Photo Bomb

PHOTO BOMB… Squid loves sea snail mail, with regular correspondence from fellow cephalopods written lovingly in ink. During election season, Squid especially loves checking the mailbox, curious to see what the candidates are saying.

Squid’s beak fell open when Squid received a mailer from Kate Daniels, running for county supervisor in District 5, and Squid recognized an image photographed by and published in Monterey County Weekly. Squid’s colleagues are serious about copyright and, as a rule, don’t license out editorial photos for commercial purposes – certainly not for political campaigns.

A couple of days earlier, Squid’s colleague saw the photo in an Instagram ad and asked the campaign to remove it, which they did. But it was too late to stop the mail – 18,000 copies were already with the U.S. Postal Service.

Daniels says she mistakenly told her campaign team the photo was OK to use. “This is on me, and I apologize,” she says. “I was just not paying attention.”

Squid’s boss will be sending an invoice to resolve this copyright infringement situation, and Squid hopes Daniels’ team learns something about copyright. Squid also hopes her team realizes “I was just not paying attention” is not a strong campaign slogan.

STEP COUNT… Speaking of sea snail mail, Squid loves following public agencies’ paper trails. Which is why Squid was fascinated by the paperwork problem that came before the Del Rey Oaks City Council on Jan. 23, where businessman Vince Pinaldi is planning to buy a property on Calle Del Oaks from the Davi Family Trust – which has owned the property for decades – for $4.2 million. Pinaldi’s company, an automotive restoration business, is already leasing it. In question is how many square feet the building is permitted for, which matters for its water allocation.

Pinaldi and his attorney Tony Lombardo contended the property, since being built in 1978, has been taxed and valued based on it being 11,200 square feet with a mezzanine that may or may have not been used at times, and may or may have not had stairs to it.

The hearing was their appeal of the city’s building official Joe Headley’s determination that, based on his records, there was never a stairway in any approved building permit, and therefore, the property was only 9,600 square feet, not 11,200 – which means a reduction of 0.112 acre-feet of annual water allocation.

Headley told the council that he can’t sign a form he believes to be incorrect – the permitted square footage: “Now it’s up to who will sign at the bottom of that form,” he said. The council punted, and voted to reconsider on Feb. 27.

Squid will have popcorn ready.