Shaffer & Kranz Buy Local - Stocks & Muir Don't

Dennis Lees, whose campaign finance research findings a week ago caused a stir, chose to confront Jerome Stocks.

Stocks wrote a post at SD Rostra  that rewrote the UT endorsement and then commented on that post (can you say self-obsessed?) defending, complaining he was a victim, accusing and of course snarling true facts™ (not true facts).

Lees brings out a whole other dimension of Stocks dubious campaign finance behavior besides the previously documented outside donations:

"Talk about disconnected from the community. First off, historically, over 2/3rds of Stocks campaign donations came from outside of Encinitas. About 4/5ths came from from developers. Only about 1/5th of his donations came from Encinitas.

Second, let’s look at campaign expenditures. Stocks has spent only about 1/10th of his campaign expenditures’ expenditures in Encinitas (about $1,700). In contrast, over 4/5ths of Lisa Shaffer’s campaign expenditures have been in Encinitas (more than $29,000) and nearly 60% of Tony Kranz’s were spent in the city (more than $12,000). And the majority of their contributions are from Encinitas.

What does this say about who is in touch with the voters and businesses in Encinitas. Who supports Shaffer and Kranz? Who do they support? And who is in touch with the business and “voters” from outside the city?"

The Buy Local logo is from the city website.  You would think that incumbent council members would have attempted to do the right thing.  You would be wrong in this case.

When asked, Lisa Shaffer said that she would have liked to spend all of the donations in Encinitas, saying she only spent outside when nobody in town could provide the services.We have said this repeatedly all year long.  Our chosen candidates walk the talk.  

Stocks, Muir and Forrester don't even talk to the community (Mo Muir aside). Their campaigns are best characterized with the icon here.  

By the way, the big box stores are located here, but they are not local businesses. Shaffer discovered a local print shop that actually sent out all of the work, thereby negating the reasons for support spelled out below. It isn't about punishing businesses - as one of Stocks' troll patrol claims.  This is about strengthening businesses that live and invest in Encinitas.  This conversation needs to continue.  The current super majority have closed out these kinds of conversations and the public is hungry for them.

Top 10 Reasons to Support Locally Owned Businesses

1. Local Character and Prosperity
In an increasingly homogenized world, communities that preserve their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character have an economic advantage.

2. Community Well-Being
Locally owned businesses build strong communities by sustaining vibrant town centers, linking neighbors in a web of economic and social relationships, and contributing to local causes.

3. Local Decision-Making
Local ownership ensures that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions.

4. Keeping Dollars in the Local Economy
Compared to chain stores, locally owned businesses recycle a much larger share of their revenue back into the local economy, enriching the whole community.

5. Job and Wages
Locally owned businesses create more jobs locally and, in some sectors, provide better wages and benefits than chains do.

6. Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship fuels America’s economic innovation and prosperity, and serves as a key means for families to move out of low-wage jobs and into the middle class.

7. Public Benefits and Costs
Local stores in town centers require comparatively little infrastructure and make more efficient use of public services relative to big box stores and strip shopping malls.

8. Environmental Sustainability
Local stores help to sustain vibrant, compact, walkable town centers-which in turn are essential to reducing sprawl, automobile use, habitat loss, and air and water pollution.

9. Competition
A marketplace of tens of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term.

10. Product Diversity
A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based, not on a national sales plan, but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader range of product choices.

© Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

We Write Letters, We Blog, We Publish

Signs on steroids

Rachelle Collier, Leucadia

Each election cycle, our candidates put up signs to indicate endorsements. I would like to call attention to the fact that some candidates have what I call signs on steroids. 

But what is more telling than the size of the signs is their location. I have noticed that they are mostly on nursery land and empty lots. Now, anyone can put signs up to endorse their candidate. Tony Kranz and Lisa Shaffer signs are up throughout many neighborhoods in people’s yards. 

This tells me that the community of Encinitas endorses Tony and Lisa. The signs on steroids are on locations with the potential to develop. Anyone who pays attention to local politics knows that there is a disconnect with what neighborhoods want and what is being built in our fair city. No one can stop development and everyone wants business to thrive. 

We live in a very special place and development should fit the community character. We should not change our character to suit the development. There is a reason that most of us moved to this incredible place. If you value this unique area, please vote for Tony Kranz and Lisa Shaffer. 

We Blog

Around the same time this letter to the Coast News editor was posted, blogger Encinitas Undercover printed this picture that perfectly illustrated Rachelle's point with another version of this same essential story captured in a headline.  

Very good stuff.  The first comment was from a well informed local describing some history of this location.

"This property was owned by the Browns, who always supported Stocks, Bond, and Dalager. The property was sold to City Ventures and is zoned RR-1 (Rural Residential 1 house per acre). A call was made to City Ventures, who responded that the Browns still have the right to give permission for the signage."

For more go here . 

Wave signs, read blogs, write letters and talk to friends, because we are all educating our community one step at a time and bringing change. And, in the in-box we received the plea by the North Coast Current Online Publisher Roman S. Koenig via his point of view editorial at his own paper. Read the whole thing by all means.  The following is just a taste. We disagree strongly only with his recommendation on Encinitas Proposal K.  Please vote no.

We Publish News

Leave Jim Kydd alone. 

Some of you might find this statement surprising coming from the editorial director of the North Coast Current, especially those of you who have chosen to use recent coverage in this publication as a passive endorsement of typical Encinitas-style “hate politics.” I found it fascinating in the past couple of weeks how the Current, in its work to cover news and provide civil discourse, had cuffs and chains thrown at it for this town’s mud pit of rhetorical nonsense. 

[. . . ] 

This whole rhetorical battle over encinitaselection.com certainly has its amusing moments. The most amusing comes from an exchange in comments Oct. 27 between posters Jack Lane and Vikki St. Mary. 

Lane accused the “blog” North Coast Current of being part of a leftist conspiracy against Jim Kydd: “This latestest (sic) critique of Jim as a person and his publication is typical of the vitriol that come from the Left and its need to smear and define others.” To which St. Mary replied: “So there is a liberal media conspiracy against the liberal media?? You are confusing please explain.” 

St. Mary’s call is right on, although I would say our publications are ultimately more centrist (not to speak for Jim Kydd, though). 

The Coast News and North Coast Current are on the same page when it comes to Encinitas City Council endorsements. The Current, like Coast News, supports Lisa Shaffer and Tony Kranz, and does not support conservative incumbents Jerome Stocks and Mark Muir. However, the Current supports Propositions K and L, largely attributed to the council’s conservative majority. Much of the “vitriol,” as Lane puts it, is in the comment sections of the Current, Patch and blogs from supporters of conservative candidates such as Stocks. 

All of this goes right to St. Mary’s reply to Lane’s cliché interpretation of recent events. 

A leftist plot by one centrist publication against another? I think not. 

Roman S. Koenig is editorial director and publisher of the North Coast Current. Columns are the opinions of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of North Coast Current ownership.