Encinitas City Councilman Bruce Ehlers.
Bruce Ehlers, who will be sworn into office Tuesday as the newest member of the Encinitas City Council, comes to the job with a strong background in city planning rules and a keen interest in the specifics policies.
“I’m an engineer, so I’m very detail-oriented,” said Ehlers, 64, a senior vice president of product development for a safety equipment company.
He expects to use his skills as he works on the long list of goals he created for himself while in office. As a council member, he wants to protect the community from “overdevelopment”; improve transparency in City Hall by making more meetings open to the public; increase the use of solar energy and carbon-free transport options; help pass an ordinance promoting the use of California native plants; and update the city’s fire evacuation plans, among other things. He said he also looks forward to being involved in the city’s budgeting process.
Thanks to 10 years of experience as a financial director for a non-profit, “I’m good at going through budgets and books,” he said.
Ehlers will represent the city’s District 4 region — an area covering Olivenhain and parts of New Encinitas — on the City Council.
He is very familiar with the city’s political scene and council meetings. He was a key author of the city’s 2013 growth control initiative, served twice on the city’s Planning Commission, made a previous unsuccessful run for City Council, and served as and campaign manager for former Councilwoman Maggie Houlihan during her 2000, 2004 and 2008 campaigns.
And, he is well versed in city controversies. His most recent stint as the city’s planning commissioner ended in April when the City Council voted unanimously to remove him from the position. Council members said they fired him because they believed he could not be impartial on housing development issues, in part because he filed documents supporting a court case against the city. last year Ehlers and his supporters said the council’s decision was a political stunt aimed at derailing his council campaign.
His supporters included Kevin Doyle, who became chairman of the Planning Commission when Ehlers was ousted. Doyle said Thursday that people who don’t know Ehlers think he might become a rule breaker as a board member — a belief Doyle said he finds ridiculous.
“Bruce Ehlers is like a Boy Scout,” because he’s so rule-oriented, Doyle said.
On the Planning Commission, Ehlers was the guy who always insisted they needed to have very detailed “fact-finding” to back up every decision they made, Doyle added, saying people often don’t understand how much Ehlers is aware of the city’s laws. . They will also be surprised, he said, to learn that he is a former Republican who left the party and became an independent when Donald Trump became the party’s nominee for president in 2016.
“I have a lot of respect for him for that,” Doyle added.
When Ehlers worked on Houlihan’s campaigns, he was a practicing Republican and was “as Democratic as a person could be,” Doyle said. Ian Thompson, Houlihan’s husband, said Ehlers and his wife, who died in 2011 of cancer, were a “very complementary combo” because they didn’t always agree on everything. Ehlers was very analytical, while Houlihan was an “energetic extrovert,” he said.
Thompson said he looks forward to having Ehlers on the board, given his strong business background and support for environmental issues. He just wishes Ehlers and Houlihan could have served on the board together.
“I think the combo would be a real force of nature,” he said.
