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Commentary: Development, Measure K and Bruce Ehlers

By Cindy Cremona

“A half-truth is a whole lie.” – Yiddish Proverb

During contentious elections, opposing sides can turn up the rhetoric to help their candidates get elected. Often, the truth gets lost in the heat of conflict. Lately, I’ve read a few opinion pieces here that are such blatant falsehoods I felt compelled to set the record straight.

Measure K: The proposed one-cent tax increase. There is nowhere in this measure that guarantees the funds received from this tax increase will go solely toward infrastructure. The mayor and supporters of the measure claim it will, but if it isn’t explicitly built into the language, the Encinitas City Council and future councils can spend the revenue any way they want for the next ten years. Read the measure.

Development and Bruce Ehlers: Claims by Tony Kranz and his campaign that we have paid millions of dollars in lawsuits filed by the state are blatantly untrue. The state has never sued Encinitas for being out of housing compliance. We were sued by the Building Industry Association and a developer, which resulted in far less than a million dollars in legal fees.

Bruce Ehlers has never claimed he would break the law if elected. He has stated that he will defend Encinitas’s rights to have local land use control from the state and join other cities standing up to state requirements to build density housing (without state funding or requiring infrastructure upgrades).

Bruce Ehlers certainly will not and has not ignored state laws. In fact, as a former planning commissioner, he knows the laws better than most.

Bruce will find reasonable sites for future development and work toward increasing the percentage of affordable units per project, further enriching our affordable housing pool. He will plan ahead and budget appropriately for infrastructure needs, as is required in our city charter, to accommodate more density.

This all goes back to budgeting and prioritizing needs over wants. Right now, Encinitas has many needs, such as road maintenance, infrastructure upgrades to accommodate the thousands of units anticipated with approved and upcoming housing developments, flooding mitigation and safe and quiet rail crossings.

The money spent on the wants, such as Pacific View and Streetscape, would have been better spent on priorities like flooding, roads and rail crossings first. It takes a mindful mayor to live within their city’s means.

It should concern all voters that a mayor who can’t budget within his city’s means is asking the residents to vote for a 14% increase in taxes while being disingenuous about how it will be spent.

I recommend a NO vote on Measure K. We must live within our budgets, as should our mayor and city leadership. Vote Bruce Ehlers for mayor.

Cindy Cremona is an Encinitas resident.

1 comment

steve333 October 13, 2024 at 1:04 pm

Agree 100% with this commentary.
Also, Luke Shaffer for D1. Jim O’Hara for D2

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