BACK TO THE FUTURE… Squid firmly believes that there’s always a tipping point at which it’s smarter and less painful to simply cut Squid’s losses and move on. Squid also firmly believe that when it comes to the GENERAL PLAN UPDATE process, MONTEREY COUNTY SUPERVISORS have hit that point.

At last week’s board meeting, the supes learned that the new schedule might push approval of a new growth document into 2007. Squid’s not gonna even try and remember how many times the elusive approval date has been postponed.

Squid does not blame county planners for this mess. The supes threw out three earlier versions of the huge land-use document. Otherwise they might have been able to approve a General Plan years ago. And at this rate, they won’t green light anything until closer to 2010. (Unless it allows unlimited development in the unincorporated county, and wins approval from the supes’ landowner friends.)

But here’s Squid’s point: This is a document that’s supposed to tell the county how and where to grow from 2000 to 2020. At that point, the County will start all over again with an updated plan to guide future growth from 2020 to 2040. And as everyone knows by now, the County has wasted, errr, spent $6 million and six years on the General Plan. So while the County hired—and then fired—a special team to write the plan, and then killed subsequent drafts of the document, the county’s more than a quarter of the way through the time period that is supposed to be governed by this plan.

Here’s Squid’s idea: Ditch the plan. Throw it in the recycle bin alongside GPU1, GPU2 and GPU3. And get a head start on the 2020 General Plan Update.

APATHY WINS; IGNORANCE PLACES CLOSE SECOND… Squid has been reviewing the results of the June 6 primary, trying to figure out: How did this happen? The answer was so obvious Squid almost overlooked it: Most people didn’t vote. And most of those who did weren’t paying attention.

The Party of the Lazy and Apathetic crushed Honorably Active Citizens, with 67 percent of registered voters choosing not to bother. And of the 33 percent who went to the polls, a vast majority failed a simple test to see if they were reading directions.

More than 33,000 conscientious souls cast ballots in the contest for District 5 Democratic Central Committee members, in which voters were asked to choose five people to serve. The top vote getter received 4,110 votes. The same thing happened in the Dems’ District 4, and in Republican District 4: most voters apparently voted for just one candidate, despite clear instructions to pick five in one race, and seven in the other. Squid would think this was funny, but…