Shaffer deletes Facebook post defending mayor bait-and-switch

Mayor Barth on the Kranz-Shaffer plan to strip Kristin Gaspar of her unanimously agreed turn as mayor (from Barth's weekly newsletter):

Encinitas mayor-sharing deal unraveling The council initiated option allows individual council members to place an item on the agenda for full council discussion at a public meeting. It is unfortunate that some critics do not recognize that asking questions and debating issues in an open forum is a more transparent and honest approach.

We wonder who those critics are who can't see that a move to take away Kristin Gaspar's turn as mayor in a unanimously agreed power-sharing deal after Barth has already had her turn is just "asking questions and debating issues in an open forum."

And we wish Barth had had this philosophy of open debate on Prop A, the most important recent public policy issue in Encinitas.  But perhaps open debate is only appropriate for high school drama.

Nevertheless, Lisa Shaffer did take to her public Councilmember Lisa Shaffer Facebook page to defend the move:

My agenda item for next week seems to have stirred up a lot of comment.  For the record, the agenda item is a necessary step to respond to Tony Kranz's decision not to take his appointment as Deputy Mayor, and this gives us an opportunity to review the overall situation with more information than we had last December.  If a majority of the Council still thinks the original plan has merit, then we will transition to Mayor Gaspar after next week's meeting.  If not, we will take different action.  It all depends on having the conversation, and to have the conversation, we have to have it on the agenda.  I think we should not fear to ask questions, just as Mr. Muir did a few weeks ago with his agenda item, proposing to revisit past Council decisions.  While I disagreed with his proposal, I absolutely support his right to raise his questions through an agenda item.

We posted a  couple of questions for the Councilmember:

If Kranz wants to step down as Deputy Mayor, I don't see how that makes it a "necessary step" to discuss stripping Kristin Gaspar of her mayoralty.  Can you fill us in on that logic?

And if your agenda item was only a response to Kranz's item, how is it that they both showed up simultaneously on the agenda without the apparent knowledge of Gaspar and Muir?

We were really looking forward to an answer to those questions. Then another of Shaffer's constituents came along and commented.

Alas, Shaffer was apparently not in the mood for difficult questions.  Instead of answering, the whole post is now gone.