As a Green, my anger is not faith based. Empirical knowledge gained from decades of diligence, prevents any sense of hope, outside of the continuing struggle. Long committed to saving the world, I realized the battle begins at city hall. As it is here that the cancer of over development first invades our neighborhoods.

More than a cultural cancer, the Ponzi scheme of local and regional government is an extractive industry, designed to benefit builders, and contractors, while providing employment for those willing to blindly support the status quo.

City staff is another infection local residents can ill afford. People who make their living developing or enabling development, should have no place in government. For profiteering to stop, profit must no longer be an option of civic leadership.

It's time to consider how much value you put in government, and how much value the government puts in you. Where is it written that elected officers requires compensation? If the goal is to serve the community, volunteerism seems to be the ethical choice.

In Encinitas, municipal governance has become an extortion racket, where people get paid to sink the community in debt. Take for example the $10,000+ salary Encinitas City Council members get paid each year for rubber-stamping over development, and unsustainability, while saddling future residents with the burden of paying for decisions they had no part in. It seems money would be saved by cutting out the middlemen, and putting everything to a public vote.

The City of Encinitas, although supporting a full staff, and controlled by predatory unions, has made an art of hiring high priced consultants to do the work of city employees. I call this the municipal double dip. More salary always equates with less services. And I dare anyone to prove me wrong.

It's time for all Southern California residents to embrace the public initiative process as a way of reducing the burden of maintaining career bureaucrats through retirement. Tax revenue should pay for parks, not politicians and their corrupt yes men.

In Encinitas the best way to fight City Hall is to give the power of the purse back to the citizens. Oceanside would also benefit from an all volunteer city council as well. No elected official has earned their salary, demonstrated by conditions in North County continuing to deteriorate.

Encinitas would also benefit from an elected mayor, district elections, and doing away with the city manager form of government completely. Accountability has been lost if not murdered and buried beneath Encinitas City Hall. One need only follow the career of Fire Chief Mark Muir to see how corrupt Encinitas governance has become. Term limits are another good idea. If the governor and all state offices are subject to term limits why aren't City Councils and County Supervisors? Think about it.

Cronyism rules city hall, not competence, efficiency, vision, wisdom, honesty, or the public will. Oceanside is held hostage by it's public employee unions. Carlsbad continues to dilute the public vote by allowing population to increase unchecked and Vista is just Vista. Currently those elected officials are plotting million dollar offices for themselves with a new city hall.

As the 2008 election approaches the best way for people to fight City Hall is through the initiative process. It's time to begin preparing for battle. It's time for residents to clean house, by whatever means possible.