Saturday, April 22, 2006
START YOUR CLOCKS NOW: If You Received a CDO, On April 28th, you will have fifteen minutes to present your case, cross examine witnesses, present evidence, etc. You will NOT be allowed to repeat testimony from other parties and of course, you will or will not be allowed whatever the Chairman determines you will or will not be allowed to present. If your individual case is "scientifically" complicated and involves a lot of technical experts, tough. Fifteen minutes, buster. Thus are your "rights" secured. All fifteen minutes of them. Also remember, this will be considered a "fair" hearing. Fifteen minutes. Oh, and if you don't show up and don't receive a continuance, you "will be in default and will be deemed to have waived the right to testify at the hearing," which may put you out of the "rights" loop forever. So, Good luck to us all in the land of the free, home of the brave, fifteen minutes of justice for all. The Proceedings for April 28, 2006 CDO hearings now online at www.waterboards.ca.gov/centralcoast/los%o2osos/index.htm.
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16 comments:
Well.....15 minutes AND 20 plus years to present their case....
Close Ann, but not quite...
The correct link is http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/centralcoast/los%20osos/Index.htm.
[Note: I use "ctrl-c" to copy and "ctrl-v" to paste so I don't need to worry about typing the URLs correctly.]
Thanks for the tip ... good reading for everyone in the PZ. I like the way the RWQCB prosecution team has put their response online in advance. Presumably this gives those with CDOs a good idea of what arguments will be the best to make.
Their response to the claim that the CDOs would cause our overdraft situation to worsen was interesting reading. Presumably anyone who would want to re-argue this point with the RWQCB would want to re-read the Cleath report carefully to see if the RWQCB claims are reasonable.
The CDOs are going thru. The arguments put forth by the CSD are weak.
There is only one part of the hearing that appears that it may be productive:
1:00 Break for Lunch
Nice “spin” Ann! Take something out of context and it can be spun anyway the writer wants and nobody will be the wiser. Most of your readership has no access to the online water board pdfs that dots every ‘i’ and crosses every ‘t’. You make no mention in your blog that all those that will be responding at the hearing have seen all of this detail!
But of course, you know this. The fact that every CDO recipient has had three months to research and respond and has had access to all details by both sides prior to the hearing is no consequence?
Three minutes at public comment seems to allow a lot of information to be communicated. Having followed closely the water boards processes live and on replays, if someone truly has a novel alternative as a defense, the board seems to have a tolerance for having the public be heard.
If the same argument is expressed over and over, it will no doubt be disallowed. You know, like the old CSD board meetings where public comment consisted of the same people rotating through multiple times repeating the same comments (and of course being off topic as well)!
It is interesting how Ann focuses on the 15 minutes.
In 15 minutes, one could easily cite 2-3 case law precedents if that would give their argument strength, and you can bet the RWQCB (which has two lawyers) would listen very intently.
Why is Ann not grilling the CSD's lawyers??? Jeez, Ann, if you hired a lawyer, wouldn't you be shaking down every single argument they give you to see if it holds water??
It's just amazing how a single writer can instill and strengthen so many misconceptions and try to deflect responsibility for a problem.
When all these appeals flop like a flat pancake, and the courts end up assigning these humungous debts, (and with no project), of course we'll see no acceptance of any responsibility for this mess from Ann. Only more inconsequential commentary like 'I just don't understand what was going thru the minds of the old board'.
HELLO - they didn't want to get fined, or sue the state, and they believed it wasn't going to get cheaper, and they were fallable huming beings - OK, Ann, it's that simple. It's not complex.
Awaiting more inconsequential commentary from Ann.
All spin and history aside. The constraints and limits to how one can respond to the CDO's sure looks like a stacked deck.
Question: Is see the map with all the little flags but is there a list of specific addresses of those properties which have received CDO's? I see on the RWQRB website it says: "Upon the receipt of Public Records Act requests for the names and property addresses of all Designated Parties, the Water Board will release those names and addresses, except the names and addresses of the Designated Parties who submitted sufficient ecidence of overriding privacy conerns that justify the witholding of their names under the Public Records Act." How does one go about submitting a Public Records Act request? Is there a published list of those addresses which have not asked for privacy?
And what are the implications for other properties in the future? After this first set of CDO's will there be more?
The entire Prohibition zone is to be CDOed, approximately 5000 homes!
The logistics of this nightmare is boggling. Do the math yourself. Gallons per day . Truck load by truck load to Santa Maria down LOVR & or US 1 through SLO. 50-60+ houses worth every day of the year during a 12 hour daylight period. Possible $1000 per dium fine if you miss your pump schedule. Our tax dollars at work bringing Justice to Los Osos.
What was everyone doing for the past 20 years that it came to this? Disagreeing with each other as to what should be done.
We will pump, and and then we will be fined and pump some more.
Put the WWTF out of town? We will only add more voices to the battle - those from out of town. More delays.
Dissolve the CSD, otherwise NOTHING in this picture is going to change.
Sewertoons said:"Dissolve the CSD, otherwise NOTHING in this picture is going to change."
Could somebody please spell out for me exactly what would happen if the County took the CSD over, including the wastewater functions? Has county engineering already signed off on the Tri W site? The SRF loan is gone and apparently now it's required to have a Prop 218 vote to get any new loan. Would enough people vote for Tri W? Would someone in town sue the county to block the site -- again? Would the County be able to get any system up and running faster than the CSD? And so forth. I hear a lot of people saying that dissolving the CSD will "solve" the problems, (the RWQCB has officially stated that the CDOs are a totally separate item and have no relationship to what the county is or isn't doing) but I haven't heard any concrete information as to just what that would entail. Oh, and there's still the problem of whether the county wants the sewer mess back in the first place.
Your argument is that going to the County won't solve the problem any faster.
There are two reasons it could.
It reduces local conflict significantly out of the decision making process - somewhat like arbitration. No one can dispute the mulitiple divisions (no sewer only septics, no Tri-W, no out-of-town, no this, no that).
The County has the financial resources to back funding - the CSD does not. No one can dispute this.
A 218 vote to secure an SRF loan is irrelevant at this point. The community screwed up it's ability to get a SRF loan without the 218 liens. The reason for a 218 requirement is because it was never necessary - no one had ever defaulted. It is not, as some people claim, because 218 is a legal requirement for a sewer.
Yes, it's sad if it has to come to that. But those are the facts.
Ann wants us to believe that the County will take about as long as the CSD would, at least in part because they don't want the hot potato.
Well, they've already fessed up that if the CSD is dissolved, they are the group holding the bag. They've also got more clout to borrow money at a better rate and to get better bids from contractors than the CSD does since October 2005. Lastly, they can probably get around a 218 vote if they needed to but the CSD has no such hope.
Now I am not arguing that dissolution would be the best choice, but if the LOCSD board keeps making decisions that will make it even more difficult for us to solve our problems, they will force me to support dissolution.
Sharky, you are so full of it... you advocate dissolution on here all the time.
Dissolvers, make sure when you campaign for dissolution you let everyone know that you oppose a 218 vote.
I am sure everyone would love to hear you want to take away that property owner's right.
Let them know you want to take away their right to say whether they want their home leined or not.
Let them know you want the county to be able to hold them responsible for whatever poor decisions, mistakes, parks, and wave walls that they want to create... and to use their homes as collateral... WITHOUT their permission!!!
Be sure to include that in all your pretty brochures and "behavior based marketing" strategies.
To our anonymous friend.
If you think I am advocating dissolution all the time you might not be reading very carefully ... perhaps you are reading selectively and not all the content. There are benefits and drawbacks with keeping the CSD and there are with dissolution. The question is whether it is a good move now or not.
I am leaning for dissolution for reasons I've stated here before, but have many hesitations for reasons I've also stated here before. The issue in my mind is largely one of whether our community is so split that we'll never be able to build at TriW (because of the CCLO influence) or out of town (because of the TW influence). If our community is so split that the LOCSD will be forever hamstrung by opponants, we'll all suffer greatly.
As Ron suggests, we would probably be better if one group or the other would just move out of town and let the others have it their way. The problem is that both sides think they are right and both sides are unwilling to move.
So ... do you think that the LOCSD will be able to pull it off? Convince me that they have a realistic chance and you will have won a vote against dissolution. I would love to have a good reason to vote "no" on that one.
As to the 218 vote ... it appears now necessary even if we want a SRF. It will also be difficult to pass if a large fraction of people would vote against any particular project (whether TriW or "Ripley").
The benefit of the County taking over is that they could borrow the money by using some other source of collateral and then charge us later in our sewer bills for the interst they had to pay during the three year construction time period. Nope a 218 vote is best but the County could always force the issue. The LOCSD has no way of paying for the mandated project if the vote were to fail.
Gee Sharkey, Lots of reasons to be for this or that, What should we DO now? Me, I'm supporting the doomed 45. They is us.
The pumping scheme sucks,I mean, why bother, as far as I can guess ( and I'm often right) LAFCO will tell us " tough luck", The county will be off the hook and we will PAY BIG TIME!!!
"Affordibilty is a tricky problem"
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