My good friend Tom Butt keeps blowing it. When a skeptic provides an easy opening to point out the N.I.C.E. side, Tom instead fires away at the skeptic himself.

He doesn't shoot holes in Richard Lompa's arguments. He shoots photos of the trash on Richard's lot.

Then yesterday when I wrote about Redondo Beach's dubious experience with a business-improvement district, Tom doesn't point out the positive side of the article, which he could have easily done. No, he fires at me.

Well, Ted you can look for the downside of everything like you have chosen to do with your blog, or you can do something about it.

Some of us have chosen the action route. There are always going to be doubters, skeptics and naysayers, and we appear to have our share in Point Richmond.

If people think the status quo is the best we can do, then they should oppose the N.I.C.E. district.

I happen to be more optimistic.

Optimistic? Let's imagine a genuinely optimistic response.

He could have picked up my observation that Redondo Beach's district hasn't been around long enough to produce obvious, irrefutable benefits. A year and a half isn't very long. From there, he could have amplified some of the article's bright notes.

He could have rooted out a more positive article. There must be one somewhere. Try LexisNexis or Google, Tom.

Those are just a few ideas. I'd still like to think that N.I.C.E. supporters can think of other more persuasive ways to respond.

I keep hoping to be convinced. I've been talking and listening to N.I.C.E. supporters. I talk to Richard Lompa too, and I keep hoping he's wrong. But I still see that cheap bag of tricks I've seen from the start.

Please, N.I.C.E. people, please! Sketch out your vision. Let me see what you see. Exactly how would the N.I.C.E. banners, the regularly emptied designer trash cans, the clean sidewalks, and the farmers markets accumulate such a swarm of consumers to be worth the money? I keep asking, but I'm always disappointed.

I can't even get a consistent answer on the alleged gerrymandering. First, it was the consultant's fault. Then, the steering committee deliberately lopped off property on the extremes. No, wait! Walter Connolly's supposedly lopped-off property really is in the district after all!

Who's going to do the day-to-day work? The nearly-burned-out volunteers I keep hearing about? The answer: oh, we don't know. Staffing would be decided by the board. Come on, now. First, that answer just stokes the fears of small property owners afraid the board would be dominated by "fat cats." (After a phone call from Richard Lompa, "fat cats" kind of rings in my ears for a while.) Second, it misses a chance to provide a vision. Does anyone know basic salesmanship on the N.I.C.E. side?

Maybe they do, in fact. Their strategy, I'm told, is to approach each landowner individually. I'm not a N.I.C.E. landowner, so I've not had such a whisper in my ear. The N.I.C.E. people might have magic up their sleeves. But they've shown no sign of it publicly.

Is this a preview of the politics to come? Will skeptics be marginalized? Will whispered campaigns and straw-man arguments be the accepted style of debate?

Tom says, "Some of us have chosen the action route." I know what he means. I spent 10 years along the "action route" for the Sierra Club's once-great Clair Tappaan Lodge. When I tried to gather political steam by building a group I called Friends of the Lodge, the others just kept yakking about how to change the light bulbs.

I've chosen the "action route" here too. The role of a skeptic, in Point Richmond right now, is to question what may actually be a good idea until the answers ring true. I'm doing my best.