Front Page  »  

Cayucos Sanitary District rejects out-of-state manager

March 24, 2025

By KAREN VELIE

Following community concerns over its out-of-state general manager, the Cayucos Sanitary District Board of Directors voted 3-2 on March 20 not to rehire Rick Koon while looking into consultant services to manage the district, with directors Robert Enns and Shirley Lyon dissenting.

Koon moved out of state last fall without informing the board while he worked remotely. He then failed to meet the deadline for extending his contract.

Last week, the board consider a six-month contract for Koon for $98,429 for a minimum of 30 hours per week. The proposed contract only required Koon to appear in Cayucos in person three days a week, during the monthly board meetings.

The board had planned to sign a new contract with Koon on Thursday. The board’s 3-2 vote not to consider Koon’s contract and to look for a new manager was not expected and likely the result of activist Julie Tacker exposure of his move out of state.

 


Loading...
Subjects:     
Related:


11 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

As a member Of the concerned community I would like to thank The three members of the board Who voted against the ill fated plan to extend employment to the now out of state district manager.


0

Wait and see what the management consulting costs…. You have to have certain state certifications to manage a wastewater plant.


4

there is a big difference between what a consultant will cost and what they are worth.


1

Thanks to Julie for drawing the community’s attention to what was happening here and to the three directors for not implementing this unique “retirement bonus package” for the former GM.


9

Thanks for the nod CCN, but I really want to give credit to the 3 board members who stood their ground for the ratepayers.


Cayucos Sanitary District manages wastewater and garbage, this is a part time job that should never have been offered as such. Nor should it have paid as much as it did. Now that the new WW treatment plant is built and operational, a part time GM is all they need.


16

Slight clarification, “should never have been offered as such”, should read “never been offered as anything but.”


4

Why is hiring from out of State so common? Are we Californians just plain incompetent?


8

Because it’s too expensive to live here.


Which is because we don’t build market rate housing and haven’t met demand since at least the 70s. Unless you bought a house +20 years ago, you know how bad it is. Kids are unable to afford to live in the towns and cities they grew up in.


1

Your explanation makes no sense considering we live in the most populated state in America.


3

Maybe because we’re the third largest state with ludicrously good weather compared to competitors Texas and Alaska, maybe because our economy is the largest in the United States and so there are jobs, cities, and farms people flock too.


Maybe it’s because we’ve been the largest state since the 1960s and these trends don’t just change over night.


Maybe it’s because the housing crisis has only become really acute in the last 20 years as population increases pushed the demand/price of housing higher while supply remained limited due to NIMBYs and Environmentalist regulators fighting to stop development.


The cost of housing is astronomical and a huge weight holding back the economy and people’s desire to live in California; saying it’s not a problem because we have a lot of people here is like saying water issues don’t make sense because we live next to the world’s largest ocean, or the cost of groceries doesn’t matter because the US has a huge economy…


0

You implying that the most populated state with some of the top technology companies in the world can’t find a californian intelligent enough to be a sanitary manager for a small beach town district is ludicrous.


0