Council Meeting Recap: E-bike crash data offers a surprise
The council spent an hour telling nine volunteer business owners that their ideas were too ambitious. Meanwhile, Encinitas e-bike crash data revealed something unexpected: riders were at fault in only five of the 14 collisions reported so far in 2026. Plus, the city landed the biggest grant in its history on a $77,000 bet — genuinely great news.
🏛️ Council Meeting Recap – August 19, 2026
💬 Quote of the Night
“El Camino Real, again, dying on the vine. It is dead. People drive through it, drive past it, get away from it. Do not go there unless you have to.”
–– Councilmember Luke Shaffer, on the new Business Commission’s first work plan
💧 San Dieguito Water District Special Meeting @ 4PM — First Rulebook Rewrite Since 2020
Finance Manager Aguilar walked the board through a top-to-bottom administrative code update. Highlights:
• 🌱 Decorative grass is on the clock.State law now bars commercial properties, HOAs, government sites, and public medians from watering “non-functional turf” — ornamental lawn nobody walks on — with drinking-quality water. Recycled water is fine. So is grass people actually use. Single-family homes are fully exempt. Rebates still available.
• 💦 Leaks are your problem. Water lost on your side of the meter is now explicitly the owner’s responsibility — even if the district never flagged it. Adjustments still require paying 50% of the disputed bill up front.
• 📄 Appeals now cost $484. New fee, mirroring the city’s fee.
• 🏦 Lake Hodges gets its own savings jar, split out of the general capital reserve so megaprojects stop inflating the district’s annual savings target.
🚰 San Dieguito Water District Regular Meeting @ 5PM — New Meters, No Federal Money
Installation starts September 14 on 1,176 Cycle 7 meters: north of Encinitas Blvd, east of the tracks, west of I-5, south of Orpheus. Four to six weeks. This area has the district’s worst radio failure rate — most of those meters are read by hand today.
The $850,953 contract is on our dime. The district’s federal WaterSMART grant application struck out; across two fiscal years the feds funded just 31 projects totaling $38.9M. Staff will apply again.
These meters aren’t “smart” yet. The radio gateways that would collect readings automatically are still being designed — that contract hits the board in early 2027. Until then, staff still drives the routes. Cycle 6 (old Leucadia) is next.
• 🌮 Food For Thought: We’re spending $851,000 in ratepayer money on meters a staff member still has to drive past to read until at least 2027. Does the Water District have a plan when the grant money doesn’t come through a second time?
⚡ Regular Meeting @ 6PM
🚂 City Manager’s Report
Surfers crossing the tracks where the Verdi pedestrian undercrossing is planned in Cardiff. (Photo by Leo Place, The Coast News)
• $33.6 MILLION in federal rail funding awarded. All three grants the city applied for came through: the Leucadia at-grade crossings, the E Street–to–Leucadia quiet zone, andtheVerdi undercrossing. The return on investment: $77,000 spent on applications yielded $33.6 million. City Manager Campbell said she’d never seen anything like it. Credit to council, engineering staff, RailPros, community advocates, and Senators Padilla and Schiff, plus Congressman Levin. Where things stand: Quiet zone at 90% design. At-grade crossings at 70%, with Public Utilities Commission and Federal Railroad Association coordination underway on the waiver for the quieter audible warning system. Verdi undercrossing is 100% designed with its coastal permit in hand. All three now need federal environmental review.
• Immigration update: August 14, 5:45 AM near Encinitas Blvd and Via Cantabria — Border Patrol agents in plain clothes and an unmarked vehicle arrested a man from Mexico during a roving patrol. Advance notice was given to the Sheriff’s watch commander. After-action report requested.
• Short Term Rental inspections under review. City Manager Campbell is working with legal and code enforcement following a wave of community complaints.
🎤 Oral Communications — 9 in person, 1 by phone
• The rules aren’t applied evenly: Judy Berlfein said she has attended council meetings for 30 years and had never seen an audience member call “point of order” without being recognized — and get away with it. Her point: people standing silently with 8.5×11 signs get removed; shouting from the audience doesn’t count as disruptive; and when she asked for quiet, the mayor threatened to throw her out. “Please apply the same rules to your opponents as you apply to your supporters.” Ehlers apologized for misinterpreting the audience yelling rule. The city attorney confirmed Berlfein was right on the law.
• Short Term Rental inspections have gone off the rails. Jennifer Wilging described inspectors demanding entry to locked closets, primary residences, garages, yards, and separately occupied ADUs with long-term tenants — none of it in the rental scope. One operator in good standing for nine years had a permit delayed over a 1965 garage conversion. Wilging says she was told she’d fail inspection if a charcoal grill was found anywhere on her property.
• “DeFlock Encinitas.” Brian Stone mapped the city’s Flock ALPR cameras and objected to the city paying ~$75,000/year for automated surveillance logging every car, every movement. His sharpest line: the same people who campaign on smaller government and less intrusion are the ones defending a permanent police surveillance network.
• Martin Tracy lives across from the CRC. Four fights broken up in his driveway this year. He credited the sheriff, made clear he’s not attacking the CRC’s mission — but challenged its leadership and donors to justify $8-10M spent on expensive, limited real estate while staff “walk over people sleeping in their doorways.”
📋 Sewer Fee Consumer Price Index Bump ✅ Unanimous. 3.8% increase, effective October 1, auto-adjusting annually. No public speakers, no council questions, no discussion. Done in four minutes.
🏢 Business Commission Work Plan: ✅ Vote 3-2 to trim down the work plan. Nine volunteer business owners. Four meetings in four months. They narrowed 18+ ideas down to 11 and brought them to council.
Council cut them down further. O’Hara led the trimming by combining goals and advocating for fewer topics.
Shaffer and Lyndes pushed back hard. The high/medium/low priority structure of the commission’s suggestions already did the triage. The commission had volunteered for the workload and was happy to do the 11 tasks. Shaffer’s motion to approve all 11 items as-submitted was seconded by Lyndes — and died.
🚲 E-Bikes: The Data Didn’t Say What Anyone Expected.
Seven months after Deputy Mayor O’Hara’s council-initiated item, staff returned with the numbers. 146 e-bike collisions since 2022, concentrated in the 13-to-15 bracket. A UCSD study shows a 300% jump in injuries among riders under 18.
Then Capt. Shane Watts said the thing that reframed the entire item: of 14 e-bike collisions in 2026 so far, the rider was at fault in only five— and two of those were solo falls by riders aged 72 and 76. Where riders are at fault, it’s wrong-way and sidewalk riding. Everything else? Drivers making right turns without accounting for a bike closing in at 20 mph.
Watts also confirmed the department has cited parents and is pursuing San Diego County’s first child abuse caseagainst parents who pulled an impounded e-motorcycle out of storage after one child was injured — and let a second child ride it, who also crashed. “We’re not playing around.”
Judy Berlfein closed the loop from the podium: 14 e-bike collisions versus 129 car collisions. “We don’t ban cars because they’re going too fast.”
No motion — direction to staff only.Coming back: e-bike education expansion (funded by $47K already earmarked), possible age-12 minimum, park and trail rules, a real definition of “nighttime,” and at-fault collision analysis.
• 🌮 Food For Thought: The city built an entire agenda item around restricting teenage riders, then learned most e-bike crashes are caused by drivers. Will the follow-up ordinances reflect that — or will the education campaign still point in only one direction?
🌧️ Stormwater Manual ✅ Unanimous. Turns out Encinitas has been more restrictive in its rulebook than the regional permit requires — and more restrictive than every other jurisdiction in the county. The fix: small residential projects (500–5,000 sq ft of new impervious surface) no longer must build costly structural treatment systems. They’ll meet requirements through site design instead — permeable materials, reduced paving, added landscaping. Large developments keep every existing requirement.
Mayor Ehlers caught another thing worth fixing — the manual references the county’s sustainable landscaping standards, overlapping the city’s own Native Plant Ordinance.He added a friendly amendment directing staff to unify the two.
📅 Quick Hits
• Sunday, August 23 – Moonlight Beach concert series finale: 1–5PM, with Steel Euphoria opening and Sabrosas Latin Orchestra at 3PM.
• Wednesday, August 26 – Special City Council Meeting @ 4PM: Roadway Safety and Traffic Enforcement in Encinitas.
Quite a heavy load at this week’s meetings, eh? Glad we were able to sit and sift through it all to keep you informed.
