Dear Site Viewers ---
The best way I know to show you how dirty political tricks handled the Mayor's visit to Pacific Beach (on Aug. 8, 2006), is to offer you this following letter, reprinted here in full. This is what's really behind what's going on and why you don't get the truth in these matters anywhere else.
An Open Letter To San Diego Councilman Kevin Faulconer
From the Pacific Beach Crime Fighters group
August 9, 2006
Dear Councilman Faulconer,
This letter was written and sent to you the day following that very controlled and "sanitized" event that was announced as a get together with the Mayor, Councilman Faulconer and the Chief of Police, in Pacific Beach. It was indicated as a kind of "Town Hall Meeting" and was described as being set up "for an informal discussion of community needs and issues."
It was, in the Town Council’s own literature, billed as being "Hosted by the Pacific Beach Town Council" and "this discussion is open to the public and the format will be open mike, questions and answers."
It was further stated, by Don Mullen in the August, 2006 PB Town Council newsletter that "Councilmember Kevin Faulconer invited his good friend, Mayor Jerry Sanders, to come out to PB and have a one on one discussion with residents..." Mr. Mullen further wrote that "At Councilmember Faulconer’s request, the Town Council is hosting the event..." and "This is a great opportunity to personally talk with our Mayor and Councilmember..."
Well, those of us who were there at the even know all too well that this is not the way it happened. First of all, I am sure you recall calling me on the phone and asking if I would like to set up a Mayor’s visit to Pacific Beach, which you indicated you would support. I agreed and immediately went about the organizational effort, which was to be with the "SavePB" group and would include all community organizations and would, of course, be open to the public.
Then we suddenly discovered that it was going to be the Pacific Beach Town Council that would host the event and that the crime fighters were now completely knocked out of the picture. The Mayor’s office seems to feel that this decision was made by someone in your office, Mr. Faulconer. However, we were never informed about any of this from you or by anyone in your office.
Many of us also will remember how, on the night of the event that finally just occurred, cards were passed out for questions to be asked. There would be no open mike. There would be no personal discussions with the folks from Pacific Beach. How nice.
I recall how many of us carefully made out our cards and passed them in. I remember my question and that of several others that I saw. If the cards would not be culled before getting to the MC or edited out at the time of the reading, there would clearly be a good representation with regard to the very serious crime issue. We were very hopeful. We should have known better.
Comments and questions we submitted dealt with the 24 reported sexual assaults in a recent 3 month period in a one mile radius from the center of PB, the local leadership and print media blackout concerning such crime issues, and how fed up we all are about having our little community under siege in this manner. The questions and comments were right to the point and extremely meaningful to all of us here in Pacific Beach.
In addition to the comment and question cards, one of your people passed out a sheet entitled "Councilmember Kevin Faulconer Pacific Beach Community Survey." Your survey listed 11 of what you evidently feel are our most important issues. "Crime" was clearly not one of those issues you cared to list. The nearest you came to that was to have an ambiguous and very general category you chose to call "public safety."
And how did that meeting go? Well, there you were, Mr. Faulconer, going through the cards you were given, going extensively into matters concerning alcohol and just about everything else imaginable. And what about "crime?" You selected just one card that had a statement that was not completely correct and was therefore easily refuted. That was the sum total that you presented on the "crime" issue.
There is absolutely no doubt, in the minds of informed beach area residents, that the meeting was very carefully edited. It was a truly "sanitized" event in the very worst sense of the word. As some expressed after the meeting, now we can see why the crime fighters were knocked out of the hosting of this event. At every turn it has become crystal clear that "crime" was not to be allowed to "interfere" with the public relations "spin" that was to be applied to Pacific Beach. How sad.
And you, Mr. Faulconer, have become a very great disappointment to us all. You now serve as one of the best examples of why we cannot trust anything that a politician says, only what they actually do or don’t do. In that light, you really are continuing the shameful tradition of bad and harmful politics in a town that has had all it can take of that sort of thing.
So, what are we going to do about it? To begin with, many of us are going to move forward, definitely without you, to try and bring our community out of this dangerous situation. We will also become more active politically when election time comes around. We will also be opening up new channels of communication within the community. And you can be absolutely certain, we will have no more of these dirty political games.
I’m sorry it had to come to this, but as you know, it was not of my making. It was you and your friends who made the defining decisions here. Your actions have set the pattern. Now what you have set in motion will determine the future.
Most sincerely,
Jonathan West — Pacific Beach
