Lynn Compton is taking out her revenge on the Oceano Advisory Council

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On Dec. 6, in her last meeting as a SLO County Supervisor, lame duck Lynn Compton is proposing to finally kill the Oceano Advisory Council (OAC). Why? Because we had the temerity to take positions on important land use issues in our community that she doesn’t agree with. Never mind that that is our job, according to the county legislation that created advisory councils—not to necessarily agree or disagree with supervisors, but to advise on what we believe is in the best interest of the community.

Of course, Ms. Compton has never had much interest in Oceano unless it related to her Republican supporters and contributors. This was made absolutely clear when she helped lead the SLO County Board of Supervisors majority’s redistricting effort and carved Oceano out of the 4th District and carved in the Edna Valley Country Club area, all in a failed attempt to defeat Jimmy Paulding.

In March of 2019, the OAC voted to support the California Coastal Commission’s staff recommendations to remove vehicles from the beaches and dunes south of Oceano and thus, for the first time in modern history, opening our beaches to safe recreation for locals and tourists—and our local economy to a new era of equitable development.

It was after we took this position that Supervisor Compton removed any funding for our basic operations (website, post office box, Zoom account, publicity, etc.) and then created a new and unprecedented second advisory council for Oceano made up solely of her supporters and contributors, to which she has given $7,000 of taxpayers’ money in the past year.

In April 2022, Henry Bonifas of the county Planning and Building Department sent the OAC a project proposal for the county airport for a $1.8 million upgrade to Oceano Airport, which is located on 60-plus acres of prime coastal land. The project is intended to build a new pilots’ lounge, upgrade the on-site campground for private pilots with new bathrooms and showers, and repave the parking lot reserved for airport business. None of this will be accessible to local residents. Oceano has very little land to develop more housing, commercial, tourist, or recreational space for the community, and the airport land is the only vacant parcel available. Currently, the county receives about $20,000 a year in hangar rentals (at 14 cents per square foot) when, if appropriately developed, this space could be generating upward of $4 million annually in property, sales, and tourist taxes for the county and Oceano. We chose to vote for the community rather than a couple of dozen private pilots who have exclusive use of the space. And we shared that recommendation with the Coastal Commission and the county.

Since 2020, we have been researching and developing a short-term vacation rental ordinance. We are the only coastal community in the entire county that does not have one—and we need one for the same reasons everyone else does. This question clearly falls within the context of a legitimate land use issue in Oceano. This effort has been publicized in local papers, on social media, on the OAC website, and at two dedicated public educational and feedback hearings. During the process we worked with county planning staff. At this point, we have not had an assigned planner for more than a year. All of this work was open, transparent, and videos of our meetings posted to our website.

It was this vacation rental work that Compton called the “final straw.” She said that the OAC is “out of control,” “off the rails,” and needs to be eliminated—based on her belief that “no one in Oceano wants a vacation rental ordinance.” The accurate translation of this is that “no vacation rental owner wants an ordinance.” In fact, an Oceano south community poll this week on Nextdoor had 87 percent of responders saying they do not want a vacation rental in their neighborhood.

Ms. Compton accused OAC members of supporting the draft ordinance because they would be “personally gaining” from it. This was based on public comments made by me (and others) that we did not want a vacation rental in our neighborhoods. Similarly, I do not want a liquor store, mini-hotel, or auto repair business in my single-family residential neighborhood of owner-occupied homes. Neither does any other homeowner in the neighborhood. This is a very common point of view, one the supervisors hear frequently when vacation rental developments appear in front of the board. Ironically Ms. Compton, at the July 10, 2018, supervisors meeting, states that she does not personally want a vacation rental next door to her and had moved to a rural area to avoid them.

Ms. Compton broke this “OAC out of control” story during public comment at the supervisors meeting the week prior to the Nov. 8 election. I have no doubt that this action was intended, in large part, to undermine my campaign for the Oceano Community Services District director position. It was a calculated and planned attempt to cast aspersions on my character, the same thing that Ms. Compton’s supporters, Linda Austin and Adam Verdin, had been doing on social media for weeks.

Ms. Compton’s tirade is simply another example of the Big Lie approach to political and voter manipulation. The Oceano Advisory Council has kept Compton (and the county) informed of our work on a vacation rental ordinance going back almost two years. We sent personal emails every month inviting her to our meetings with the agenda attached. I have examples from Aug. 13, 2020; Feb. 17, 2021; and April 13, 2021, in which the agenda features the vacation rental ordinance and a hyperlink to the document. If Ms. Compton did not know about the ordinance, it was because she did not care about what was happening in Oceano and ignored our communications to her.

The Oceano Advisory Council is a stellar example of a local organization acting as a champion for general community betterment. The work OAC has done in partnership to find major grant funding for flood control and sidewalk infrastructure in the community; the work to mobilize community support for the Oceano Plaza Project; initiating public discussion on Pier Avenue redevelopment and a Oceano Beach Plaza; supporting new local business and housing development; and many other community services are examples of our community betterment orientation. And we do all of this with no support of the supervisors, no county planning staff assigned to us, no county funding, and on our own time. That sounds like we should be getting a “thank you,” not being eliminated. This is Ms. Compton’s last punch to the gut of Oceano for whom she has shown little understanding or concern over the past eight years.

My campaign platform for community services district director included many of the projects and goals I initiated and led as a member of the OAC. As of Nov. 30, the citizens of Oceano have awarded me 57 percent of the vote, and the Compton camp candidate has 43 percent. Bottom line: Besides losing her supervisor seat to Jimmy Paulding, now Charles Varni has defeated her surrogate, her plan to influence the Oceano Community Services District election has failed, and she is very unhappy.

On Dec. 6, Ms. Compton will attempt the unprecedented elimination of a county-created advisory council that has done an exemplary job, followed and exceeded operating guidelines, and been more transparent than any other existing advisory council. Ms. Compton wants to eliminate us because of our ideas, because she doesn’t agree with us. This is a dangerous, ugly, slippery slope that feeds the dark shadows of our species, both historically and currently. It would create a horrible precedent.

Compton’s proposal is being presented with no investigation, fact-checking, or sincere concern for public input—including setting aside time for the Oceano Advisory Council to address the issue. No clear-thinking, democracy-loving supervisor should support it. Every advisory council in the county should be protesting it because they could be next on the chopping block. Every fair-minded county citizen should be concerned. Δ

Charles Varni writes from Oceano. Send a response for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.

This article appears in Dec 1-11, 2022.