A City Council candidates forum at Rancho Carlsbad mobile home park escalated into a true debate Wednesday night, with the hopefuls exchanging shots over city employee pensions, the expansion of auto dealerships and a drainage plan for northern Carlsbad.
Six candidates are running for two open seats in the Nov. 4 election.
The forum offered a “home team” in Keith Blackburn, a candidate whose parents live in the gated senior community.
Blackburn joked that he visits Rancho Carlsbad regularly in his capacity as a Carlsbad police sergeant, “but not necessarily arresting the Rancho Carlsbad residents.”
Blackburn found himself on the hot seat when candidates Thomas K. Arnold, Farrah Douglas and Glenn Bernard criticized the city's pension plan, which at retirement pays employees 3 percent of their salary for every year they worked.
Blackburn will retire from his police job in January.
Douglas said the state's retirement system – called CalPERS – lost $25 billion Monday when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 777 points. Blackburn corrected her to say the actual figure was $7 billion, and it recovered $4 billion of that the next day and is not in danger of failing to meet obligations.
Blackburn said regardless of one day's activity, the system is funded and the city is not on the hook, because its employees pay into the system.
However, if CalPERS can't meet its obligations, the city must pay in to make up any shortfall.
“With the current pension system I'm scared to death,” said Arnold, calling for a two-tiered system in which new employees would receive lower pension benefits than those on staff.
Councilwoman Ann Kulchin, who's running for her eighth term and is supported by the police and firefighters unions, didn't take a position on the two-tiered system but said Mayor Bud Lewis planned to look into it.
Lewis said in an interview yesterday that he wants to form a commission of citizens and city staff to study possibly reducing the yearly credit to 2.5 percent – and therefore reduce the city's overall financial burden.
He said he'd like to put such a proposal on a citywide ballot in 2010.
Douglas found herself in an unusual position, as she was accused of turning her back on business in a vote she made as a member of the city Planning Commission.
Douglas is a longtime member of the Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce and volunteer for civic causes. On Sept. 17 she voted against a proposal to expand an auto dealership plaza on Avenida Encinas, south of Palomar Airport Road.
Bernard began the attack on Douglas' vote, saying it was no time to vote against business, and he soon was supported by Blackburn, who noted that car dealerships contribute more than 25 percent of the city's sales tax revenue – $6 million in 2007-08.
Kulchin said the expansion could have been worth $500,000 to the city, and Arnold also said he supports expanding car dealerships.
But Douglas said she voted against the expansion because it would have been too close to homes.
“My job is not just to bring money to the city. My job is to improve the quality of life,” Douglas said. “You don't want to have a car dealership next to your bedroom window.”
Rancho Carlsbad residents, who numbered about 100 at the forum, grilled the candidates on a drainage plan that affects their community of 500 homes. More than half of them lie in a 100-year flood plain.
The city's drainage plan called for construction of a basin to catch storm-water runoff at a site occupied by the mobile-home park's RV parking area and garden.
The city staff has said repairs to Calavera Dam, about 1½ miles north of Rancho Carlsbad, and construction of a 7-foot-diameter pipe beneath Cannon Road on the park's northern boundary, have made the basin unnecessary.
Park residents hired a hydrologist who says the opposite.
The city has collected developer fees to pay for the basin.
Blackburn, Arnold and Bernard sided with park residents on the basin, while Kulchin and Douglas said it needs more study.
Candidate Evan Delaney Rodgers was absent from the forum.
Michael Burge: (760) 476-8230; michael.burge@uniontrib.com
