The Oceano Advisory Council’s future is on San Luis Obispo County’s chopping block.
Come Dec. 6, the county Board of Supervisors will discuss withdrawing its recognition of the advisory council. The topic made the supervisors’ agenda after 4th District Supervisor Lynn Compton publicly criticized the group for trying to get a vacation rental ordinance in place.
“This is a group that is going behind the backs of business owners and individuals for their own personal gain,” she said at the Nov. 2 meeting.
The advisory council irked a group of residents and vacation rental owners in Oceano after a September meeting where it devised a draft plan about a vacation rental ordinance that could one day be presented to the supervisors. At that meeting, some attendees were worried that the potential ordinance could increase the cost of vacation rentals and prevent owners from passing expensive rental permits on to new owners.
An Oct. 28 petition circulated among the community, asking the supervisors to reject the proposed ordinance—in part because of the way the advisory council notified Oceano residents about the vacation rental ordinance discussion.
“In terms of notifying residents of this ordinance discussion, the board members placed flyers only on the doors of neighbors on the inland side of Highway 1,” the petition read. “They did not place flyers on the coastal side of Highway 1, which is where the vast majority of the vacation home business licenses exist.”
Other complaints documented in the petition include name-calling by members of the advisory council. Signed by more than 100 people, the statement alleged that council members called property owners the “mafia” and vacation rental homes a “plague” to the neighborhood.
“One OAC [Oceano Advisory Council] member has openly referred to tourists as ‘tourons’ [an amalgamation of ‘tourists’ and ‘morons’] and on another occasion, an OAC board member referred to vacation rental owners as ‘assholes,’” the petition read.
At the Nov. 2 meeting, Compton called the complaints in the petition the straw that broke the camel’s back. Her call to discuss deauthorizing the advisory council came during her final weeks in office as Oceano’s representative. Current Arroyo Grande Councilmember Jimmy Paulding will succeed her in 2023.
“No other advisory council in this county is like this group,” Compton told New Times. “They’re off the rails.”
Compton added that the main purpose of advisory councils is to gather community feedback and talk to people about projects that are up for supervisors’ discussion.
“They’re not supposed to be activists trying to shut down businesses,” she said. “They call themselves the unofficial arm of the county. They’ve become a bully pulpit against members of the community.”
Advisory Council Chair Charles Varni is running for a spot on the Oceano Community Services District (OCSD), and he said he hopes the OCSD could become a “bully pulpit” advocating for sidewalk improvements in the coastal town. Varni told New Times that the advisory council was not informed about the petition and hasn’t read it either. But he said that it’s “absolutely not true” that flyers weren’t placed on the coastal side, as the petition alleged.
“I personally put about 15 posters up on the coastal side along Strand Way and Little Hawaii,” he said. “We did the best job to notify people, and we’ve been working on [the vacation rental ordinance] for almost two years now. If they still haven’t heard of it, then they need to take more responsibility.”
Varni criticized Compton for declaring at the meeting that the advisory council “was going behind everyone’s backs” to get the ordinance greenlit. Compton told New Times that the Board of Supervisors filed Public Records Act requests with the California Coastal Commission to find out about letters from the advisory council asking the commission to shut down the controversial Oceano airport. When it came to the vacation rental ordinance, she said the council worked directly with members of the county planning department and didn’t consult Compton—South County’s supervisor—up front.
“This sounds like the final kick in the butt for Oceano from Lynn Compton,” Varni said. “She hasn’t paid attention in the past, and we’ve invited her to every meeting and sent her minutes. But she ignored us.”
Unlike previous iterations of the advisory council, Varni said that the current five-member group isn’t a “rubber stamp for supervisors’ opinions.” He described the council as activists.
“We will definitely have a presence at the Dec. 6 meeting. We will be mobilizing Oceanans to speak up at the meeting,” he said. ∆
This article appears in Nov 3-13, 2022.