Julie Tacker has the experience Los Osos needs

October 12, 2016

OPINION by MARLY TACKER

I know what you’re thinking “this letter is signed by a family member, no wonder they support this candidate.” What you should realize, is I’m not just a family member, I am the daughter of Los Osos Community Services District (LOCSD) candidate Julie Tacker.

As such, I know better than most to what lengths my mom has gone to protect our community. I’ve been by her side supporting her my whole life. We have shared the deeply personal things that all families do, accidents, illness, births, deaths, divorces; but we also share the highly public things she has stood up for as a hardworking community volunteer.

I had the privilege of holding her hand in the delivery room when my little brother was born. I stayed up late at board meetings rocking him to sleep while she finished out her 2004-2008 term as a director on the LOCSD.

I helped her paint signs when she promoted “Spaghetti for Letty,” the “Josh Sanders Benefit” and several others. We painted signs again when she ran for office to “move the sewer” and again when she alerted this county to PG&E’s seismic testing project that would decimate sea life in a “zone of lethality” off our shores.

I cheered her on as she endured extreme criticism for her stance during the Sweet Springs expansion, as she pushed for drainage and habitat management and a public access at 3rd St. and Pismo Avenue.

I agreed with her when she fought cell tower installations within Los Osos neighborhoods and the installation of solar carports on school parking lots instead of on their rooftops.

I stood firmly by her when she took on the corporate McDonald’s and Starbucks giants as she argued their water use.

Over the last year or so, mom dug into the LOCSD finances enough to know that payroll anomalies were approved by those who benefited from them. Those staff members are gone as a result of her nose for numbers. Mom’s hunger for information found that the districts bond rating had been suspended without the board’s knowledge. In each instance she contacted board members to alert them of the problems she’d found at the district.

Having Julie Tacker on the LOCSD board of directors makes sense. There is no learning curve. With your vote she will get right to work continuing to clean up corruption, eliminating wasteful spending and putting ratepayer dollars to work on important seawater intrusion mitigating infrastructure.

I’m a “Tacker Backer,” you should be too.