The California Coastal Commission has more than a few questions to ask the County at the as-yet-unscheduled de novo hearing on a number of “substantial issues” hanging over the Los Osos Wastewater Project. In the meantime, however, there may need to be a hearing even before the de novo hearing just to determine how many “substantial issues” will be on the Commission’s agenda for the de novo, because there seems to be a basic difference in understanding between the Commission and the County as to how many and exactly what the issues actually are. “We have at least seven specific issues discussed by our Commission… as opposed to the four you have listed,” wrote the Coastal Commission’s Dan Carl to County Public Works’ Mark Hutchinson. Any further delay in the County’s project timeline “will be dependent on timely materials assistance from the County. … Even optimistically, it seems likely that we are looking at a hearing at least several months away, and potentially longer.” These are not  just "minor concerns" as Gibson and Ogren minimized them to the Tribune.

There is no escaping it. No topic in the far-flung Los Osos Wastewater Project universe remains on more residents’ minds than affordability. Yet the word and what it stands for – thousands of people forced to leave Los Osos because of the looming $250 a month sewer bills -- has all but disappeared from the public dialogue, as if the issue never existed in the first place. To document the ongoing ground-level reality of this overriding issue in Los Osos, Sherry Fuller and Mimi Whitney last year co-authored a “white paper” on the potential sewer project costs to lower income residents of Los Osos. Their “Affordability Report” of January 2009 used census data from the year 2000 that had been projected to the year 2008 by a leading computer modeling firm (ESRI) that is widely used by both government and industry. “With the new Census being prepared now, we should see updated figures next year that will most likely be even worse that what I reported last year,” co-author Mimi Whitney recently told The Rock. “Consider the effects of our current recession on Los Osos residents: unemployment, bankruptcy, the housing market...We will do an updated ‘white paper’ after we have the new census data to work with. Stay tuned for the really bad news.”

The 2nd District Supervisor had stumped up state and down lobbying the all 12 Coastal Commissioners in their offices, via email and on voice mail to approve the Los Osos Wastewater Project, and when the commissioners voted 7-5 to extend the process and hold a de novo hearing in April for a limited review of project loose ends, Bruce Gibson bowed his head, his ears red. He was joined in defeat by brother San Luis Obispo County Supervisor “Katcho” Kachadjian, who had lobbied from within as both a Coastal Commissioner and County Supervisor, to follow staff’s recommendations and find ‘no substantial issue’ with any of the almost 30 appeals of the project brought before the Commission in Huntington Beach on January 14. But at the end of that long day, after waging what the Tribune called a “week-long lobbying blitz,” Gibson and Kachadjian stood there with the long faces of losers, looking more like the blitzed. It was a most reassuring sight and worth the long trek for several Los Osos appellants who had driven five hours to Huntington Beach to speak to the Commission for five minutes each. It was also a reprieve, no matter how brief, for homeowners and residents back in Los Osos.

As a result of the Coastal Commission’s 7-5 vote last week to hold a limited de novo hearing in April to review finite details of the Los Osos Wastewater Project, the County will have to wait at least four to six months to receive a CDP from the Commission for the $165 million project to be permit-ready. Despite staff and Commission recommendations to find ‘no substantial issue’ with any of the nearly 30 appeals brought before the Commission, and Supervisor Gibson’s warning that a delay might put at risk $80 million in federal stimulus dollars for the project ($64 million of that in the form of a loan), the Commission rejected any attempt to use time or money as an excuse to waive its standards of consistency and rubber stamp the project.

The County has made the upcoming Proposition 218 vote so confusing, some Los Osos residents may not know what they’re actually voting for—at their great peril.

Unseen correspondence, old and new, from politicians and key decision-makers that reveals what’s going on behind the scenes that impacts “Prohibition Zone” homeowners.