Creating Obstacles

There are all kinds of things that I'd love to address in the "Viewpoint" in today's Tribune, but I want to focus on just one horrendous line:

"The (LOCSD) board has followed through in spite of numerous obstacles it did not create."

That's a joke, right?

The board has followed through in spite of numerous obstacles it did not create?

You guys are kidding, right?

"Numerous obstacles it did not create!!?"

Please tell me you're kidding.

Bob, Joe, Vivian and Don, (four people to write one editorial?), since it doesn't appear that you've been following the events in Los Osos over the last six years, allow me to let you in on a little secret -- the LOCSD Board created almost ALL of the obstacles.

Good God, are you guys living in the same fantasy land that Pandora Nash-Karner is?

Follow me on this:

• Did the initial LOCSD Board/Solution Group create an obstacle by luring their community into supporting a "better, cheaper, faster" sewer system, the Community Plan, that would save "$30 million," through a less-than-accurate, and scrupulously questionable marketing campaign conducted by Pandora Nash-Karner?
  
  Yes!
  
  
• Did the LOCSD Board create an obstacle by pursuing the deeply flawed Community Plan for nearly two years after every relevant regulatory agency told the Board it wasn't going to work in Los Osos?
  
  Yes!
  
  
• Did the LOCSD Board create an obstacle by finally abandoning the deeply flawed Community Plan for the same reasons that those regulatory agencies told the Board two years earlier?
  
  Yes!
  
  
• After wasting two years of everyone's time and money, including the California Coastal Commission, the Regional Water Quality Control Board, the State Water Resources Control Board, the County of San Luis Obispo, and the fine folks of Los Osos, chasing that terrible plan, did the LOCSD Board create an obstacle in the form of a now-very-pressing urgency to move forward with any viable project because of the two years wasted pursuing that terribly ill-conceived plan?
  
  Yes! (That one actually looms large in this whole mess.)
  
  
• Did the LOCSD Board create an obstacle by baselessly identifying a "project objective" of "centrally located community amenities" in the new much, much more expensive plan?
  
  Yes!
  
  
• Did the LOCSD Board create an obstacle by ignoring the will of Los Osos voters and including a multi-million dollar park in the project?
  
  Yes!
  
  
• Did the LOCSD Board create an obstacle by having that multi-million dollar park dictate the downtown location?
  
  Yes!
  
  
• Did the LOCSD Board create an obstacle by including multi-millions of dollars of extra odor, visual, and environmental mitigation in the project because of the downtown location to accommodate the "project objective" of "centrally located community amenities?"
  
  Yes!
  
  
• Did the LOCSD Board create an obstacle by not selecting the "environmentally preferable" site on the outskirts of town, a site that, according to the LOCSD, would have saved Los Osos multi-millions of dollars, because that site was just too far away to accomplish the "project objective" of "centrally located community amenities" -- amenities that the community didn't want in the first place?
  
  Ohhhhh... yea! Big time!
  

"The board has followed through in spite of numerous obstacles it did not create?"

That must be a joke, 'cause I'm laughin'.

I have a question. If the LOCSD Board is so righteous, so squeaky clean, so friggin' perfect, then why did California Coastal Commissioner Dave Potter call the Los Osos CSD Board "a little bait-and-switchy?"

Obstacles. Obstacles. Obstacles.

Bob, Joe, Vivian and Don, the current Board has about 38 days left in their obstacle creating ways.

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