Los Olivos CSD: Tax and Spend. When Will it End?
Dear Friends and Neighbors,
The Los Olivos Community Services District is holding a
PUBLIC HEARING: CONSIDERATION OF THE PROPOSED FISCAL YEAR 2023-24 BUDGET
this Wednesday (July 12): 6:00 pm at St. Mark’s (and via Zoom).
Five years of meetings. Five years of assessment fees. How do we get an appropriate, affordable plan that will preserve historic Los Olivos and its surrounding agricultural land and finally be a step in the right direction to addressing the township’s groundwater quality problems?
The draft budget is allocating money for all of the following items in the coming months,
but we do not have a final project description —
or even any project alternatives to choose from.
—> Paying engineers to get “the project” 60% designed. What project? Do you know? Is it this one? If so, where are the engineering studies (financed with assessment fees paid by District landowners and government grant funding extended to the LOCSD) for “the project”?
—> Finalizing siting options by fall of 2023. If we don’t know what is being designed or built, how can a site be selected for it? Oh, and what is “it”?
—> Environmental study of the proposed project. Ummmm. Again . . . Why is the Board planning to spend money to study a project that is not even a twinkle in a professional engineer’s eye at this point?
Proposed Budget for the LOCSD Board’s consideration Wednesday evening.
Please come out and keep asking questions:
Where are “all the options” the LOCSD Board has told us they are studying? For months now, the Board has repeatedly said in public meetings that “no decisions have been made” and they are “studying all the options,” which will be put before the public for a vote.
Why is the LOCSD Board now saying there is no money to study any other options? How did that happen, and why did they keep saying studies were being done if they weren’t?
What in the world are we supposed to make of this “Working Draft” of the 2023-24 budget which is set to become FINAL on July 13 (the day after this Wednesday night meeting)?
Without your input, there is a very real risk that the Board will finalize this “budget” — and we will be facing another 12 months of public funds being spent on things, and in ways, we know nothing about.
Be part of the conversation.
Come out and encourage the LOCSD Board to identify some viable alternatives this beautiful community can afford to support: financially, environmentally, aesthetically, historically . . .
I
