This commentary is from blogger and taxpayer JP St. Pierre and is cross posted on the Leucadia blog.

A raspberry to the increasingly irrelevant North County Times for endorsing all 3 Encinitas city council incumbents. Not only is endorsing the status quo boring, it defies their own logic.

NCT: EDITORIAL: Encinitas trio merit return to city council

How quickly the NCT forgot it's previous Editorial comments about the Encinitas incumbents:

Encinitas approves 20 percent raise for city manager

May 14, 2007 NCT Roses & Raspberries
The 'City Manages to Overpay' award
A raspberry to the Encinitas City Council majority for being the latest to overcompensate their chief executive. Council members James Bond, Jerome Stocks and Dan Dalager voted to boost the salary of City Manager Phil Cotton, by all accounts a fine public servant, to $198,723. So Cotton apparently cottoned up to the council enough, in just six months on the job, to earn a 20 percent ---- or $33,723 ---- raise. What's more, the council tried to sneak it through by putting it on the consent calendar ---- more typically reserved for minor, noncontroversial items to be approved en masse.

In a bizarre race to cripple themselves at the bargaining table when public employee unions come a-calling, local councils are competing to overpay their city managers. Escondido shells out $243,310; Poway, $237,350; San Marcos, $237,008; Carlsbad, $228,968; Vista, $216,587; and Oceanside, $207,525. Even tiny Del Mar pays $160,000 and Solana Beach, $156,870. It's good to be the city manager. Taxpayer, not so much.

NCT criticizes city for holding special meetings: When is a 'special meeting' not so special?

Jim Bond's lame "State of the City" address
Raspberries and Roses

"A raspberry to Encinitas Mayor James Bond for his ill-prepared and self-serving State of the Community address last week. Bond's delivery indicates he has become entirely too comfortable in office. Unless voters see more substance and less stale style from the mayor, they may send Bond right back to retirement in 2008."

Comon' NCT, we need some fresh meat on the council. Try to think outside of the box, go to a different restaurant for a change. NCT, you are in a rut man. You used to know how to party but now look at you. You are old and stale man. ZZZZzzzz. You gotta reach for the brass ring every once and awhile in life you know? Can't have leftover meatloaf every Saturday night for the rest of you life you know what I'm saying man? Go talk to the pretty girl, she digs you man and you don't even have the balls to go over there and introduce yourself. NCT, you've turned into your parents man.