UPDATE 9:55 PM PST: Pandora Nash-Karner has issued a response:
Fortunately, Los Osos has more than one facet — we’re not just about the sewer issue.
Celebrate Los Osos is dedicated to making a difference, one project at a time, with highly visible projects, engaging volunteers who want to get their hands dirty “doing good work” for the benefit of our unique community.
Genius loci — the Spirit of Place — is the unique, distinctive and cherished aspects of a place — the very reasons we love Los Osos. It is as much in the invisible weave of the people as it is our area’s tangible physical aspects.
The Spirit of Volunteerism and love of place have a long history in Los Osos. Just look and you’ll see the evidence: the Elfin Forest, Sweetsprings, the Bridge Bears, the Community Center, the historical murals, Los Osos Community Park, not to mention the legions of men and women who coach and support youth sports.
Volunteering is the most fundamental act of citizenship and philanthropy in our society. It is offering time, energy and skills to help others and the community we live in. By caring and contributing volunteers make a difference to the quality of life. People work to improve the lives of their neighbors and, in return, enhance their own.
Join us in the celebration of our place.
Celebrate Los Osos is more than just an organization, it has become a movement. It began in January 2008 with the intention of bringing a splintered community together and re-establishing community pride. We are an all-volunteer, community-based, non-profit corporation committed to benefit public spaces in Los Osos and Baywood Park.
We utilize volunteers of all ages and abilities to plant, paint, repair, build, beautify, refurbish, remodel, restore and maintain projects that directly involve and engage community members in order to stimulate community pride, bind us together, and leave a legacy for all to enjoy.
Your blog didn’t mention all the other people involved with Celebrate Los Osos who have not be involved in trying to solve the wastewater issue. Unfortunately you didn’t mention them.
Razor Response: It’s good to note that there are many volunteers — who contribute to “Celebrate Los Osos” — who are not involved with the sewer. Unfortunately, many of the founders, the movers and the shakers of this non-profit organization have created more pressing issues to the community: more substantial, critical issues that landscaping the road median on Los Osos Valley Rd. will not address. The spirit of volunteerism is not prohibited in this article — and to imply that it is shows a lack of understanding. In fact, the article does state that the focal point of the event should be donating money to where it’s needed the most, the residents of the Prohibition Zone. Planting a tree, clearing brush and building fences will be a moot point if it’s done for a ghost town. There’s no other way to look at it. Contribute to what matters the most. It comes with great sadness to see that Mrs. Nash-Karner does not see the forest for the trees.
UPDATE 6:30 PM PST: A petition is now available for Prohibition Zone residents to sign. The petition is designed to hold the Celebrate Los Osos founders accountable. For more details, click here.
Week after week, a few Los Osos residents speak at public comment during Tuesday’s SLO County Board of Supervisors meeting. No matter what happens in the ever-changing sewer saga, public comment speakers revisit the same themes in the same combative tone. Legendary American boxer Muhammad Ali once said, “It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen,” but in the case of Los Osos residents speaking out, nothing happens when repetition is involved.
Getting Your Message Across
After making several landmark, controversial decisions that effectively diminished the County opposition to the wastewater project process, the Board of Supervisors made an existential choice to move on without any afterthoughts or reconsideration. Meanwhile, a small number of residents continue to speak every Tuesday, insisting that the board is not listening to them. If the BOS isn’t listening, why speak?
The best use of podium time would be to educate the audience at home — though only a handful of watchers — on upcoming events that promote your cause. Make your voice heard on your own terms, not Gibson’s, not Sparks’. Unless you’re a public official serving the government, the diplomatic channel of speaking at board meetings is now ineffective. We need to break the habit of speaking to an uncaring brick wall.
In reality, getting the message across doesn’t have to involve speaking on the same topics ad nauseum at the podium.
There needs to be a public investment into community outreach. Creative, aggressive grassroots efforts will persevere over three minutes or less of public comment.
Here are some suggestions to make your message known:
- Know your audience. Members of the Board of Supervisors were elected by voters. The voters are the ones who decide who stays and who goes in the BOS elections. The voters should be the ones being educated on the process and its flaws, not the board. Secondly, think about the people who will be directly impacted by the Los Osos sewer project: Prohibition Zone homeowners, particularly the elderly on fixed incomes. Not everyone has access to SLO-SPAN and not everyone has access to the Internet — so bring the message to them. Bring the message home whether you leave it at their doorstep or on the TV, at local events or on the radio.
- Physical effort counts. Stuff envelopes, make calls, staple signs together. Be seen. March the streets. If you’re more digitally inclined, work on graphic/web design, create and present objective, resourceful PowerPoint presentations, submit videos to YouTube, spread your message worldwide to social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. The truth is that Los Osos needs a lot of people to be heard, individually and collectively. No matter what kind of skills you have, no matter the level of commitment you have to promoting the issues, you will have plenty to do in the areas of your expertise and plenty of opportunities to make things happen. On the don’t side: Eliminate the e-mail pep rallies.
- Unify, unify, unify! Disposable non-profit organizations that focus on strategic litigation that have a small chance of being successful. It takes leaders working together to build a unifying force with an established presence. It’s a known fact that Los Osos has been subject to political fragmentation and alienation due in part to the abundance of half-cocked non-profits with no clear purpose. It takes leaders to unify and develop a community movement. It takes leaders to show that concerned citizens are not limited to the few public comment speakers. To achieve this unity, we need to go back to basics and learn from the 2005 recall sans the misinformation and petty politics.
- Demonstrate what people will get for their vote. Use readily available resources — such as composing press releases and leaflets to be distributed at businesses with heavy traffic — to invite wastewater professionals into town for “meet and greet” events. Instead of showing people what Prohibition Zone homeowners and residents could get for joining your mission, show residents what you want them to have, what collection and treatment systems should be part of the County’s design-build process and how those systems would work with our community’s project criteria. Directly confront the County’s reasons for dismissing affordable alternatives (i.e. STEP/STEG easements, vacuum not being able to serve high groundwater areas etc.); have those presentations taped and made available and in every accessible medium from the South Bay Library to YouTube.
The following event can be used to utilize these grassroots suggestions.
Wrong Group Celebrates Los Osos
On October 25, 2009, “Celebrate Los Osos” will meet at Los Osos’ Oktoberfest event.
It’s important to note that members behind “Celebrate Los Osos” — the folks behind the mantra, “Making a difference, one project at a time!” — include several known wastewater politicos including Frank Freiler, Gary and Pandora Nash-Karner, Mimi Kalland, Maria Kelly, Lynette Tornatzky, Leon Van Beurden, Jerry Gregory, Joyce Albright, and the cast of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
On September 25, 2005, organizer Pandora Nash-Karner — yes, the very same person who said in a Tribune article on October 18th, “Good friends were not talking. We’re better than that” — wrote to RWQCB enforcement czar, Roger Briggs, “I hope the CSD gets fined out of existence fast enough to save the contractors and the low-interest loan!” Let’s see. Good friends were not talking. Oh, I know! Maybe they’re not talking because you wanted their taxpayer-funded district — the very same district that Nash-Karner wanted to be established under Measure K in 1998 — to be fined out of existence.
Nash-Karner has come a long way from erecting “honeyhuts” all over town to mending fences.
On September 29, 2005, Jerry Gregory — yes, he’s a member of “Celebrate Los Osos” too — upped the ante. In an e-mail written to Roger Briggs, he wrote, “At Rose Bowker memorial I asked you to fine the Community of Los Osos if the Recall is successful. Well, I am asking you again. Please do this immediately and with the largest fine that is legal for you to do. [...] My honest opinon (sic) is that your fine is large enough to bankrupt the CSD and place all of the services back in the hands of the County.” He probably forgot to add, “I would like to scoop up all the foreclosures with my friend, Leon Van Beurden, and make a huge profit! Those fools won’t know what hit ‘em! Please, please with sugar on top?” Only a few months after he sent that e-mail, without any scientific evidence that their septics were polluting the groundwater, 45 homeowners received Cease and Desist Orders. When 45 homeowners received CDOs, and thousands received NOVs, many lives were deeply affected, emotionally, fincancially, and physically.
Gregory has come a long way from urging homeowners to receive large enforcement fines to planting trees.
Nothing that these two hypocrites — and the rest of the “Nest” — have done for Los Osos is worth celebrating. In fact, they should hang their heads in shame. Instead of posting up a poorly crafted Web site and hosting a booth for this year’s Oktoberfest, they should have a table and a money jar. All of the proceeds should go to the legal defense of homeowners who have been unfairly targeted by these people who couldn’t accept the fact that three of their board members were recalled in a fair election. Instead of landscaping and planting trees on a road median, these individuals should be apologizing profusely for ensuring that widespread community healing would not be possible in their lifetimes.
Nash-Karner said in the Oct 18 article, “We need the entire community to get involved — one project at a time.” Nice try.
On October 25th, I urge all homeowners who were affected by members of “Celebrate Los Osos” to attend Oktoberfest, rise up and denounce their divisiveness and hatred. Denounce the “Dreamer” volunteers without violence, without conflict. I urge everyone to stand together and let the community of Los Osos know who is pretending to make a difference.
Let’s celebrate the fact that in this wonderful country, everyone — even these lovely folks — have the right to express their opinion and assemble even though they’ve done so as a way to suppress dissent from speaking out — one project at a time.
– Aaron Ochs
