A politically fractured Oceano temporarily connected in an unintended way over a 4th District Supervisor Jimmy Paulding initiative.
Long an ideological battleground that witnessed bitter conflicts in its community services district (CSD) and advisory councils, Oceano came face-to-face with a draft “unification compact” helmed by the freshman San Luis Obispo County supervisor who eagerly wants the unincorporated town to bury multiple hatchets.
In letters dated Feb. 16 to the members of the recently decertified Oceano Advisory Council (OAC), the current county-recognized Vitality Advisory Council of Oceano (VACO), and the Oceano Economic Development Council (OEDC), Paulding emphasized looking ahead.
“The compact builds on our initial conversations around making a conscious choice not to pursue certain controversial goals in the interim, and instead, to work together around common goals that will result in meaningful and tangible improvements to the community of Oceano,” he wrote.
Two of those “controversial goals” pertain to driving off-highway vehicles at the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area (ODSVRA) and the Oceano Airport—topics that Oceano’s advisory councils have disagreed on. Paulding’s road to civil recovery hinges on consensus among the three groups to not discuss either issue for the foreseeable future.
“The undersigned parties hereby agree to abide by the attached Code of Civility—and to the extent possible—not to use or participate in community advisory councils … to engage in unnecessary and unproductive controversial political activity related to off-highway vehicles [OHV] at the ODSVRA or the closure of the Oceano Airport,” read an excerpt of his compact agreement.
However, all three groups balked at the draft. The OEDC complained that Paulding’s document misrepresented its stance on the airport.
“The proposed Airport Improvements Project is seen as a preemptive move by the county to prevent the future repurposing of the airport’s land use,” OEDC Chair Nick Alter wrote in his response to the draft. “It is not seen as a benefit to Oceano, particularly in the long term if the land can be used for a higher and better purpose than as an airport.”
Members of VACO and the former OAC—two groups whose public fights crested with Paulding’s predecessor Lynn Compton “unrecognizing” the latter—questioned the clause about keeping mum on off-roading and the airport.
“We very much appreciate Supervisor Paulding’s earnestness, but there is a general discomfort in VACO to sign a document that says other members can’t openly and passionately express their views on the airport and OHV,” VACO member Adam Verdin told New Times.
Historically, the OAC opposed off-highway vehicle use on the dunes and found continued use of the local airport dubious. Former OAC Chair and current OCSD Board Director Charles Varni added that the advisory council no longer exists, and its body has dissolved into individual residents. Despite the OAC’s rocky past with VACO, Varni said that contentious subjects were never immune to discussion.
“We never suggested that people shouldn’t talk about certain issues,” he said. “I was not comfortable with [the clause], and I certainly wasn’t going to sign an agreement like that as an individual.”
Talks of unification of a different kind germinated from the rumblings surrounding the compact: the possibility of Oceano being annexed by the city of Grover Beach.
“This discussion was prompted due to Oceano’s inability to pay for fire service (the OSCD has initiated LAFCO [Local Agency Formation Commission] proceedings to divest from fire service responsibility),” Paulding wrote in a March 13 email to OEDC’s Alter. “The central question is—given its financial problems—whether Oceano would be better served receiving city services (police, fire, public works, water/sewer, parks/recreation, and community development) as opposed to the limited services that the [OCSD] and the county are able to provide.”
The supervisor clarified to New Times that he’s not confident supporting an annexation until further outreach is done in both Oceano and Grover Beach.
“I’m not pushing anything,” he said. “I’m just considering this as an option. It’s an appropriate time to have this conversation, if any.”
Varni agreed with Paulding about the timeliness of an annexation discussion. He told New Times that there’s “never been a better time to look at it.” Last year, he was a vocal proponent of rejecting the special fire tax that the OCSD brought to general election ballots for the second time. Voters booted that tax, consequently leaving the CSD to figure out how to pay for continued emergency fire and medical services originally delivered by the Five Cities Fire Authority.
Varni is also an advocate of curbs, gutters, and sidewalk improvements in Oceano and believes that a possible annexation by Grover Beach would address some of the unmet needs of the district. Until then, he’s looking forward to data collection to study the impacts of a unification.
“What comes to Grover Beach from Oceano are property, sales, and transient occupancy taxes, a very rich water portfolio, and a town on the verge of a very positive economic potential for expanded tourism and housing,” Varni said. “Right now, we’re a cash cow for the county and that’s been happening for a long time.”
But not everyone sees a possible annexation as a good thing. VACO representatives and Varni’s fellow OCSD board members Linda Austin and Shirley Gibson took offense at Paulding’s framing annexation as an option in the face of being unable to pay for fire services.
“OCSD is run very fiscally responsibly,” Austin said. “People who were so adamant about the fire tax of $15 a month are now for this draconian annexation. These people [county officials] have appointed themselves as knowing what’s best for this community.”
Both VACO members and former OAC Vice Chair April Dury told New Times that Oceano residents can afford to pay for fire services but chose not to. Gibson added that she hasn’t heard from Oceano residents who were supportive of a possible unification with Grover Beach. Dury said she witnessed the same.
“No one I’ve talked to wants to be Grover Southwest or Grover Lite,” Dury said.
A city’s annexation of a CSD requires a lengthy series of approvals. LAFCO Executive Officer Rob Fitzroy explained that there is a difference between an annexation and a merger. The latter terminates the existence of a CSD altogether while the functions, services, assets, and liabilities of that district are assumed by a city. An annexation, on the other hand, means the inclusion, attachment, or addition of territory to a city or district.
“LAFCOs generally exercise their regulatory authority in response to an application being submitted by an agency,” Fitzroy said. “The process would begin when an agency submits a proposal application for a ‘merger’ to LAFCO.”
As of April 7, LAFCO hadn’t received an Oceano-Grover Beach proposal yet. It would require a study of operational, financial, and service impacts followed by a LAFCO evaluation based on its existing policies. The entire process could take more than a year to complete.
“The proposal would then be considered and decided upon by LAFCO at a noticed public hearing, in which any member of the public may participate,” Fitzroy said. “In general, the merger would require agreement from affected agencies such as the city of Grover Beach, Oceano CSD, the county, as well as support from landowners/registered voters of the affected area.”
Portions of Oceano have been under annexation interest since the 1960s. Archived clippings of a 1961 issue of the Arroyo Grande Valley Herald Reporter detail annexation attempts of the same Oceano parcel by both Arroyo Grande and then Grover City. In the late 1990s, the Five Cities Times Press-Recorder recorded a Grover Beach City Council attempt to delete an annexation goal after inciting the ire of Oceano residents—one of whom was Harold Guiton, Austin’s father.
“Oceano has a [CSD], (which incidentally was formed primarily to stop the attempts at piecemeal annexation of Oceano), which gives us almost the same status as a city,” Guiton wrote in a 1998 Times Press-Recorder opinion piece. “To just ignore our 6,600 citizens and elected leaders and treat us like some second-class crime-ridden bad neighbor is pretty shoddy.”
The Grover Beach city officials Guiton faced have changed in the 25 years since. City Manager Matt Bronson told New Times that annexation discussions are still in their infancy, and neither the county nor Oceano representatives have been approached yet.
“We are open to discussing ideas that support our community in Grover Beach and of our neighboring communities,” Bronson said. Δ
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Apr 13-23, 2023.
Thanks to New Times for this article on a very important topic. At this point the idea of a merger between Oceano and Grover is just that, an idea. There are way more questions than answers. The Oceano Community Services District will be the lead agency in providing accurate and factual information to our community and will do so in an open, transparent, and honest manner. I will propose agendizing this topic for every OCSD meeting until such time it is concluded. I encourage local citizens to remain open minded until they fully understand both the process and the actual facts of what a merger would look like, including probable benefits and/or liabilities. OCSD meets the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of the month. Meetings are televised and can be streamed on line. Go to http://OCSD.org for details.
When it comes to Charles Varni, a lot of what I see is deja vu.
I’m a member of Nextdoor’s Review Team. As part of the team, I get to see posts and comments that were made by residents within a 35-40 mile radius from my neighborhood. Mr. Varni’s posts are reported a lot to the Review Team for violating Community Guidelines. I can’t go into what violations occurred or who reported the violations, but there is a concern by Oceano residents about Mr. Varni presenting himself as an “open minded” representative of the Oceano Advisory Council or the Oceano CSD while also placing his thumb on the scale. He’ll say in the New Times, “This is just an idea,” and that there are more questions than answers, but then he wholly endorses annexation on Nextdoor.
To me, that’s deja vu because it reminds me of when he was running for the OCSD and promotes a candidates forum organized by the OAC as an impartial venue when it clearly wasn’t because (1) he was the chair of the OAC and (2) the campaign moderator was the Vice Chair.
You have to ask yourself: Who made the OCSD the sole mediator of this discussion on annexation? Yes, annexation would benefit Oceano in theory, but I haven’t seen any indication that Mr. Varni or the OCSD has reached out to the Grover Beach City Council to have a joint session to discuss this. They would be an added stakeholder in the annexation process. But then it begs the question: Why is Arroyo Grande and Pismo Beach not involved? If we’re looking at this from a regional perspective, it only makes logistical sense to loop them in.
All I see is a lot of narcissistic grandstanding from Mr. Varni and not much else. As far as Supervisor Paulding is concerned, I appreciate the thought, but the rollout of his idea was sloppy.
I am very clear that I think the idea of a merger may hold great promise for both Oceano and Grover–as do a very large number of others who are interested in seeing neglected Oceano develop basic sidewalk and flood control infrastructure. Also, for those Oceanoans who value local control a merger with Grover represents a historic opportunity as it would provide a complete city government and representation for our community. I am in the information gathering and education mode–as was stated above.
My Ochs innuendos (i have never been reprimanded by Nextdoor and just recently was awarded a commendation by them) and critical labels are tiresome. He needs to educate himself at the LAFCO website before offering unfounded suggestions.
Mr. Varni,
Allow me to educate you a bit on what I actually wrote, not what you think I wrote.
As a member of the Nextdoor Review Team, I can only see users reporting posts and comments. None of us are aware of any actions or “reprimands” that platform takes. However, we can vote whether or not reported content should be removed. If enough consensus is received on votes, the platform takes action. Since June 2022, your posts were reported by users 355 times. Some of those reports are redundant since multiple users would report the same content. Review Team members in your area voted overwhelmingly to remove your content, and most of it was in fact taken down.
Some of these posts are rather incriminating since they clearly show contempt for your colleagues on the OCSD. If the OCSD was an actual company, you would’ve been written up by Human Resources the moment you punched in for your first shift and fired for harboring a hostile work environment. It’s no wonder your advisory council went “unrecognized.”
But what’s also telling is how you constantly put your thumb on the scale by stating decisive opinions on board business before you even vote, just like you’re doing right now on annexation. That’s actually a Brown Act violation. On top of that, you’re effectively chilling public participation. Why? Because residents who are concerned about annexation or oppose it will feel they’re not being heard on the OCSD. And quite frankly, you have no authority to speak on behalf of OCSD members. You’re not king. And that’s highly inappropriate — just like how it was inappropriate for you to draft an ordinance on vacation rentals or vote to restrict funding on capital improvements when you were on an *advisory* committee. Advisory committees recommend policy, not impose it. Clearly you don’t understand the lanes you’re supposed to stay in.
I don’t need to be lectured on “innuendo” from someone who chaired the first advisory committee to be formally unrecognized by our county in decades. I don’t need to be lectured by someone who takes their cues from an ex-felon who stalks and harasses county residents (https://www.newtimesslo.com/sanluisobispo/…), a person who compared Oceano residents to insurrectionists and the KKK (https://www.newtimesslo.com/sanluisobispo/…), and a controversial out-of-town developer who engages in financial fraud schemes and had inappropriate contact with a middle-aged girl (https://www.newtimesslo.com/sanluisobispo/…).
As far as LAFCO is concerned, Paulding’s idea won’t make it that far. There is already widespread opposition to annexation from Grover Beach residents and business owners. A cursory look on social media shows your community is unified on that opposition on a bipartisan basis, something that Paulding’s unification compact couldn’t ironically pull off. And residents in the surrounding area recognize the optics aren’t good. Paulding may be floating an idea that he claims to have not taken a formal position on, but he’s nonetheless proposing an idea that makes it appear he’s dumping Oceano after three months of being supervisor. And if he’s doing that now three months in, how the heck will he handle the rest of his term? Lord have mercy on District 4.
The City of Grover Beach simply doesn’t have the budget to shoulder the costs of bailing out Oceano. Even if they did, Grover Beach will be facing the statewide issue of unfunded pension liabilities, which will put them in the red in the next few years without additional revenue sources. Even proposing the very idea of annexation is delusional when you have an economic climate that makes residents weary of new expenditures like tax measures and cities that are unable to maintain the most basic public works infrastructure regularly on their shoestring budgets. I have no doubt the City of Grover Beach wants to help Oceano, but their charity and kindness can only go so far. The fact you’ve chosen to alienate them from the onset is shameful.
In other words, Mr. Varni, go fly a kite. This gig isn’t for you.