How did our council perform in first semester 2026?
Six months into the year, the Encinitas City Council has given us plenty to grade — some genuine wins, a fair amount of unfinished business, and more than a few puzzling incidents and decisions that left us wondering what they were thinking.
We dug back through the votes, meetings, promises and results, sorting the council’s performance into three simple categories: A, C and F. We’re giving credit where it’s due, calling out mediocrity where it deserves it, and saving the red ink for the failures that mattered most.
Here’s the council’s first semester report card:
- Native Plant Ordinance, unanimous: Real environmental policy with teeth — 50% native plants for new development, 100% near sensitive habitat, plus a built-in effectiveness check. 🌱
- Sage Creek developer appeal denied, 5-0: A developer tried to dodge sidewalk and bike lane improvements. Council said no, despite litigation threats and all.
- Pride Month: The city raised the Pride flag again, and Mayor Ehlers presented a Pride Month proclamation to the North County LGBTQ+ Resource Center. 🏳️🌈
• Leucadia At-Grade Crossings approved, but no $: After 20+ years, a genuinely rare win — CPUC almost never approves these anymore. 🎉 Council calls it a “must have,” then funds $300K in design and leaves $6.2M in construction and $8.4M in matching funds totally unaddressed. Talk is cheap.
• Homelessness – San Diego Rescue Mission (SDRM) partnership working but..: 98 served, 40 placements in two months, growing to 66/15 by April. This chunk earns an “A” on its own but gets dragged to a “C” by the Safe Parking debacle and the shockingly declined $4M grant seen below. 👇
• State of the Spin: Mayor Ehlers claimed a pavement improvement win using software estimates between real field surveys — actual 5-year data shows one point of progress (74→75), and he exaggerated a pavement quality rating in his State of City presentation. Not exactly a mic drop.
• Marathon meetings: Average meetings ballooned 42% under Mayor Ehlers, from 2:55 to 4:09 hours. On June 24, Youth Commission applicants — kids — waited until midnight to speak. Not public engagement. Public exhaustion. 😴
• Housing affordability, MIA: A stated council goal – a legal obligation – and it hasn’t hit a single agenda all year, even as Encinitas blows past 295% of above-moderate housing targets and limps to ~20% on low-income, roughly a fifth of the affordable housing it’s legally required to plan for under its RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Allocation) obligation. The city isn’t just falling behind on affordable housing; it’s overbuilding expensive housing while badly underbuilding the housing regular people can actually afford.
• Safe streets ignored, skate park features fast-tracked: Three young people killed by cars in three years, most recently 17-year-old “Fin” Fadick in a marked crosswalk on July 10 — the 8th verified pedestrian death since 2022. The city’s own Mobility & Traffic Safety Commission declared a traffic emergency last September. Council never acted on it, and an April 2025 safety action plan is still unreviewed. And the council is spending $3.8M to rip out the Santa Fe Drive West bike infrastructure many residents fought to keep. Meanwhile: a 14-member skate committee got fast-tracked in weeks. 🛹💀
• Rejected ~$4M in homelessness funding: Oceanside, Carlsbad, Vista all got this state Housing and Community Development (HCD) grant money. Encinitas didn’t even bother to apply.
- Ehlers: distrust of HCD. San Antonio: “the HCD thing…freaks me out.”
- O’Hara: “Housing First…failed miserably”
- Shaffer called $3.9 million “not chump change” – then votes no anyway, with no explanation.
- Lyndes was the lone yes vote.
• Safe Parking Program, still gone: 160+ residents testified. Council said “no” anyway to the city’s only overnight safe-parking option — five years, zero incidents. At a February special meeting, despite many residents submitting comments and testimony, the Homeless Action Plan came back with no mention of Safe Parking at all — no timeline and no commitment. Deputy Mayor O’Hara went further, calling the SPP a “regional” issue and saying he’d support an overnight lot — just not in Encinitas.
• Houbeck: weeks of silence, then a 4-1 shrug: Residents first demanded new Urban Forest Advisory Committee member Steve Houbeck’s removal on February 18 over racist Facebook posts. Council said nothing. Residents returned week after week. Houbeck himself finally spoke at a UFAC meeting, offering a weak non-apology residents called “too little, and far too late.” Resident Monette Marino’s line stuck: “Racism is not a difference of opinion. It is a disqualifier for public service.” It finally came to a vote on April 22 only because Councilmember Lyndes forced it onto the agenda herself. Result: 4-1 to retain Houbeck, Lyndes the lone “no” vote. Five months, seven-plus public pleas, one councilmember doing the work — all for the council to end up right where it started. 🧾
• Legislative Program stripped, then restored: Mayor Ehlers and Deputy Mayor O’Hara quietly stripped gun-violence prevention, equity language, and ICE-safety priorities from the city’s playbook. 130+ emails and a packed City Hall got it unanimously reversed. 💪
• Lecturing residents from the dais: 🎤
- Deputy Mayor O’Hara branded public comment “propaganda” from “deep operatives”; scolded the room for booing — but only when the boos were aimed at him; and falsely accused the Leucadia 101 Main Street Association of doxxing residents who complained about the farmers market relocation. One of the people O’Hara berated broke into tears.
- Councilmember Shaffer told the room of residents he “didn’t see one person under the age of 50″ there to talk about the skate park; waved off noise complaints with “we’re not going to stop because a couple of people just don’t want to hear some noise”; told residents living here is a “privilege” and to offer up their own driveways to people sleeping in cars — which is against city code.
- Mayor Ehlers just watched it all happen – gavel in hand.
• Collaborate? Not with the city next door, not with the schools: Remember when the Council and City struggled to collaborate with Solana Beach on a crosswalk and other road improvements? The Council also struggled to collaborate with the school districts. Crossing guard MOUs with both EUSD and San Dieguito Union sat tabled for a month — May 27, still stuck June 17, finally passed June 24. Then, school bike-safety funding got held up over a missing report while $33K flowed to the Chamber with zero accountability. Lyndes had to publicly call it out: “if we can’t fund kids, I will be shocked.” Kids waited. 🚸
Thank you for staying informed, asking questions, and helping shape the future of Encinitas!
You may also be interested in:
Mayor Ehlers’ ignores Deputy Mayor O’Hara’s Chronic Tardiness and Rudeness
The Collapse of Compassion at City Hall
Encinitas City Council Blames Residents after Racism Accountability Demands
When the Rules Become a Joke, Encinitas Has a Leadership Problem