Calhouns Can(n)ons

. . . While Visions of Sugarplums Danced In Their Heads . . .

While 4,500 clueless people in Los Osos – those in the gun sights of the RWQCB but oblivious of same – go about their happy Christmas preparation, below is some correspondence from one The Los Osos 45 to Michael Thomas, RWQCB. The RWQCB’s foregone conclusion, kangaroo court hearings may or may not be on January 22 (there have been so many continuances, scuttled plans, moved goal posts, changed rules, violated due process, citizens jerked around for a whole year, who can say what this Board or staff will dream up next?), so this is how the Moylans will be spending THEIR Christmas Vacation.

If you’re one of the 4,5000 clueless, you might want to read this correspondence and think especially carefully about Bev’s final Dec 20, 11:01 pm. email, paragraph two, three and four. Then you might want to hoik yourself down to Coast Savings next to the Post Office and donate funds to the Prohibition Zone Legal Defense Fund, a small group of CDO recipients who are working hard to protect your due process rights (you’re next, trust me on this one,) and continue to work for a win/win alternative settlement, since the settlement agreement presented to the Board at the Dec 14 hearing, has some really dangerous legal traps imbedded in it, traps I would bet the farm the signers of same were totally unaware of, especially since some of those promising to sign hadn’t even read a final version of same. Talk about “duress,” this agreeing to blind sign a “contract?” Not even sleazy used car salesmen are allowed to get away with that under California law.

I’ve re-stacked these for chronology. Posted with permission from Bev DeWitt-Moylan

Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 4:35 PM
Subject: Los Osos CDO hearing

Mr. Moylan and Mrs. Dewitt-Moylan:
The Water Board continued your hearing to January 22 at 1:00. The Water Board also continued the hearings for Mr. and Mrs. Mortara (and two others) to the same date. We will send you a hearing notice for the January 22 hearing, including a list of the evidence submitted into the record at the December 14 and 15 hearings, as soon as possible.
Thank you
Michael Thomas

12/20/2006 6:50 AM >>>
Mr. Thomas,
Thank you for your message regarding the continuance of our hearing to January 22 at 1 PM and your promise to send by post a notice of the hearing and the submitted evidence list.
This hearing is scheduled, of course, in the middle of my teaching day when I would normally be involved in a session in Atascadero with a multihandicapped blind young woman and her parent. Just for your information her handicaps involve blindness, severe developmental delay, autism, and medical fragility. Following that missed session I will also be unavailable for a Braille instruction session with a blind third-grade student in Creston, and his teacher will receive no consultation that day.
As you mentioned to me in a recent message, government agency business supercedes any personal business of any citizen. As you may know, my service to the blind and visually impaired students of this county is governed by legally binding documents, called Individualized Education Plans. These documents are based on assessment and research. Negotiated and agreed upon at IEP meetings, signed by teachers, parents, school administrators, any advocates present, and any state agency representatives present, as well as by the student if able, the IEP includes the frequency and duration of my service to each student. The services provided in this document can hardly be termed personal business. My students are entitled by law under IDEA to this individualized educational plan. Parents and students of legal age are entitled to due process if any part of the agreement or its execution is in dispute.
Because of the seriousness of this legally binding document and because no one with my credentials is available to substitute for me in this county, I have accrued 184 sick leave days over the past 25 years with the County Office of Education. It is my practice to serve my students. I am bound to serve my students. Attendance at professional development sessions, such as the class in trauma in children which I attended in Carlsbad last week has the function of improving my level of service to my students and their families and to school personnel. Two of the three days of this intensive class occurred on the weekend.
At least four teachers of students with special needs are among the first round of citizens in receipt of CDO documents, and at least three of us are bound in our service by Individualized Education Plans. As a state agent and public servant, you respect the authority of regulations that govern how you conduct the business of your agency. As a San Luis Obispo County Office of Education employee and public servant I respect the authority of the regulations that govern the education of children.
Though it probably goes without saying, I hope I have conveyed through these comments the seriousness of the RWQCB's overriding the requirements of my public position, requiring me to leave my students in the middle of my teaching day yet again, in order to comply with the requirements of your agency.

Thank you,
Beverley De Witt-Moylan




Wednesday, December 20, 2006 5:09 PM
Subject: Re: Los Osos CDO hearing

Mrs. Dewitt-MoylanIt is difficult, if not impossible, to schedule hearings at a time that is convenient to all participants. Would it be better to have your hearing later in the day on January 22?

Michael Thomas


Wednesday, December 20, 2006 11:01 PM
Subject: Re: Los Osos CDO hearing

Mr. Thomas,

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to your question regarding my ability to attend the CDO hearing at a later time on January 22, 2007. As an itinerant consulting teacher I fully appreciate your comment regarding the difficulty of scheduling hearing dates and times acceptable to all participants. My professional position as a Vision Specialist requires that I develop a personal schedule that accommodates the schedules of many other specialists involved with my students, a schedule that also coincides with each school's schedule. Each year, and in some cases more than once in the school year, through cooperation and compromise specialists are able to formulate a matrix that meets our need to schedule our own individual sessions while best serving the goals and objectives of each student. We are all well aware that the goals and objectives drive the process, and so we are able to come to agreement to facilitate the outcome we all desire, which is the program that best benefits the child.

I do not need to tell you that had the water board followed the procedure of notifying citizens first of perceived violations, the subsequent complicated repeated scheduling and rescheduling of hearings would not have been necessary. The interference in the individual lives and schedules of dozens of extremely busy homeowners and their families would not have been necessary. The difficulty of your accommodating a variety of schedules could have been avoided altogether.

Imagine what could have happened if a spirit of professional cooperation and compromise had prevailed. Your board, which has no money for a mediator or for vidoetaping the hearings, would not have had to spend hundreds of staff hours and thousands upon thousands of taxpayer funds conducting the CDO hearing process to which you are committed and in which you have been engaged for almost a year but have yet to complete the processing of just 45 of the almost 5000 properties. Instead of a mere 45 properties, many more homes would have already pumped, inspected, and repaired their septic systems, as your board desires, had they been notified a year ago of a violation and given an opportunity to mitigate through the same process your board ordered in the CDO. But instead, your executive officer determined to follow the much more rigid and difficult CDO process, bringing with it the potential of years of litigation with no mitigation in a process easily conceived whose outcome now is uncertain.

If the water board has difficulty scheduling hearings to accommodate all those involved in this so-far abortive process of CDO enforcement, if the board is in financial difficulty and cannot pay for services like a mediator, then the board might consider achieving compliance by an avenue other than the CDO process, which has proven so much more expensive in taxpayer funds, personal funds, staff time, and personal time for those in receipt of CDO documents.

With regard to my schedule on Monday, January 22, my duty day extends through 4:30 pm. I will complete a Braille session with a third grade student in Creston at 3pm. Because I drive a SLOCOE vehicle, it is necessary for me to return it to the office on Highway One before I would be able to drive across town to the water board site. The drive from Creston to the County Office of Education takes 45 minutes. I would be able to leave the office between 3:50 and 4 pm depending on traffic, and could probably be at the RWQCB site before or by 4:30 pm, depending on traffic.

Thank you,

Beverley De Witt-Moylan