The new mayor of Encinitas expects homelessness and housing compliance to be at the top of his agenda

The city’s newly elected mayor said he had no doubts what the major issues were during his tenure.

“The growing concern about homelessness, I think, will soon dominate,” said Councilman Tony Kranz, who was elected mayor in November and will be sworn in on Tuesday.

Kranz, a 63-year-old printing company employee, will replace Catherine Blakespear, who recently won election to the state Senate.

He said last week that he didn’t expect to make drastic changes to the city’s direction once he took the top job, but he hoped to “de-escalate some of the tension” over issues that have come up before the council, particularly the housing conflict. He considers former mayor Teresa Barth a role model, he said, adding that he liked her approach of holding special meetings and engaging in strategic planning sessions to solve city problems.

Areas of recent community conflict include the council’s approval of overnight parking spaces for homeless people temporarily living in their vehicles. The Safe Parking Space Program initially opened on private farms and then moved to a section of the Community & Senior Center parking lot. Kranz said he would continue to support him in his new location, but he thought it was time for Encinitas to seek regional solutions to the problem of homelessness rather than go it alone. He wants Encinitas to work with neighboring communities to build permanent shelters, so the Sheriff’s Department has a place to house people sleeping illegally in city parks or downtown sidewalks, he said.

“I think one of the biggest concerns Encinitas residents have is that our park is full of homeless people,” and the park should not be a campsite, he said.

Other topics Kranz hopes to tackle in the next two years include keeping the city in compliance with state housing laws, moving forward with the northernmost section of the Leucadia Streetscape improvements on the Coast Highway, increasing the area of ​​the rail corridor and improving rainwater drainage.

Kranz, who was first elected to the council in 2012, is practically a native of Encinitas – he moved to the city with his family when he was a baby. On the campaign trail, he regularly emphasizes his long-standing ties to the community and he expects his local knowledge to help him in his new leadership role.

Asked by a reporter to give the names of two people who could speak to who he is as a person and what he’s like as mayor, he suggested former councilor Lisa Shaffer, who had recently moved to south Carlsbad, and her high school graphic design teacher, a Cardiff resident, Neil Bruington.

Bruington said he taught Kranz for four years and “he was an excellent student.” He added that Kranz was not someone he expected to enter politics, but as a teenager he had abilities that served him well now as a politician.

“He was a good listener, he always asked questions that were relevant to what he was given… he was a good problem solver,” said Bruington.

Shaffer said that he hoped Kranz would become “a very hard-working, non-traditional mayor, in the sense that he’s a very creative person.”

He would be “non-traditional,” he added, because he would not come up with a solution that fits the Democratic or Republican viewpoints and that might irritate some people along party lines. However, he said, he expected he would have a good working relationship with the two state representatives, who are both Democrats and live in Encinitas.

“They know each other very well. They understand each other, ”he said.