Calhouns Can(n)ons

Nice Work If You Can Get It . . .

Ah, sweet! Little Tribune “CountyRoundup” notice: “The former general manager of the Los Osos Community Serviced District may head to Nipomo. Bruce Buel, who was placed on administrative leave by the Los Osos district’s board in October, would work as an assistant to Nipomo’s general manager, Michael LeBrun.”

The pay for the new job? $84,000, plus benefits. This on top of the $94,000 a-year paycheck he’s still getting from his original CSD contract.

Sweet! And who said this train wreck was a disaster?

Not known is whether Nipomo will wait to hear from the local District Attorney. He’s trying to figure out how it came to pass that Bruce signed a contract with the engineering firm, Watson Montgomery Harza, on behalf of the CSD before he had even been hired and before the CSD Board even voted to approve the money. Ah, well, it's just one of those little Los Ososian puzzles that litter our little town that remain to be solved.

Over at http://www.sewerwatch.blogspot.com/, Ron Crawford has posted his complaint to the local Grand Jury. In it, he “alleges that the initial CSD Board of Directors, subsequent Directors up to 2005, and staff members, deliberately misled, from 2000-2005, the County of San Luis Obispo, the California Coastal Commission and the Regional Water Quality Control Board that a ’strongly held community value’ exists in Los Osos that any wastewater treatment facility must also double as a ‘centrally located’’ recreational asset.’

“Evidence shows that the initial CSD Board manufactured that ‘strongly held community value, in an attempt to coerce regulators into approving the ‘centrally located’ Tri-W site as the location of their second proposed wastewater treatment facility/public park, even though evidence shows there was no rationale to site the second faciity at Tri-W.”

Well, good luck to him. I hope the Grand Jury does look into this matter since that’s one of the great puzzles to this whole train wreck -- Just why the old board clung so ferociously to the that Tri-W site when it was clear to many there simply was no point to it once the Ponds of Avalon bit the dust.

If the Grand Jury is supposed to “investigate local government agencies and official to form a view as to whether they are acting properly,” then The Hideous Sewer Project is just ripe for a look-see.

Of course, whatever reports they end up writing usually get tossed in the trash can by the very people they’re reporting on – “Oh, thanks soooo much for this scathing report on my appalling incompetence and malfeasance. I’ll cherish it . . . right here in this round file with the old MacDonald wrappers and cigarette butts.”

So, while this would be a worthy project, I won't exactly hold my breath. Not in this county, anyway.