shame, and would be a great disservice to the public.

We won’t be fooled by the pretense, by the bait and switch tactics being employed by an out of town art organization that has no history of running an art center, nor has demonstrated the financial stability to do so. We do support a true community art center, in the public domain, not over-building and privatizing in the name of short-term profit and the personal ambitions of EUSD Superintendent Timothy Baird, only in Encinitas since 2009.

Baird left Ojai Unified School District in 2008, after he unsuccessfully tried to develop a so-called “art center/strip mall” in Ojai, on surplus school land, which had been promised to the community for a skate park. Despite Baird’s machinations, the skate park was finally built, after he left OUSD to come to EUSD at more than $65,000 per year more, making over $200,000 per year, here. He recently was given a contract renewal by EUSD.

Council was wise not to be leveraged by the bogus EUSD lawsuit. At the next public hearing on the Pacific View matter, Council should politely decline to direct staff to begin the long, drawn out and expensive process of creating a new zoning classification. Council unanimously turned down changing the zoning to mixed use in November of 2010!