Centurion Gibson Calls for ‘Ramming Speed!’ to Accelerate Los Osos Sewer

Second District Supervisor Bruce Gibson is in a big hurry, at least when it comes to the Los Osos Wastewater Project. He would do anything to speed up the project, anything. He’s proven that over and over again. If he could push the start of construction up six months from March 2012 to September 2011 by ramming it by his pliable County Board of Supervisor brethren, then he will ram them head-on by lawyering, squeezing, smothering, hustling, and palavering them until they roll over, which they all eventually do.

Gibson, like the Roman Centurion commanding the war galley rowed by slave Ben-Hur, has called for “Ramming speed!” on the Los Osos sewer. Public Works staff has been asked to return to the board in September with an accelerated plan. It seems like Gibson has been trying to speed up the project from the moment it landed in the lap of the County in 2006 and he joined the board.

This rush tactic is nothing new for speed demon Gibson. He tried to bowl over the California Coastal Commission in January by pounding on the urgency of receiving their CDP in time to meet the County’s USDA loan application deadline, but it didn’t work. Coastal at least forced him to slow down long enough so more specific environmental safeguards could be conditioned into the permit the County eventually received in June, despite lingering environmental concerns from activists and professionals about the County’s choice of big-pipe gravity collection for the Los Osos sewer.

Gibson the pirate would happily ram the ship of County government into the Los Osos Wastewater Project, or vice versa, if it meant breaking ground earlier on the most expensive sewer per capita – about $350 per month -- in the history of California. Only a pirate would levy outrageous new taxes and plunder a disadvantaged community in the trough of the deepest recession since the Great Depression. Only a pirate living by the sword, bereft of compassion, would rush forward an over-the-top public works project that will force half the town to walk the plank—sell their homes and move out—at the lowest point in their lives.

With what Gibson calls a “known project” (price still unknown) and Coastal Development Permit in hand, the benefits of speeding up the project outweigh the risks, Gibson the gambler assured the board and public at the Board of Supervisors’ Los Osos Update in San Luis Obispo on July 27:

“I’m comfortable enough that the financing will fall into place or that we have gotten far enough down the due diligence line to propose that we find another $400,000 to accelerate efforts.”

Screw the risks, throw more good money down the bad sewer—RAMMING SPEED!

“If we pass the due diligence early (and financing falls through) ,” Gibson acknowledged, “we would be on the hook for the entire $165 million project—without knowing if the rates and charges passed, without knowing what the State Revolving Fund loan yield is going to be… We (the County) would then be in the gun-sights of the Regional (Water) Board for being the (financially) responsible party to making a sewer happen, without the necessary blocks of financing set up.

“I see the picture gradually clarifying,” quickly added Gibson the gypsy, gazing into his crystal ball, which looks suspiciously like a magic 8-ball purchased at Target. “I think we’re headed toward a diligence resolution. I think we’re headed toward taking formal acceptance of the project as these various issues and items fall into place… It is risking general taxpayers’ dollars on a loan basis… (but) I see that we are getting closer to resolving those uncertainties...”

That’s when Gibson the gambler put his foot on top of the County’s foot and jammed it down on the accelerator.

“As I look at the way things are lining up, under the assumption that we have a favorable result from the USDA application,” he said, “I think it would be a legitimate manageable risk of general tax-payer money to accelerate this project, so we get the best possible bid environment and get the water conservation plan going and all the benefits that an accelerated timeline would provide.”

The County should have started a mandatory water conservation program in Los Osos long ago, without a sewer in place, but Gibson will say and do anything to get his way, including twisting the County’s lack of a water conservation plan for Los Osos to make it seem like a benefit to moving up the start of construction.

Groundbreaking can’t come soon enough for dwindling County coffers tapped by Gibson and Public Works Director Paavo Ogren to plot the Sewer to Nowhere. Accept the project earlier, start the project earlier, and the County can move faster to begin drawing from funds assessed Los Osos “Prohibition Zone” homeowners—to pay itself back the $8 million in County general funds already spent, misspent some say, simply to bring the project to bid.

Gibson is in such a hurry that he would openly lie to the board and public attending the July 27 meeting, and those at home watching on TV or listening to the radio. No problem:

“Six months of delay is something like another 180 million gallons of improperly treated pollution dumped in the Morro Bay National Estuary, and we seek to correct that as soon as we can, it’s been going on far too long,” he intoned.

And, when asked if there was a building moratorium in Los Osos, Gibson the liar, who graduated with a master’s degree in geophysics and lava lamps from the University of Hawaii, said:

“There’s not a building moratorium in Los Osos, but there is a requirement to retrofit to build and that is basin wide. New development actually ends up reducing the seawater intrusion problem.”

Wrong and wronger.

At the following week’s Board of Supervisors meeting, during public comment, a speaker chastised Gibson for spreading misinformation—for using his bogus “180 million gallons” and “New development reduces seawater intrusion” arguments to pressure a board motion to expedite the project—without offering a shred of proof or a single document to verify either fallacious claim. Unperturbed by the confrontation, Gibson maintained his stony silence, offering no clarification, no apology, although a whole community has been sentenced to economic Death Row on just such false evidence he has entered into the record.

The other board members said nothing about Gibson’s propaganda because they didn’t know the subject matter and didn’t want to get drawn any deeper into the Los Osos quagmire they’re already sinking in. Instead, they chose to play willing victims of false claims from a fellow board member breaching his fiduciary duty, rather than asking a single question in even a belated fake-sincere attempt to uphold their sworn duty. They have already allowed Gibson to get away with too much wrongdoing, and that in itself is casting a long shadow across the board.

So here they all are again, gathered around the roulette wheel at Casino San Luis, otherwise known as the Board of Supervisors meeting on July 27, spinning for more tax dollars to keep the Los Osos project on the attack. Gibson the gambler is in so much of a hurry to cover the deep debt he’s worked up that he’s willing to risk $400,000 more of County general funds, on top of the already-spent $8 million, to move the project start-up date six months, six months closer to being unstoppable.

Unstoppability is Gibson’s goal for the sewer and why he can’t stop pushing. And one of the unspoken reasons why he’s in such a mad dash—is ghosts. That’s right, ghosts. Gibson knows all about the Los Osos jinx and the ghosts of sewer failures past. Whatever can happen will happen in that topsy-turvy, whimsical land of sea-seasoned nature-preserve dwellers, where lawsuits pop up like mushrooms in a damp basement. Gibson inherited the jinx from previous 2nd District Supervisor Shirley Bianchi, who in 2005—with her own personal radio ads—fought against the recall of three Los Osos Community Service District directors promoting the ill-conceived midtown Tri-W project—and lost to strong community opposition to the Tri-W project, however slim the margin.

Gibson saw firsthand how the jinx claimed Bianchi. He studied the grand failure of Tri-W, and knows that anything can happen anytime in Los Osos to stop project cold in its tracks. He knows a lawsuit could drop at the 11th hour, or there’s always a good chance Public Works will screw up and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory as it has so many times before with the project; as it has by wasting millions of dollars to develop a flawed project from a flawed EIR that had to be corrected, changed and conditioned extensively by the Planning Commission and reinforced by the Coastal Commission.

History is not on his side and time is his enemy, and Gibson is trying to beat the Los Osos jinx by closing the window of opportunity for failure. He’s fighting to take time off the clock for the humongously bloated and grotesquely expensive project to get bogged down, perhaps forever, in the uniquely absorbent “magic sand” of Los Osos. Gibson seems to have learned his lessons well. Or has he?

A new face at public comment is always a point of interest for jaded board members weary of seeing the same faces and hearing the same voices and same complaints at meetings, week after week, no matter how legitimate they are. Arlene McQueen, a Los Osos homeowner and senior, had never spoken at a Board of Supervisors meeting before July 27, so her poignant, plain-spoken comments carried an extra measure of weight to those tuned that afternoon to a fresh face and new voice in the crowd. Here are her comments in their entirety:

“I have come here today because I am extremely worried about our future in Los Osos. We built our home in 1980 and intended to stay here for the rest of our lives. However, it doesn’t appear that that will happen. So many of us will not be able to pay this exorbitant sewer bill which you are forcing on us. We trusted you, our County, to protect us from losing our homes, but instead you are leading us down the hill to disaster. We trusted you to find an affordable alternative to this very expensive gravity collection system. We all know that there are other options available that are used all around the world, but you haven’t even tried to get bids for STEP or vacuum systems.

“Bruce Gibson—you have let us down. Public Works—you have let us down. You have all let us down. You have tunnel vision and only want to see this project get underway, no matter what the cost, no matter who is hurt. We implore you to rethink this situation before it’s too late. What you are doing is a crime to the community of Los Osos. This cleansing and removal of the lower and middle income residents will be on your conscience forever. Can you live with that on your conscience? There is simply no way that we and thousands of others can afford this project. It’s a bad project and it’s far too expensive. We know that there has to be another way, and you know that also. Thank you.”

There is yet one more compelling benefit—conveniently omitted by Gibson—to accelerating the unaffordable project: The faster construction starts, the sooner Mrs. McQueen will have to pack and move. That’s one less senior that Gibson and the mute board will have to hear whine about being kicked out of town by a $350 a month sewer bill. Multiply her voice by 6,000 and that’s a lot of whining this board and the next board does not want to hear every Tuesday.

Mrs. McQueen did not use all of her allotted three minutes to complete her heartfelt comments, and that must have greatly pleased Gibson and the board, which offered her no response from which to take even a grain of solace. None at all.

Gibson the salesman had closed the deal.