The crescendo of drama in Paso Robles just keeps getting louder and louder.
Is it a slew of October surprises or a story about a dysfunctional city with too many ultra-right crazies in it that don’t think the conservative governing bodies in the city are quite conservative enough for them? Or is it that certain elected officials saw a power vacuum that they decided they were going to fill? Or was it the paid parking conversation that really did it?
I have my hunches, but the jury’s still out.
Not only do we have a pair of Paso City Council candidates with their eye on the prize—getting rid of City Manager Ty Lewis for his crime of simply being Ty Lewis, we also have a battle of letter-writing in one local newspaper, a conspiracy theory involving a sitting council member, a self-styled “investigative reporter,” and the city manager, and we have allegations of federal fraud against both candidates in one school board race.
I’ve been eating so much popcorn lately, my gears are clogged with kernels.
Rumors about Paso City Councilmember Chris “Ty Won’t Do What I Want” Bausch and Cal Coast “News” Diva Karen Velie and their vendetta against Lewis have circulated for months, leaking the occasional email copied to local media outlets and city responses to Public Records Act requests.
Now, thanks to a strange and convoluted he-said/she-said story in The Tribune that doesn’t point to any hard evidence and comes complete with anonymous sources, the rumor and weird little side-tangent allegations that come with it are out and about for all to read.
Mayor John Hamon and Bausch have been trading barbs in the Paso Robles Press with letters to the editor, not conversations with reporters. Velie wrote a diatribe defending herself and her compatriots—calling everyone else a liar, of course, and accusing the “anonymous” sources by name. The journalism is astounding.
Meanwhile, Hunter Breese, running for a seat on the Paso Robles Joint Unified School District against incumbent Nathan Williams, also decided he would rather write a letter to the editor than respond to any reporter requests for comment about the voter fraud allegation leveled against him. Sure seems a lot easier to spin your narrative than it is to be questioned on it, doesn’t it?
In that letter, Breese accuses Williams of breaking U.S. Postal Service laws by dropping unstamped flyers into mailboxes near Breese’s brand-new address!
Are we spying now?
Breese, unsurprisingly, did speak with Velie for a story about the allegations. You can read what he said right next to the advertisement urging readers to vote for Breese, Kenney Enney, Leo Castillo, and Laurene McCoy for Paso school board. Velie calls the person who filed the fraud allegation complaint a witch. Sick burn!
Enney filed a complaint against Williams—Enney, whose girlfriend is renting to Breese so he can run in the 3rd District election. Williams said he didn’t know he was breaking the law.
“If you look at the sequence of events, allegations were made against [Breese], whether founded or not, it’s not my business,” he said. “And then immediately afterwards, himself and [Enney] went out of their way to try to deflect it and turn it around on me.”
Are we actually in high school? Or are these adults who want to make decisions and policies to further the quality of Paso’s public education system?
Meanwhile, certain candidates in the Lucia Mar Unified School District are also silent when it comes to talking to local media. No surprises here: It’s the three spawned by Grace Bible Church who are committed to strengthening parents’ rights in public education but not necessarily the public’s right to know anything about the candidates other than what the candidates want you to know.
But, I guess, at least the incumbents have challengers. That’s more than anyone can say for Morro Bay, a politically charged city where people seem to care more about one ballot measure than who’s actually going to make decisions on the City Council.
For the first time ever, everyone on the ballot is going to be serving on the next iteration of the City Council.
Really? All of that activism against the proposed battery energy storage facility and offshore wind farms and that’s it? Everyone wants to criticize the council but not actually participate on it.
Incumbent Mayor Carla Wixom, who’s already secured another term before the ballots get counted, thinks that maybe the city’s issues are just too big to commit to.
“We’ve always had [environmental issues] because we’ve had the power plant, and there’s always been our fishing industry,” Wixom said. “No one else has a harbor that they have to contend with, with Coastal Commission, environmental issues, and estuaries, so it’s a lot.”
Maybe people just prefer to be one-cause activists, she added.
Well, it’s easy to complain. All the residents of Morro Bay have decided to do, rather than run, is to mount a ballot measure that would actually take power away from its City Council. Nice!
Now, Vistra‘s decided that that it’s had enough of Morro Bay and its residents. The energy company pulled its battery storage facility project from the city and is going directly to the state.
Looks like Vistra already stripped the City Council of its power. Δ
The Shredder is an excellent complainer. Send your complaints to shredder@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Oct 31 – Nov 10, 2024.
“Or are these adults who want to make decisions and policies to further the quality of Paso’s public education system?” Slight correction, conservatives in the education space do want to make decisions and policies, but they typically don’t want to further the quality of public education.
Mr. Carson, The quality of public education is receiving failing grades. Maintaining the status quo is lunacy, don’t ya think?