The Oceano Community Services District (OCSD) is planning to apply for a grant designed to help Oceano Elementary School students.
OCSD board member Charles Varni said that the month-old Parks and Recreation Committee is having a special meeting on Sept. 21 to vote on whether it should submit the grant application. If the grant moves forward, the committee expects to find out in November if Oceano will receive the funding.
“It’s a small grant to get school students to go on field trips to state parks and state beaches, so they’re going to go from first grade to sixth grade, and they’re all going to have three to four field trips if we get this grant,” Varni told New Times.
Parks California, a nonprofit partner of State Parks that helps expand programs, amenities, and resources, is sponsoring the Route to Parks Grants program to help ensure that all communities have an opportunity to visit and enjoy California State Parks, according to Parks California’s website.
Varni said that opportunities for the Parks and Rec Committee are pretty new, so right now the committee is just working on getting its feet off the ground.
“We have representatives from the Lucia Mar School District, the school PTA, from [the] county parks commission, the Boys and Girls Club, and other community representatives as well,” he said. “So I think that it’s going to be a very, very positive impact on the community and a way to bring the community together.”
This comes after a OCSD board of directors meeting on Sept. 13 where board members discussed the Parks and Rec Committee and its duties, governing policies and procedures, committee membership, and bylaws. Board members also discussed whether it could become a standing committee and have the authority to manage its own budget without having to get approval by the board.
According to the OCSD website, the district is authorized to provide parks and recreation services; however, the district has limited programs available for it.
“We do have authority for parks and recreation. We got it when OCSD started it, but it was just never funded,” Varni said. “When I started researching it, I thought, wow, if you have a parks and recreation in place, there’s a whole lot of stuff you can do, and there’s grants out there that are available to you. I saw it as a way to get more resources to the community.”
Daniel Chenug, the district’s legal counsel, said during the meeting that according to the board’s bylaws and in accordance with the Brown Act, the Parks and Rec Committee could be a standing committee with authority over its own budget if the board wanted to approve that.
Ultimately from a legal standpoint, Chenug said he advised and recommended that the committee does operate as a standing committee that has control over its budget without needing board approval.
“I think the intent of the Parks and Rec Committee seems to be to give it a continued standing existence on issues it can discuss and recommend to the board,” he said.
Although the committee is still waiting for board approval of standing committee status, Varni said that it’s excited to begin that work in the community and looking forward to hearing back about this grant.
“We really see our role is to bring new resources to the community and use OCSD to leverage capacity in existing organizations in the community,” he said. Δ
This article appears in Sep 21 – Oct 1, 2023.
Thank you Ms Hererra for the well written and positive article about a new service at OCSD to benefit the community. For any interested community members who want more information please contact me at directorvarni@oceanocsd.org