From the Cheap Seats: Judgment in Encinitas

The municipal election in Encinitas will soon be upon us. Ballots go out October 5. Voters will fill three of five council seats: mayor, the open District 3 seat, and District 4. Control of the council is at stake, and the campaign turns on one question: whose judgment do you trust?

That matters because the biggest test may lie ahead. In 2027, the city begins planning for the housing cycle due in 2029, deciding how much and where Encinitas becomes more dense. The next council will face renewed pressure from Sacramento, housing advocates, and development interests.

What’s remarkable about this campaign is how much the challengers have adopted the current council’s own issues and solutions — visible on Rimga Viskanta’s campaign website and again at last week’s League of Women Voters forum, where the candidates agreed far more than they disagreed.

Mayor Bruce Ehlers is running for reelection, joined by incumbent Marco San Antonio in District 4 and Ed Sprague for the open District 3 seat. The 2024 election replaced a Democratic-led council with one having no party majority — one Democrat, one Republican appointee and three independents.

The incumbents have a record to run on: cutting costs, improving public safety, progress on homelessness, infrastructure investment and resisting pressure for higher housing density. They did all that without the sales tax increase, Measure K, which they opposed, their opponents supported, and voters rejected. Of four North County cities, Encinitas was the only one to turn down a tax increase.

This year’s challengers — Viskanta, Arielle Golden, and Brad Lefkowits — are partisan allies endorsed by the Democratic Party and by state Sen. Catherine Blakespear. In a town with a large Democratic registration edge, that helps — but it wasn’t enough in 2024, when Ehlers won 52 to 48 percent.

With relatively little disagreement on current issues, the challengers have instead criticized the council’s “tone” and “temperament” — criticism aimed largely at Deputy Mayor Jim O’Hara of District 2, who isn’t on the ballot.

That leaves character and judgment as the more critical issue: how have these candidates acted when confronted with difficult choices and competing interests?

Ehlers’ opposition to overdevelopment isn’t campaign rhetoric. He was a principal author of Proposition A, the 2013 measure requiring voter approval before the city can enact major upzoning or density increases. It passed 52 to 48 percent despite being materially outspent by opponents, including the Chamber of Commerce. For more than a decade, voters have known where Ehlers stands on development and local control.

Viskanta’s record is a different story, one I wrote about in 2023. Judgment shows in how officials spend other people’s money. At her first meeting as San Dieguito Union High School District board president in December 2022, Viskanta and two colleagues voted 3-2 to amend a teachers’ contract approved in 2021. The existing formula would have raised the district’s health-care contribution by 6.15 percent, roughly matching the rise in premiums.

The amendment raised it nearly 20 percent, adding an extra $300,000 a year — with the district getting nothing in return. The union had previously accepted a smaller contribution in exchange for higher wages. It wanted another bite of the apple, and Viskanta’s majority obliged. When a minority trustee on the dais tried to lay out the numbers publicly, Viskanta shut him down.

In my view, this was a corrupt bargain that rewarded the teachers’ union for supporting Democratic school board candidates. I’ve written about this problem before, and my view is unchanged: it makes no sense to have union advocates sitting on both sides of the table when issues arise in which they have an interest.

Similarly, as board president at Encinitas Union School District, Viskanta managed the 2020 controversy over reopening schools by forestalling a vote on the issue. Teachers opposed returning to the classroom while parents clamored for it.

Those episodes matter because officials make decisions when organized interests are applying pressure.

Housing will provide the biggest test. The developments we’re seeing now were launched before the current council took office. State law makes approval of housing on the 15 sites upzoned by the prior council largely a ministerial duty. The resulting traffic, parking, and affordability problems were substantially baked in.

The question is what happens next.

Developer money and independent spending have long shaped Encinitas politics. Blakespear, whose tenure as mayor was strongly associated with increased housing density and accommodation of state housing mandates, backed the challenger slate early. Her support, coupled with Viskanta’s record, gives voters something to consider as they decide how these candidates might respond to the next round of pressure.

By 2027, that won’t be theoretical. Encinitas will again be deciding how much density to plan, where to put it, and how to defend local control.

Campaign positions can converge. “Local control” can appear on everyone’s website. Past judgment is harder to rewrite.