Calhouns Can(n)ons

The Children’s Hour

The newly elected CSD board held a pretend meeting on Thursday, Sept. 29th, which turned into a Thank-You fest. (Full disclosure: My “public comment” was to recommend the board have some huge banners printed up and displayed in the auditorium [during CSD meetings] with Mark Twain’s dictum on them: “Always tell the truth. It will astonish your friends and confound your enemies.” If the previous CSD board members who had just been recalled had done that years ago, perhaps we wouldn’t be in this present predicament.”)

Covering the meeting the next day, the Tribune quoted former board member Gordon Hensley as saying that he thought this pretend meeting looked “ . . like the petulant children have taken over. It’s a tantrum.” The paper did note that Hensley wasn’t actually present at the meeting, so I had to presume he was watching the proceedings on TV? But the comment was a pretty good illustration of the tin-earedness that landed all three directors out onto the street. Instead of actually hearing what those tantrum-tossing “children” were really talking about, they were dismissed and sent to bed without milk and cookies. And, like all wicked children, they would have their final say.

On the other hand, I had to really wonder: How could Gordon have forgotten? This “children’s hour” of a meeting caused in me an immediate flash-back to the very first meeting of the very first CSD. There was the same childlish glee, the same “thank-you’s,” the same hopeful huzzahs from a grateful audience, the same snarky, heh-heh-we-won triumph. Surely Gordon couldn’t have possibly have forgotten that, could he?

Over at, New Times, Cartoonist Russell Hodin’s wicked take was to show a box nailed shut with the name “Pandora’s Box” on it Her name had been crudely crossed out and above it was the word, “Ballot.”

No doubt, sly reference to the final campaign contribution figures (and donors) which have yet to be reported out. It’ll be interesting to see just who and how much came in to each campaign war chest at the last minute. That’s the ridiculous way our laws allow us to do it – deliberate cluelessness -- Please don’t let us know until after it’s too late, until after the election’s over, just who the big rollers were, please, please.

Tonight, Saturday, Oct 1, in a special meeting at Sunnyside school, the new CSD board, now officially certified and sworn in, will hold a “real” meeting. In what can only be described as another tin-eared, irony-free comment, former board member Gordon Hensley was quoted in the Trib as asking of this Saturday meeting, “What’s the rush? Usually the old board meets with the new board. There’s the passing of the gavel.”

Apparently, Gordon completely forgot that the old CSD board president Stan Gustafson canceled the regular board meeting set for the 29th. That would have been the perfect time for the old board to post notice, amend the old agenda, then engage in all the nice “gavel passing” that Gordon mentioned.

And as for Gordon’s question as to “What the rush?” Uh, Gordon, let me take a guess here. Could it be the new board felt it critical to vote to issue a stop-work order to the contractors who, without that official stop-work order would continue digging holes in the ground, shoveling tax payer money into the holes, then covering them up – a process they’d keep on doing world without end amen, until they received an official, legal order from a duly elected board – like, say, a meeting the old CSD board could have called even before the election and themselves voted on just such a contingency, should the recall be successful. That’s what a fiscally responsible board that cared about not wasting taxpayer money would have done.

Of course, if the former CSD board had not turn-keyed the contractors until after the election, and then set an earlier election date (exactly what the recall supporters begged for), NONE of this wasted money would have been pounded into the ground in the first place. That waste is totally the responsibility of the former board majority. So if anyone in the community wants to whine and wring their hands about pounding money down rat holes, please go see Gordon, Stan and Richard, thank you.

Also up for Saturday’s agenda is a decision that could be described as: “What do we do about Bruce Buel, the general manager? And whatever shall we do with our newly hired PIO, Mike “No Spin” Drake? The Trib reports that Bruce is retiring in January anyway so his severance agreement will take him to that point, no harm, no loss. He could head to France without missing a single paycheck. [Correction, as per Director Shicker at the 10/1 CSD meeting, the Trib had the date wrong; Bruce's contract is up in 07, not 06. So, there goes France, at least for a while. Dang! )

As for Mr. Drake, however, the Trib reports that he’s considering “challenging the board’s decision if it violates the terms of his contract” . . . but “. . .declined to elaborate,” which is good since elaboration usually leads directly into “spin” of some kind and that’s the one thing Mr. Drake needs to avoid at all costs.

Meantime, the world waits with bated breath for Mr. Roger Briggs of the RWQCB to check in. The key question for him and the Regional Board is this: Do you want a wastewater project that the whole community can get behind and then, with the RWQCB’s help, rapidly move forward on getting it built? Or do you want the entrenched, go-nowhere-forever, Pyrrhic battle of a wasteful legal World War Three? Take your pick.

While Los Osos waits, I would suggest we all read the Oct 1, Tribune letters section and especially a letter from Bill Garfinkle, who ran some voter numbers, noted that about 34% of the registered voters couldn’t be bothered to vote in this election , and then concluded that “22.8 percent of the people (less than one in four) made the decision for all of us as to how we will spend a large amount of our income for the next 20 to 30 years.”

It’s a quote that needs to be emblazoned onto a banner and strung up at the entrance to the town. Additionally, maybe it’s now time for a New Rule: When you hear someone whining or complaining about this election, the old Board, the new Board, sewer this, sewer that, and all that “wasted money,” FIRST ask them IF they voted. If they didn’t, you have my permission to slap some duct tape on their mouths and then sit them down in a chair and force them to look at the big, ugly, stupid expensive mess at the Tri W site for 10 days.

Then, from that point unto the end of time, they’re to . . .ZIP IT!