In Party Planning, Future Planning, the City Approach is ‘Rich’

Last April, the New Encinitas Business Network was invited to attend the City’s Cultural Tourism Committee meeting by the inimitable Jim Gilliam because the subject of the monthly meeting was The Upcoming 25th Anniversary celebration and Jim asked me, “Why not invite the other half of the City over the hill?

It was our pleasure and we were impressed by the standing room only attendance.

The ‘tentative plan’ for the ‘Celebration’ was to ask the Encinitas City Council for $30K and when I heard that I almost fell off my chair.

Being the only attendee that represented a group that did not take money from the City (We would best be described as a pro-profit, the opposite of a non-profit) and/or the County, I believe I might have viewed the $30,000 much differently from the others around the table in the Poinsettia Room.

I raised my hand and asked exactly ‘what’ that much money would be spent on? The answer was a free ‘box lunch’ for several thousand people and to pay a band or two.

Much like recent news stories about the Network bird-dogging the City Planning Staff and Berkeley-based vendors over designing a new General Plan our Network’s approach to governance in Encinitas is from decidedly different perspective; everything should pay for itself; even ‘Celebrations’.

WE host a party every month that we call a Sundowner that pays for itself and know a thing or two about producing successful events.

It’s NOT that hard to plan and execute an event that pays for itself; much of what is necessary is what we called down home ‘want-to’.

NOTE: This news just in; bureaucrats do not appreciate you questioning their judgment or expenditures; but there IS a similarity between the party planning for our 25th Anniversary Celebration and the planning/approach to the new General Plan 2035, neither assignment (event and document) took into account investment and profitability. Oh, there is plenty of lip service about fiscal prudence, but most of the Staff doesn’t even have a solid proforma from running a profitable lemonade stand, much less a $40 million dollar budget. But I digress.

The Network designs all our events to pay for themselves and even, with hope, make some money off a party. Is there a problem?

One of the reasons the ‘tentative plan’ was so expensive was that it was being held at Cottonwood Creek Park, which is a wonderful place, but one that is not rife with parking.

The ‘tentative plan’ called for trams, busing and a plethora of extremely expensive peace officers to direct traffic.

After querying the other representatives around the table about when and where they were holding their events over the Fall, I found myself drawn to the intelligent new Director of the San Dieguito Heritage Museum director as he described the plans for the ‘Lima Bean Festival’ on Saturday, October 1, 2011. It sounded like he was trying to make a profit off his event!

DOUBLE-MINT! Suddenly my thoughts went ‘double-mint’ I thought, “Two! Two! Two events in one!?

Impulsively, I asked if he would mind if there were 5000 people joining him for his festival instead of 500?

“What if we move the event to the first day of October and hold the 25th Celebration in conjunction with the Lima Bean Festival?” I asked.

“Why would we do that?” Someone not Staff responded curtly.

“First of all, it is a much better date. Secondly, I’ll bet if you ask real nice the school district will allow you to park 10,000 cars on their 10 acres across the street from the Heritage Museum; Thirdly, because there is actually parking, paying a deputy $900 for the day to direct traffic, along with his four brethren will save the city $5000 out of the budget; and finally, for an event like this 25th Anniversary, I can get you five really good Encinitas bands, in fact, a coupla them might even pay you to play.”

“Anything else?” Someone not Staff sniffed.

“Yeah, I don’t know if anyone ever mentioned this to you but ‘there is no such thing as a ‘free lunch’, especially in this town. Let’s bring in some food vendors and let them handle the food and pay a percentage to Will Neblett’s group to underwrite the event and everybody is happy.”

“Is that so? Everybody is happy” Someone not Staff sniffed again.

“Well, look, that’s the way we would do it in the private sector; throwing away taxpayer money because you’ve chose a site for an event with no parking, a site that requires you to spend a half of your budget on trams and deputies to direct them might endear you to the deputies socking away ‘Overtime’ in their Christmas Club bank account, but I can tell you for a fact; the Encinitas City Council will like passing a resolution to spend 5 or 6 grand on a party than $30,000.”

And much to someone’s (Not Staff) surprise, when the ‘new place, new date’ idea was vetted, it was unanimously approved that the changes should be embraced.

Not approaching an event with your hat in your hand is very ‘freeing’ creatively. Not having any skin in the game you can be less afraid to speak your mind. Not being afraid to voice an opinion for fear of having your funding cut off is innovative!

City of Encinitas’ 25th Anniversary Celebration, to be held on Saturday, October 1, 2011 at the San Dieguito Heritage Museum, located at 450 Quail Gardens Drive from Noon to 4pm.

The event will be free and open to the public, and is expected to draw as many as 4,000 attendees.  The event will include entertainment, community groups, hands-on exhibits and free admission to the Heritage Museum, the San Diego Botanical Gardens and much more.  The schedule of events is as follows: (More event info at EncinitasParksandRec.com)

12:00pm               Event begins/Expo area opens/Lima Bean Festival                                

12:30pm               Magic of Joel Ward performance on main stage.                                                    

1:30pm                “The Credentialed” band performance on main stage.

2:15pm                  Event ceremonies, cake-cutting with City Council.                                            

3:00pm                 Bobby Hartman Juggling and Unicycle performance on main stage.

3:15pm                 Jack Tempchin and “Rocket Science” band performance on main stage.               

NOTE: Institutional Blindness. There is a similarity in the disconnect from true profitability and it’s approach; and the similarity between our interaction with the City on party planning and the Staff’s approach to targeting El Camino Real and Encinitas Boulevard for density intensification.

And the similarity is this: Several new Encinitas Network folks were told Monday night at some of the Staff info stations that the business owners should be happy with the gift that staff is giving them of the added ‘mixed-use’ component and be grateful and go away with what has been offered them.

Quite simply, as far as spending money to make money or cutting budgets to remain in the financial black, the Staff simply has no experience in it and it is comical at times to have lifetime bureaucrats try and advise people who live day-to-day by their wits trying to pay their mortgages without a union or guaranteed pension.

Even though the Staff had received a clear and loud ‘voice of no confidence’ from the city council; the demand for a disclaimer on the new General Plan 2035 document, a breaking away from the 2 year process to vet the plan from a business income producing prospective with leadership NOT affiliated with the team from Planning and Berkeley’s MIG, there is institutional indignance that that cannot admit that planners don’t specialize in profits; period.

That attitude is pretty ‘rich’ as they used to say in the ‘Great Depression’.

“Rich’ was a term laced in irony in the great depression, used to describe someone with so much money that their reaction to day-to-day challenges were at time bereft of common sense because of the ability to ‘solve’ problems by throwing money at it.

In both instances; budgeting a ‘Celebration’ and developing a new General Plan, the suppositions of the City appear to be ‘rich’.