Oceano could soon be home to two separate community advisory councils: one with members who unanimously support the elimination of off-roading in the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area (SVRA) and one with members who are adamantly against it.
At its upcoming meeting on June 8, the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to consider a resolution recognizing the formation of a new community advisory council, the Vitality Advisory Council of Oceano. The group, according to a county staff report, first formed and requested recognition in April.
“We are a diverse group of interested citizens and business owners in the historic and proud community of Oceano,” the Vitality Advisory Council of Oceano wrote in an April 18 letter to 4th District Supervisor Lynn Compton, who represents Oceano. “The recent decisions made by the California Coastal Commission, which profoundly impacts Oceano, as well as other long unresolved issues, require a responsive, locally informed voice.”
The letter is signed by founding members Linda Austin, president of the Oceano Community Services District; Adam Verdin, co-owner of Old Juan’s Cantina; Marios Pougioukas, owner of the Rock and Roll Diner; Barney Foster, a recent failed candidate for the Oceano Community Services District; Gina McMahon; and Jonathan Rodriguez.
To members of the already existing council, the Oceano Advisory Council, this looks like a strategy on Compton’s part to silence the voices of those who disagree with her.
“Believe me, we are going to speak out,” said Allene Villa, chair of the Oceano Advisory Council. “We’re not going to take it, and I believe we’re going to be victorious.”
The Oceano Advisory Council has been meeting regularly since it was officially recognized by the Board of Supervisors in 1996. Community advisory councils don’t have any real voting power, and their members aren’t always chosen through an election process, but, once recognized, they have to follow strict regulations and offer insight about various local issues to the county.
Community advisory councils usually receive a small amount of funding from the Board of Supervisors, although the board isn’t required to fund them.
In April, Villa said the Oceano Advisory Council sent a line-by-line budget request to Compton’s office detailing funding needs through December 2022. The request, which totaled $4,832, included items like office supplies, website maintenance, and a Zoom contract. The most expensive request was a one-year contract with Survey Monkey—at a cost of $2,700—for a proposed community needs assessment regarding the future of Pier Avenue.
The Oceano Advisory Council never heard back from Compton’s office on the budget, Villa said, which she thought was strange. Members even asked about the request during public comment at Board of Supervisors meetings in May. But when Villa heard about the new advisory council, which she said consists of ardent off-roading supporters, everything became clear.
Villa suspects Compton will try to put most, if not all, of her funds toward the Vitality Advisory Council of Oceano, effectively disbanding the long-running Oceano Advisory Council. Villa called the move “undemocratic.”
But Supervisor Compton said the formation of the new Vitality Advisory Council of Oceano wasn’t her idea. She said she’s received numerous calls and complaints about members of the existing Oceano Advisory Council—who are unanimously in support of the Coastal Commission’s decision to ban off-roading in the Oceano Dunes SVRA—refusing to consider the views and opinions of those in Oceano’s business and off-roading community.
So when several community members asked if she’d support the formation of another advisory council, she said she thought it sounded like a fine idea. She likes to hear from both sides, she said, and the creation of one advisory council doesn’t equate to the elimination of another.
“I think it’s a good thing,” she said. “The more input the better.”
Although Compton wouldn’t say whether she planned to approve the current advisory council’s most recent budget request, she doesn’t plan to cut off all of its future funding.
“So if either group brings good projects forward I’m likely to fund them,” she said.
Still, Charles Varni, vice chair of the Oceano Advisory Council, remains staunchly opposed to the formation of another advisory council. Varni said the current council has taken pains to get input from the business and off-roading community in Oceano. He personally contacted some of the members of the new council earlier this year when the existing council was recruiting new members in hopes they’d apply. So he takes issue with Compton’s characterization of the Oceano Advisory Council as being biased and unwilling to listen.
“That’s an absolute lie,” he said. Δ
This article appears in Jun 3-13, 2021.
Compton attended exactly one OAC meeting in the years I was there. She doesn’t have a complacent and toothless lapdog stocked with her buddies anymore, but a diverse council that asks pointed questions and makes reasonable demands in the furtherance of its purposes:
– To develop and maintain community involvement in the promotion of sound, comprehensive planning and development in the greater Oceano area;
– To hold public meetings and conduct surveys or studies; to provide for and facilitate public education and awareness of planning and community development issues;
– To advocate and lobby for the Oceano community; to promote equitable community representation and inclusion of the public in community issues; to provide a two-way channel for communications between the community and County elected officials and public agencies;
– To build a sense of community and civic involvement; to provide a civic forum for open
and civil discussion of public issues affecting the community.
The existing OAC has been doing a good job fulfilling these purposes, despite Compton’s lack of responsiveness and publicly expressed derision, and the County should continue to fully fund it. Oceano doesn’t need a Visionless Advisory Council of Offroaders pushing its narrow agenda.
Thank you Supervisor Lynn “Marsha” Compton for being inclusive, not divisive. That new bronze hair color is working for you. Oceano values diverse participation from actual minority business owners (not fake business proxies) and minority residents in our community, those who PERSONALLY ENGAGE with many of our residents, those who also represent real Native Americans interests in Oceano, those who volunteer, those who PARTICIPATE CONSTRUCTIVELY, and those who spend time and money to construct nice things for our community, I may add. All of the those founding members listed in the Vitality Advisory Council of Oceano should be involved in representing real interests of the members of our lovely bedroom community. Allene Villa, Cynthia Replogle, Charles Varni are just sore losers because they’ve never received an invite to Oceano’s famous secret “taco parties.” Why? Because they are destructive. They do not create anything of real value to our community. They lodge endless complaints and cause divisiveness and disharmony within Oceano and other parts of our county. They own very little, exhibit poor public behavior in meetings and public events, have no or little APPLIED experience nor APPLIED knowledge in their fields of political interests but want to make decisions for major shareholders and others professionals who risk their economic livelihoods and their personal lives supporting our community. Shit the first time I attended one of those “subversive” shindigs I thought I landed on the moon. It was like I walked onto a Stanley Kubrick movie set, staring Hunter Thompson (me), along with a well coifed cast of costumed characters from both the left and the right “sides” of the aisle who joyfully serenaded each other with refined conversions, fine wine, tacos, Halcyon ditch weed, whiskey, famous stories from the Oceano’s past told by famous resident authors, mystics, pipe layers, firemen, business owners, real estate brokers, vintners, farmers, sailers, pilots, scientists, physicist, doctors, famous athletes, along with other luminaries, and the TACO KING. For me it was an irreproachable eye-wide-shut moment. Again, I felt like I landed on the moon, diverse people from our community, and from the furthest reaches of our county enjoyed each others company and shared valuable poignant moments without “poor” Replogle and her sycophant armed gang of violent political stalkers busting in on the fun with protest signs, taser weapons, and tear gas canisters. Now “poor” Replogle, Varni, Villa, and the “Queen of the Yoga Pants,” aka: “The Bubnash,” stream their online crocodile tears like a virus because they ran out of people to bully. Bubnash served us another one of her classic vocal fried wedge salad with liberal helpings of Charles Varni’s shit salad dressing. No Monkeys left to Survey, Bubnash.
Did “Ms. Bubanash” get a tongue rash from a Rhodesian salt lick?
Ms. Bubanash thought we were trapped on “Old Whitney Mc Donald’s Gay Animal Farm” in Arroyo Grande. Bubanash though we were going to sing “ey eye ey eye oh,” “with an oink oink here,” “and a cluck cluck there?” Nope we don’t allow “filthy heirloom cocks” nor “pot belly pigs” to roam freely without detention on the mean streets of Oceano. We have standards here. All those roaming uptown farm animals in AG are a huge distraction, not to mention a public safety and health risk. That’s why we gave Ms. April Dury the boot. Notwithstanding “AJ” Dury’s past criminal behavior of moral turpitude, Ms. Bubanash has made moral lapses in judgement with promoting dangerous untrustworthy individuals such as Ms. Dury. The entire Democrat party stepped away from Ms. Dury and her dangerous antics. Stop giving these mentally unstable people a platform to censor, stalk, and spread innuendos about respected and valued members of our community.
The Kentucky Colonel
Lordy, this poor man. Mental illness is no joke and he deserves the treatment hes been denying himself. So sad.
Seems like a high school student could raise $2,700 dollars for Cynthia Replogle and Charles Varni’s membership to Survey Monkey. But then again perhaps Tommy Gong’s wife would embezzle the funds…but poor Tommy and his wife are sent packing to a higher paying job to “care for his aging parents,” right after his wife has served her jail sentence for stealing from children. Perhaps Replogle, Varni, or Villa might subvert Survey Monkey funds or misuse Survey Monkey accounts for political exploitation or personal business use outside of OCSD purview or scope? This sounds like an expense a well known fake “rocket scientist” in our community would use for their own personal business. If you cannot raise money from residents, businesses, and politicians in your own community what does that say about you? Volumes.
Yes, Ms. Dury who drives for Uber.
It’s so unfortunate that someone with absolutely no comprehension of the role of an advisory council, how an advisory council is funded, the transparency and accountability check-points that are in place, and even, in this case who the current members of their very own advisory council are instead chooses to spew mentally-unbalanced disinformation into the ether.
But, this is America, land of the free and home to the willfully ignorant.
http://nebula.wsimg.com/4f7cef19e7a6b6f205…
It’s a shame how willfully ignorant people choose to be in our community.
http://nebula.wsimg.com/4f7cef19e7a6b6f205…
Yes we do understand, AJ Dury. In practice, most residents of Oceano reject advice from felons who agressively stalk residents and OCSD Boardmembers, those who use foul language in public meetings, those who harass OCSD district employees, those who embezzle money from their employers, those who verbally assault baristas, those who refuse to wear protective masks in businesses, those who recently drove for Uber after a prison sentence, and those who use basic consumer off-the-shelf tax software to conduct business as reputable bookkeeping service. Our parents taught us how to spot grifters.
Yes, Ms. AJ Dury, I am willfully ignorant to argue with you online in-between your second breakfast. That’s why I take my midday bong hits before 10:00 a.m., dear.
The Kentucky Colonel
Love thy neighbor.
Love thy cake. Vitality Council of Oceano serves better tacos, and also offers cake and Native American fry bread with local honey for vegetarians. Love thy cake.
I think it would be wise to have Julie Tacker check the Oceano Advisory Council receipts and investigate Director Replogle’s demand for public funds. Julie should also investigate Director Replogle’s real motivation for Survey Monkey account.
April Dury, Julie Tacker, Karen Velie of Cal Coast News constantly try to target minorities who expose their hate crimes and bigotry. Our Brokeback Sheriff and his Bareback Baptist Barrister boyfriend remain silent while their gang of “righteous” proxies from the Cal Coast News spread dangerous innuendoes to attack the character of respectable residents of our community, verbally assault residents in public meetings, lodge endless false legal claims against politicians and residents who get in their way.
April Dury, along with her ex-parter-in-crime Cynthia Replogle, and Allene Villa, all lack a sense of self awareness. They treat prominent members of our community like idiots. All of them lack social graces in public, and leadership skills. All of them are socially awkward. None of them have held meaningful engagements with the business, unhoused, and minorities communities. They are superficial, period.
Let’s go back 30 plus years. Kasey Bubnash wasn’t even born yet. Mayor Caren Ray wasn’t even a Russom yet. Young Ray-Ray was running topless through the gay college streets of Westwood Village with her girlfriend sorority gang to tank up at Stratton’s Bar and Grill. She was part of a collegial drinking club with a running habit. Her late night weekend evenings would typically end in the back of a bar in Westwood Village tossing up her guts to the Anglo Saxon porcelain god, or found studying at “The Diddy” – Diddy Riese Cookies. While college Ray-Ray was downstairs in Stratton’s, I was upstairs sitting with the Capo of West LAPD and his wife, My Jewish Boss and his Shiksa girlfriend, our mutual mercenary friend from South Africa named Sasha and his Kiev stripper roommate (and sometime high class call girl, now a well know LA attorney) named Jordana, Jaime Monroe (actor), a Mexican bodybuilder and his perpetually drunk brother, our mutual friend Matt from Switzerland, who worked for the Swiss Bank – along with his flavor of the week, and my girlfriend who I would later marry named Louisa – who happened to be a Diplomat from the government of Quebec at the time. I was already serving as a member of technology advisory council at Sinai Temple along with two additional industry and military advisory councils when Caren Ray Russom decided to turn her Wonder-Bra into a water balloon slingshot on the campus of UCLA. Good for her. I ended my professional career in defense as a PAID advisor and consultant to NATO and their commanders, HEADS OF STATES, DARPA, CIA, FBI, Naval Research Laboratory, NASA, UK Defense, US Army Special Operations, Navy SEALS, MARSOC US Marines Special Operations Command, and several industry advisory councils.
I am actually trustworthy, not a filthy politician.
AJ Dury, Cynthia Replogle, and Alene Villa, all suffer from a sense of self awareness. No experience, no leadership, no influence.
Lions eat lambs.
The Rhodesian