Attend government meetings long enough and certain non-elected, non-official faces and voices become familiar.
However one feels about these residents, who often stand before the microphone during the public comment period, it’s hard to ignore them, and they keep conversations rolling.
Oceano Community Services District (OCSD) President Shirley Gibson was an engaged Arroyo Grande area native before being elected to political office eight years ago. Her interest in local history led to many hours spent at Arroyo Grande City Council meetings as an ordinary resident advocating to preserve century-old buildings.
“What I learned is you have to pay attention early,” she said. “You have to understand that you’ve got to be there at the very beginning because when something is approved or built, it’s just too late. I wish more people got involved everywhere and went to city council meetings or the county Board of Supervisors.”
Though methods vary, these county residents have appointed themselves as government watchdogs. They show up to meetings, scour staff reports and budgets, file public records requests, write blogs, build insider knowledge, and alert the press and public to hot-button local issues.
“It doesn’t bother me. That’s just people using their rights to information and making their opinion known,” Gibson said. “I think when people participate, they’re not as unhappy with government because they’re being a part of the government when they’re putting in their time and making all these efforts to keep things on the straight and narrow.”
Rude behavior from some participants at public meetings does bother her. Gibson pointed to a time when Oceano resident April Dury mocked fellow attendee Clark D’Souza. D’Souza gained notoriety in 2022 after former CSD member Cynthia Replogle accused him of stalking her. Replogle resigned after the district refused to file a restraining order against D’Souza on her behalf.
‘I wish more people got involved everywhere and went to city council meetings or the county Board of Supervisors.’
—Shirley Gibson, Oceano Community Services District president
“He was walking up to … make a comment,” Gibson said of D’Souza. “He always has his dog, and he stumbled a little bit. [Dury] goes, ‘Well, here comes crazy,’ and then she laughed and then several people around her laughed.
“That was shameful and inexcusable,” she added. “We don’t want to see people shamed and humiliated for trying to make their opinion, just because they’re different.”
Gibson’s developed thicker skin when it comes to criticism against her. She added that people are welcome to write what they want, complaints and compliments, to the OCSD since elected officials are answerable to the public.
“I had really negative things written about me, but you just try not to read that stuff, and you let them bring it on, and they do,” Gibson said. “I personally think it’s best to show up in person [to meetings], … but any involvement is good.”
New Times spoke with a handful of the county residents who dedicate their free time to monitoring local authorities. The topics they’re passionate about and their approaches diverge, but they’re all tuned in.
Shuttling scrutiny
Oceano’s April Dury traces her activism back to 2008, when she tried to set up a farmers market in the unincorporated town.
The desire to provide a cornucopia of locally grown produce for southern SLO County residents lured her into the rigamarole of county procedures and processes.
“I kind of became the point person on the rules and regulations of what it was going to take to start a farmers market,” Dury said. “I learned that in Oceano there was a little group of people that were looking to start a farmers market. … We all met up and started to be very involved in this. The next step was the [OCSD] kind of adopted us and wanted our farmers market to be under their wing.”
Plans for the market fell through, but the way the Community Services District worked stuck with Dury. She learned that the district oversees water supply, sewage management, and trash collection—not the process of setting up a farmers market. Soon enough, Dury felt that “things seemed kinky” in Oceano.
Dury emerged as a vocal figure in debates around the Oceano airport and vacation rentals in the area and as one of the central forces behind the now-defunct Oceano Advisory Council.
As co-chair of the advisory council, Dury questioned the value of keeping the airport open and who its true clientele was. She previously told New Times that Oceano wouldn’t benefit from an airport that primarily caters to private pilots. In 2024, the SLO County Board of Supervisors opted to keep the airport open and improve infrastructure.
The advisory council she belonged to found itself “unrecognized” by supervisors after contentious debates with former 4th District Supervisor Lynn Compton over several issues, including the group’s attempt to get a vacation rental ordinance in place.
Sometimes, Dury’s criminal history also takes center stage. Her 1999 felony embezzlement conviction—the result of her admitting to using a nearly $7,000 check from a Reno animal hospital for reasons other than its intended purpose—became the undoing of her 2020 run for a seat on the OCSD board.
“I have a criminal past and the people who were my opponents made sure the whole world knew about it,” Dury said. “That’s when I realized how dirty Oceano politics are.”
Her past run-in with the law often rears its head when Dury engages with local bodies. After Dury left a SLO County Integrated Waste Management Authority meeting, the attorney informed the board of her conviction. She said board members told her about it later.
“Hello, who’s the president of the United States of America right now? These are the same people who are OK with that, but because I speak up and I point out things in Oceano, they want to knock me down,” Dury said. “I’m not going to live in a world of pity or hate for myself. I did what I did. I paid the consequence, and if we don’t believe in rehabilitation, then don’t let people out.”
Dury is still a bookkeeper, self-employed with 50 clients. She balances her career with investigations into the inner workings of the district. Being her own boss, Dury can set her own schedule, accommodating both daily responsibilities and government inspection.
Though her initial ambition of forming a farmers market in Oceano didn’t work out, Dury came away with a future best friend by her side.
“Julie Tacker and I started to communicate, and that’s what really, really, really got me. She taught me so much about the Brown Act and the rules and requirements of the funds, like the general fund versus the water fund,” she said. “Even when you go to one of these meetings, they don’t teach you how to participate.”
Document diggers
Former Los Osos CSD board member Tacker has a long history of monitoring government operations in SLO County. Before introducing Dury to the art of civic participation, Tacker’s involvement in her kids’ Parent Teacher Association in the 1990s led to a keen interest in Los Osos happenings.
At the time, the North Coast community still used septic tanks to treat sewage. A resident alerting Tacker about how a proposed sewage treatment plant would price out a lower-income family in the area hit a nerve. It prompted her 2002 campaign to be on the Los Osos CSD board. Despite losing, she threw herself into learning how government works.
In 2004, she ran again and won.
“I have a very inquisitive nature, you know, I want to know how things work. I want to know how to fix things. I’m quite frugal and very much a ‘recycle, reuse’ person from early roots,” Tacker said. “So, when I got involved in government, I started to see waste in money, of my money, of the people’s money.”
Over her four years on the board, Tacker familiarized herself with the Brown Act, the Public Records Act, and the Fair Political Practices Commission. She now calls herself an armchair expert in these matters.
Immersing herself in filing public records requests, poring over agendas and attached documents, calculating payroll and contract discrepancies, and watching meetings takes up roughly 10 hours a week.
Tacker also served on the Los Osos Emergency Services Committee for 14 years and the Los Osos Community Advisory Council Land Use Committee for a decade.
Now enjoying her time as a singer and working at Paso Robles’ senior living facility Creston Village, she no longer holds political office.
But Tacker still appears at board meetings, pens opinion pieces in local media outlets, and speaks with residents in not just Los Osos but other small governments scattered across the county. People from Ground Squirrel Hollow, Heritage Ranch, Cambria, San Simeon, and even Orcutt tip her off about government annoyances and have turned to her for advice.
‘I’m doing the homework that really Joe Citizen should be doing. Sure, I’ve walked away from a lot of lawsuits, but I feel very confident that I have a lot of positive influence over local government because they change their ways and do things right.’
—Julie Tacker, Los Osos resident and government watchdog
Some of her supporters gained a nickname: Tacker Backers. It originated as an informal slogan when she was running for office in 2002. Tacker Backers still exist, she said, adding that the sentiment evolved into something called the “Tacker effect.”
“When I walk into a board meeting of a city council or a JPA [joint powers authority] or wherever I go, I feel it,” Tacker said. “Council members, boards, whatever, they wonder why I’m there. And I’ve had the effect of stopping Brown Act violations, stopping overspending, buying lunches at delicatessens for staff, things like that. I will scrutinize them, and they don’t want that scrutiny, they don’t want that press.”
Tacker told New Times she’s a “lone ranger,” in that very few people push for transparency like she does.
“I’m doing the homework that really Joe Citizen should be doing,” she said. “Sure, I’ve walked away from a lot of lawsuits, but I feel very confident that I have a lot of positive influence over local government because they change their ways and do things right.”
Transparency is key for San Luis Obispo resident Kathie Walker too.
Walker’s outrage over the city’s and Cal Poly’s handling of unauthorized fraternity parties in residential neighborhoods led to the SLO County grand jury stepping in.
The grand jury concluded that the city didn’t effectively work with the community to solve problems like noise, property damage, and general disorder arising from unruly frats in residential areas.
Mismanaged frat events eventually forced Walker and her husband to move out of their Alta Vista home just south of the Cal Poly campus.
“Transparency is so important, and unfortunately, there’s not a lot of collaboration and transparency between the city and the public, between Cal Poly and the public,” Walker said.
She’s since sued Cal Poly President Jeff Armstrong and the California State University board of trustees over the school’s refusal to disclose the addresses of fraternity events despite overwhelming demands from the community.
Walker’s attempts to defend her former Alta Vista neighborhood started before unpermitted frat parties plagued it. Roughly 15 years ago, knocked-over trash containers in Hathway Alley were the problem.
Students in the area were spilling the containers in the alley behind her house, and homeless people were rummaging through them, according to Walker. Rotting food, rats, and the stench of garbage filled the space.
Walker’s persistent pictures and communications with the city documenting the overflowing trash resulted in a City Council discussion. She told New Times that the meeting led to a rewritten ordinance that required people to bring their trash bins behind a fence and take it to the front curb on trash pickup days.
Dormant for a few years, Walker’s dogged determination awoke when loud frat parties began affecting her quality of life and her husband’s ability to work as an emergency medical services helicopter pilot.
Sifting through public records request responses related to the frat management sometimes takes up 12 hours of her day. But the rigorous review of documents isn’t as hard as what Walker endured in Alta Vista.
After numerous failed face-to-face conversations and text messages with the fraternity next to their former home in a bid to curb the noise emanating from parties, Walker made her first phone call to the police in 2023.
Then, she said, the harassment began.
“Within 24 hours of getting that citation, they started cyberstalking me. They posted my address online,” Walker said. “I started getting emails from PornHub that they had opened an account in my name. I got a notification that I had been exposed to a sexually transmitted disease. They started sending people to our house, like, signing up for appointments with Scientologists, Mormons, and missionaries, to come to our house.”
Still, Walker chips away at finding answers.
“People would be surprised to know who I am. My favorite genre of music is hip-hop,” she said with a smile. “I’m extremely loyal and devoted to my friends and family. I think what drives me is doing the right thing. I think there should be accountability when someone doesn’t do the right thing, but I also believe in community and working together to find solutions.”
Pen and perusal
Sometimes, keeping an eye on government looks like spreading the word through writing.
For Morro Bay resident Aaron Ochs and Cambria resident Christine Heinrichs, tapping into their roots as journalists does the trick.
Ochs’ family launched a newspaper called The Rock in 2006 that focused on educating Los Osos homeowners about the town’s wastewater issues. Ochs and his father, Ed, spoke with experts in the field about possible solutions, and the paper became a platform for dialogue.
“My mom was involved in an effort to ensure that residents had a vote on the laws of the sewer via Proposition 218, which we were successful in doing, and the county eventually adopted the framework that we were championing for years,” Ochs said.
The Rock shuttered in 2009, and though Ochs worked more in the production department than editorial, he credits the family paper for giving him the “journalism bug.”
“I define journalism as looking at the who, what, when, where, why, and how of a story, and diving deep into a subject matter that appeals to the public interest,” he said. “The way I started doing the journalism thing is I really got into more of the opinion journalism side. I was not writing news articles. I was expressing opinions based on information I was uncovering in real time.”
By 2012, Ochs worked in two industries: marketing and strategy, and journalism. Hired by the now-inactive Information Press, Ochs began writing articles assigned to him by editor and publisher Sandra Marshall. But he also nurtured a blog called The Razor—his version of the family paper that opined about Los Osos and the county.
“I take value in being a nonpartisan, independent voice. Before I had more of an agenda,” Ochs said. “I had more of a sharp edge and [was] appealing to only a small audience. I realized that when it comes to expressing an opinion or writing news or writing op-eds, it’s about being thorough, being calm, being collected, and providing a measured voice that is trustworthy and reliable.”
The Razor eventually changed its name to simply Aaron Ochs since Ochs wanted to speak truthfully as himself and not hide behind a moniker. His blog morphed into a Medium page racking between 50,000 to 60,000 views a month and is now a Substack newsletter with more than 50 subscribers.
Ochs’ writings now focus on SLO County politics. His latest post on May 5, “When Fake News Becomes a Threat to Life,” outlines his decision to sue Cal Coast News founder Karen Velie for defamation.
Velie faced Ochs’ wrath in older versions of his blog posts, too. But back then, his words packed more of a bite, he admitted.
“I still made a lot of mistakes as Aaron Ochs. Plenty,” he said. “A lot of the time, I used to write a lot of jokes … When I was younger, I was very critical of Karen Velie of Cal Coast News.”
Ochs told New Times that in 2014, Velie pressured his employer Marshall over his coverage of the libel lawsuit against her. Ochs resigned from Information Press following complications with Velie and Marshall. The paper closed in 2017.
Other articles in Ochs’ Substack criticize SLO County District Attorney Dan Dow’s social media mannerisms, 4th District Supervisor Jimmy Paulding’s policies, and 2nd District Supervisor Bruce Gibson’s decision to pick District 2 supervisor candidate Jim Dantona as his legislative assistant.
“People have written to me over the years expressing gratitude for me being able to broach a lot of these subjects that are uncomfortable and controversial, and it gave people the motivation to express themselves without the fear of reprisal,” Ochs said.
He has ambitions to launch a podcast. Ochs envisions each episode as a sit-down conversation with influential figures around the county. He’d like to start with Gibson once he officially retires from his supervisor role.
Cambria’s Heinrichs found her more traditional background as a journalist helpful in her inspection of the local CSD.
After earning her degree in journalism, Heinrichs worked in the 1970s as a general assignment reporter and news editor for a paper in Moscow, Idaho, where she covered City Council.
“At the time, I was as confused as everyone else, and I needed to learn more about it,” she said. “It helps me to think about what questions people would be asking, what information do people need to take into this meeting and feel like they actually are participating?”
To reporters and SLO County residents who’ve lived in the area long enough, Heinrichs’ name pops up in email inboxes like clockwork—right before a Cambria CSD meeting.
These emails contain detailed breakdowns of the CSD’s agenda. Heinrichs summarizes and gives her opinion about each discussion item and lists out the general rules around the public comment period.
“I’m sensitive to the fact that people simply don’t know, and I try to include that information,” she said. “It seems repetitive, but I feel like every time there’s a meeting, it could be someone’s first meeting.”
Heinrichs is constantly learning. She hones her writing skills every chance she gets: freelancing for local and regional outlets, taking nature writing classes at Cuesta College, and attending professional events like the Society of Environmental Journalists Conference.
It helps that CSD meetings only happen once a month. That gives Heinrichs enough time to study the agenda when it’s published the Friday before the Thursday meeting. She writes her summary for a 60-person email distribution list over that weekend. Heinrichs said she views the process as a hobby. By the time the meeting rolls around, she’s seated in the CSD chambers ready to watch the discussion unfold.
“I’m pretty much a critic of the board and the district. So, they don’t like it, and I understand that,” she said. “I’m most concerned with protecting the environment, and that doesn’t seem to have much priority for the board.”
Cambria’s Water Reclamation Facility—the emergency project to ensure water security during severe drought by treating wastewater—is Heinrich’s main focus. She told New Times that the facility was built using a rushed emergency permit, and it affects an environmentally sensitive habitat area.
“They just don’t seem to be concerned about the biological reports, or I consider them to be very skimpy,” she said. “Cambria has such a privileged population. There’s a lot of retired people from really good jobs, you’re well educated, have money, they’re retired on income. We should have the best possible government, and we don’t.”
Heinrichs believes the CSD needs an observer on the outside who’s talking to the public.
“I enjoy spending time working on local issues,” she said. “I would love to get some young people, I’d love to get anyone in there. What I’m trying to do is open a pathway into these meetings and into public engagement.” ∆
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in May 14-21, 2026.
New Times’ profile of Christine Heinrichs reads less like journalism and more like reputation laundering for a longtime Cambria CSD obstructionist whose public activity is overwhelmingly defined by criticism, delay, and distrust of local governance.
The article portrays Heinrichs as a civic-minded educator simply “helping” residents understand CSD meetings. What it fails to acknowledge is that her commentary is rarely neutral, frequently adversarial, and consistently framed to undermine confidence in the Cambria Community Services District itself. Presenting agenda summaries alongside personal editorializing is not objective public service.
New Times also glosses over the real-world consequences of this style of activism. The Water Reclamation Facility was not created for convenience or ideology. It was pursued because Cambria faced severe water insecurity during drought conditions. Residents needed solutions. Instead of recognizing the urgency of protecting the community’s long-term water supply, Heinrichs has spent years amplifying procedural complaints and environmental absolutism while offering little practical path forward.
The article repeatedly frames Heinrichs as some sort of courageous outsider standing up to power, but Cambria residents deserve to ask an obvious question: when does constant opposition become counterproductive? There is a difference between accountability and reflexive obstruction. If every project, report, permit, or board action is treated as illegitimate, governance becomes impossible.
More troubling is New Times’ decision to publish an almost entirely one-sided profile without meaningful scrutiny of Heinrichs’ claims, motives, or track record. There was no balancing perspective from CSD officials, no examination of the broader community benefits of the Water Reclamation Facility, and no acknowledgment that many residents are tired of perpetual negativity surrounding every district initiative.
A functioning community depends on people willing to solve problems, make difficult decisions, and accept that compromise is necessary. Cambria cannot afford to be trapped in an endless cycle where activists attack every infrastructure effort while claiming the moral high ground from the sidelines.
Criticism has a place in public life. But elevating serial opposition as civic virtue, without examining its impacts, is not responsible local journalism. New Times should aim higher than turning habitual dissent into a personality profile.
Christine keeps trying to portray herself as a journalist and public watchdog, but sending biased email rants to a small group of followers doesn’t make someone a journalist. Real journalists report facts fairly and objectively, they don’t twist every CCSD issue into another opportunity for fearmongering and political activism. At this point, she’s less interested in informing the public and more interested in attacking the CCSD with the same recycled accusations and half-truths month after month.