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Follow the law in San Simeon, stop threatening whistleblowers

March 28, 2022

Julie Tacker

OPINION by JULIE TACKER

The following is an open letter to San Simeon officials:

San Simeon’s general manager services and legal counsel are giving you bad advice. I have complained to you directly, with little to no response. Filing complaints is the only vehicle available to me to make you aware of these ill-advised practices. These continuing complaints to your board and outside agencies will hopefully make you aware that things are not okay in your small disadvantaged community.

For over 20 years, I have studied local community services districts and served as a director on one for four years. I have had a pretty good track record for finding corruption in several.

Over the last year and a half, I have become a student of your district. I have learned your policies and procedures, apparently knowing them better than you do. I am an advocate for the Brown Act, California’s “sunshine law” and transparency. I am fiscally responsible and have witnessed your contractors giving you bad advice.

Ultimately, your ratepayers pay twice: the first time when your contractors fail you and the second when they get paid to clean up the mess they created for your district.

In my opinion, your contractor general manager service,” with their pattern of blunders, is taking advantage of your disadvantaged community. The general manager doesn’t attend your Budget Committee meetings where he is legally and contractually bound to provide financial management for the district including all important rate setting. You let this slide.

Moreover, it’s unbelievable and wholly inappropriate that you recently agreed to use ratepayer funds to pay nearly $50,000 in legal bills associated with his admitted Fair Political Practices Commission’s violation of conflict of interest law — self-dealing. An objective board would not indemnify someone who was fined for breaking the law and acknowledged that he had harmed the district.

Here’s some free advice: stop violating laws; stop violating your policies and procedures; get annually required Brown Act training for your committee members and your contractors; and have a workshop on your policies and procedures.

Ensure that your general manager and legal counsel become fully knowledgeable in the policies and procedures and the Brown Act, this will aid them in performing their duties. Perhaps, you should read the California Constitution, that you swore to uphold in your oath of office, so you know that citizens have the right to criticize their government without reprisal.

Julie Tacker is a life-long San Luis Obispo County resident and one of several activists who exposed wrongdoing in San Simeon. She is also one of several people a district official has threatened to sue if they continue to report the wrongdoing.


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Every single public entity that has hired Jeff Minnery as legal counsel ends up in trouble. How does he continue to work in SLO County.


4

I would recommend taking a very close look at Port San Luis Harbor District.


3

Those are some of the problems in smaller neighbor CSD’s where there only purpose are things like roads maintenance or waste service.


4

Cambria next?


10

Right now! There is a proposal for an annexation of an approved Ag Cluster Development on the Santa Margarita Ranch and now, 10 years later, the project owners/County of San Luis Obispo are studying this for annexed to The Town of Santa Margarita. I certainly support the project as a stand alone project, as approved but I do not support “bait and switch” projects that could adversely impact the existing community, especially where the County of San Luis Obispo can be heavy handed and has FAILED this community in the past.


Let me be clear, I do not trust the county to perform with the best interests of the community in mind. For example: The water deprivation, discontinuing 200 acre-feet of appropriated water, to justify the community into finding a new secondary water source option was intentional and self-serving for the “California Incorporated” County of San Luis Obispo.


Personally I get tired of hearing cost comparative justifications, especially when a community already has paid for such entitlements and have been taxed for almost 50 years. What does the county do?, they let the water go because Santa Margarita works well and that is bad for new revenue streams. The obvious narrative is to continually generate new fees to expand that dirty “G- I need a job and build an empire” word. This is a multi generational process and the new people will gladly pay because where they came from, is even worst.


12

In over 50+ years there has never been a succesful prosecution under the Brown Act…. Not something to rely on lol.


8

Everything thing wrong with the world would be made better if there were more Julie Tacker’s.


27