Next year, the annual State of the City address will happen first at a City Council meeting, rather than at an Encinitas Chamber of Commerce-organized gala.<\/p>\n
A new city policy spelling this out will be drafted in the coming days, the City Council decided in a 4-1 vote Wednesday, with Councilmember Joy Lyndes opposed.<\/p>\n
By making the change, the city is \u201cbringing back (the event) to the people\u201d and allowing anyone to hear it for free, said Councilmember Jim O\u2019Hara, who put forward the proposal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe person at the bus stop has just as much right to attend as you,\u201d he told people who have attended the chamber\u2019s gala in the past.<\/p>\n
Lyndes, a former deputy mayor who is not seeking re-election to her council seat in the fall, said she agreed with one public speaker \u2014 Encinitas resident Fabian Gonell \u2014 who opposed O\u2019Hara\u2019s proposal, saying it put restrictions on the mayor\u2019s legal free speech rights.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this is government overreach,\u201d Lyndes said.<\/p>\n
Mayor Bruce Ehlers said he, too, agreed with Gonell on the free speech issue, but seconded O\u2019Hara\u2019s motion to create the new council policy.<\/p>\n
Councilmembers Luke Shaffer and Marco San Antonio said they could support a city-organized, live-streaming of the State of the City and posting it on the city\u2019s web site, rather than worrying about having it occur in-person multiple times.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s worth making a big deal about it, if we can just add to our city website,\u201d Shaffer said.<\/p>\n
The Encinitas Chamber of Commerce has played host to the mayor\u2019s State of the City address for many years and the mayor\u2019s in-person talk at the event has been filmed, live-streamed and replayed on the city\u2019s website in recent years. This year\u2019s event, which attracted about 250 people, was held the evening of April 9 at the city\u2019s Community & Senior Center. Tickets, which included dinner, cost $65 for chamber members and $75 for non-members. Table sponsorship also was available at prices ranging from $1,000 to $8,000.<\/p>\n
At Wednesday\u2019s meeting, chamber CEO Carol Knight told the council that the event consists of far more than just the mayor\u2019s address, saying it\u2019s the only major event in town that brings together local business people, community leaders and regional elected officials. The leaders of the chamber and the area\u2019s three Main Street associations also give their annual addresses there, she noted.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s one of the chamber\u2019s biggest fundraisers of the year. However, \u201cif we have to pivot, we will pivot,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The question of how to handle future State of the City addresses first surfaced two years ago after the state\u2019s attorney general issued a legal opinion saying that the Brown Act \u2014 the state\u2019s open meetings law \u2014 applied to such events held by private organizations. That meant that if three or more council members attended the chamber\u2019s event, it would be considered a standard public meeting where public comment must be allowed.<\/p>\n
In response, the mayor decided to give the address twice in spring 2025 \u2014 first at the chamber gala and then a week later at a council meeting. The mayor and city\u2019s deputy mayor attended the main chamber event where the mayor gave his address, while the three other council members \u2014 O\u2019Hara, Shaffer and San Antonio \u2014 attended the informal mixer portion, but were directed to leave before the main dinner gala occurred.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Next year, the annual State of the City address will happen first at a City Council meeting, rather…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7,4779,4601,4602,4603,12564,23,100,3054,12565,74,84,76,75],"class_list":["post-333995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-california","tag-cardiff-by-the-sea","tag-encinitas","tag-encinitas-advocate","tag-encinitas-advocate-news","tag-leucadia","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-north-county","tag-olivenhain","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-county","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}