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Cayucos district considers contract with former out-of-state manager

March 28, 2025

Julie Tacker

OPINION by JULIE TACKER

Open letter to the Cayucos Sanitary District:

After months of closed sessions and special meetings, your board is at it again.

Today, March 28, you have a special meeting, which was noticed just 27 hours ahead of time, to enter into a sole-sourced consultant contract with Richard “Rick” Koon, your former general manager who moved to Utah last October.

The short notice, special meeting, at 3: p.m. today, is at a time when most working people cannot attend. The agenda posting does not include a staff report explaining how you got here or who is recommending you do this.

How did you get here? The items identified in the scope of work; developing plans for capital improvements, operations and maintenance for the four-year-old wastewater treatment plant, and use and disposition of assets left at the Morro Bay wastewater treatment plant, are all things that should have been either advanced or completed over the course of Koon’s five-year employment contract that ended last month.

With such limited information, it is impossible to justify why your board is willing to enter into a sole-sourced, open-ended, “ever green” contract that “shall remain and continue in effect until terminated…” with anyone. Why Koon? The $235.00 per hour rate should be competitively bid.

There is no proposal, timelines, milestones or deadlines for the scope of work in the draft contract before you. There is no “not-to-exceed” amount for which you are willing to pay.

Surely there is no urgency to warrant a special meeting. Your board certainly could wait until the next regular meeting on April 17 when the community can more fully participate. There is still time to get quotes from local qualified bidders for the work, and potentially save the district money.

I urge you to (1) Postpone today’s action. ( 2) Send the scope of work out to bid, bring the proposals back, and (3) Consider the items in a regular, open session, meeting and let the community help you in deciding how their money is spent.

You are the fiduciaries of the district. You don’t owe Koon anything. You owe the community to get the most for their money.

 


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Update: The board discussed the open-ended, $235.00 an hour, contract for over an hour at this meeting. They were divided, but came together to ask for an actual proposal from Koon. This will give them an idea of what the total cost of the tasks will be. One asked for a “not-to-exceed” figure. They also reduced the three tasks down to two, for now.


They hope to have the proposal back from Koon by next Friday and have scheduled another special meeting for April 4th.


There was only one member of the public in attendance; me.


4

Hourly could be a lot less than any alternative middle aged candidate looking to get PERS …. depending on # of billable hrs. Koon is a proven superior negotiator with regard to the pending disposition of the old plant and joint owned property mentioned above. That alone is big bucks + or – to the rate payers.


-3

Heck, I’ll do the job for room and board!


2

Odds are Koon threaten a lawsuit or to release details of closet skeletons unless they hired him back.


12

I live out-of-State, have extensive requisite experience and will accept the contract at 50% atwhat is being offered. Give me a shot, you won’t be sorry.


12