I was watching the Board of Supervisors meeting, enjoying the comments made during public comment until former TAC chairman Bill Garfinkel showed up. Here’s some of what he had to say today:
To follow the speech, cue the meeting of the video at 263:13.
I’m representing the majority of the residents of the community of Los Osos who do not come to your meetings because they are either working or uncomfortable to be here or just tired of the unending process of trying to get a sewer built for Los Osos.Many feel intimidated by the confrontational attitude of the few dozen people who claim expertise and attend most of your meetings with their same protests that have delayed this process for far too long.
Although they claim to speak for Los Osos and to be working for our best interest, they are not.
They told the community to deny the County 218 vote but we voted overwhelmingly in favor. They came before you and said that we were intimidated by the RWQCB. They appealed to the community to elect CSD directors who would continue to fight the county process. We voted overwhelmingly to deny their appeals and change the direction of our CSD board.They campaigned heavily to the community to fill out their surveys and support their solutions of the wastewater project when we overwhelmingly rejected their solutions, asked for a gravity collection system and showed our support for the preferred EIR project, they came before you and said that the survey was biased.
Bill Garfinkel was not elected to be a representative. He was appointed by the County to be a member of the Los Osos Technical Advisory Committee. The purpose of TAC was, according to the TAC’s bylaws, “… to assist in the development of a Pro/Con analysis of Project alternatives, receive public input, and make recommendations to the Board on that Pro/Con analysis.” The purpose of TAC was not to appoint community representatives, but to accept people who filed applications as part of an open application filing process.
Garfinkel did issue a viewpoint in the San Luis Obispo Tribune, which was also signed by 82 other concerned members of the Los Osos community who support his position. The problem is that he’s accounting for 82 people out of 8,167 property owners and renters inside and outside the Prohibition Zone. That comes to roughly 0.01% of the community he represents. I would imagine that if there were more community members on his side, he would have gotten more signatures on his viewpoints.
Garfinkel goes on to complain about how people are delaying the process through protest. I took that as a statement supporting oppression.
The fact of the matter is that these “protests” of sorts have been limited by time. However, on the first Tuesday of every month, the County Board of Supervisors has allowed public comment for the maximum of three minutes per speaker and they still manage to vote on staff recommendations and approve the monthly project update without hindrances — hindrances like pending litigation, 1960s Civil Rights-era sit-in protests, fist fights, death threats, etc. For every Tuesday other than the monthly update, members of the public are allowed to comment on the Los Osos wastewater project for a total of 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the evening, which is allowed under Section III.B in the Rules of Procedure. So far, there have not been any delays of the County process. The only protests have been protests that fit perfectly within the confines of the law and common decency.
None of the “few dozen” speakers that Garfinkel talked about have claimed to speak for Los Osos. None of the speakers from Los Osos have declared that they are representatives for anyone other than themselves, their friends and family. All of the speakers have made it abundantly clear that they are fighting for what they think serves the best interests of the community. Some of the former and present CSD speakers — while their accomplishments are hotly debated — were elected by a majority vote.
On September 27, 2005, Chuck Cesena, John Fouche and Steve Senet were elected by more than 50% of the community. To be exact, the average voter turnout in favor of the three CSD directors was 51.1%. While that is not a mandate, the vote was certified by a majority of voters. Meanwhile, on November 2, 2004, Lisa Schicker and Julie Tacker were elected with an average voter turnout of 37.8%, which was still a considerable turnout compared to the voter turnout of Maria Kelly and Marshall Ochylski on November 4, 2008, which came out to an average of 30.6%. There was no indication of any landslide or vote of confidence by the majority. No, Mr. Garfinkel, you are quite wrong there.
On November 5, 2002, Stan Gustafson, Gordon Hensley and Richard LeGros won with 20% of the total amount of voters. The average voter turnout for those three was 19.3%, which was the lowest turnout in history for LOCSD directors. It appears that Garfinkel is in step with those CSD directors. Mr. Garfinkel, there’s no overwhelming majority there. Keep looking!
Without addressing the legality of the recent 218 assessment vote, the majority that did vote (not everyone in the community did by a long shot) voted to be assessed for a sewer, not because they were in support of the County’s process or the County’s handling of the process. Everyone had their own reasons for voting yes, but that vote was also not a vote of confidence in the County. The community (CORRECTION: those who voted for the 218) voted overwhelmingly for a sewer.
And finally, 34% completed the survey, 66% of the community didn’t. The majority of that 34% overwhelmingly supported gravity collection, but the community did not. The survey, even by the majority of the BOS’ own admission on April 7th, was considered to be biased, but they concluded that the results surpassed any concerns about the survey being biased.
So Mr. Garfinkel, as it turns out, you were wrong about pretty much everything except for your name. Yes, you really are Bill Garfinkel (and not Garfield), but no sir, you don’t represent me. You don’t represent my family. You don’t represent my friends or my neighbors. You don’t represent the Prohibition Zone or the district. If you were an elected representative of the community, chances are you would have already been recalled and laughed out of town. You already got me in stitches since you became chairman of the TAC.
While I have no doubt that you’re great at manufacturing machine controls, Mr. Garfinkel, I think the only machine you haven’t managed to control is your brain.
Since you didn’t reply to my last blog article about you, I would like to take the opportunity to let you know that the offer still stands. You know where I am. I would love a rebuttal. I would be glad to post it, but if you can’t (or won’t), then you wouldn’t mind me calling you the village idiot, right?
