Our view: No reason to change horses on council when city's fortunes are soaring

In Carlsbad, voters should re-elect incumbents Matt Hall and Mark Packard to the City Council.

Both are hardworking, both are knowledgeable and both are helping to guide Carlsbad in the calm waters of fiscal strength. It's hard for challengers to unseat incumbents when the city is, by almost any measure, being run so well. The choice gets even easier when the opposition is so weak.

The city is on pace to finish this fiscal year with as much as $50 million in its general fund reserve accounts and many millions more in dedicated reserves. Carlsbad is also on solid ground paying for its projected $188 million in capital projects, including a long-awaited aquatics center residents will splash around in for years to come.

The city's tourist-tax revenues are soaring thanks to Carlsbad's 33 hotels, and the mix of auto dealerships, downtown shops and bigger retailers fill city coffers with generous sales tax revenues. The city is prudently adding staff and equipment in important areas -- this year's budget brought new patrol officers and forensics specialists for the Police Department, for instance, and a third ambulance for its Fire Department.

Experienced in running their own businesses, Packard and Hall are fiscal watchdogs who have placed the city's interests over public-employee unions in key negotiations. We note that their opponents have the backing of city employees who want a bigger piece of the taxpayers' pie.

Both Packard and Hall are strong supporters of Poseidon's desalination project, which is now before the California Coastal Commission. Considering the city's long slog with the commission over its municipal golf course, we hope Carlsbad voters keep their council stocked with supporters of this visionary attempt to shore up the region's drinking water supply.

Carlsbad has grown past its ability to easily absorb much more housing and traffic, fueling discontent seen everywhere, from the opposition to the city's grandiose development plans for Ponto last year, to the discussions between city officials, including Hall, and landowners near the strawberry-growing fields near Cannon Road. But in each case, the council has proved it can and will listen to its constituents when they make their voices known.

What's more, their opponents' preferred remedy for growth -- Proposition E on the Nov. 7 ballot, which would slap a "coastal agricultural" zoning designation over lands now farmed but owned by others -- is an impractical infringement on the landowners' property rights. Better for Hall, Packard and the rest of the council to sensibly guide the property's transition toward a mixed array of "open space" uses than to attempt to stop the march of time away from the coast's agricultural heritage.

Prop. E's main proponents in this race, Ronald Alvarez and Dustin Johnson, both have a few good ideas, but both are irrevocably tied to Bernard Goldstein, the developer whose frustrated desire to buy the land in question started the whole process that led to Prop. E and Mayor Bud Lewis' equally unnecessary counterpart, Proposition D.

This campaign's latest misstep was a newsletter that, among other outrages, passed off comments posted by anonymous readers of the North County Times Web site as representations of the paper's perspective. The state's Fair Political Practices Commission should look into who paid for this last-minute hit piece and whether the Concerned Citizens of Carlsbad group violated election law in distributing it.

The other challenger, Roland Chicas, is a new face in town. But news that both he, a financial adviser, and Alvarez filed for personal bankruptcy last year can't help their respective bids to take responsibility for Carlsbad's more than $200 million annual budget.

When the trip has gone smoothly and with curves in the road ahead, Carlsbad should keep steady hands on the steering wheel. Re-elect Matt Hall and Mark Packard.