Cuyama sits in Santa Barbara County’s most northeast corner.
It’s a dusty and dry landscape 50 miles from Santa Maria to the east, and more
than 60 miles from Ojai to the south. Everything in between is either farmland
or the Los Padres Forest.
There’s no direct water line going to the small community of
roughly 1,100 people, so it’s entirely dependent on an aquifer that’s been
slowly drying up for the last several decades—ever since the discovery of the
South Cuyama Oil Field that brought development to the area in the late
1940s.
It’s not exactly the aquifer itself that’s the problem;
rather it’s the district that manages it that has proven problematic, according
to a recent report. Cuyama is unincorporated, but the Cuyama Community Services
District (CCSD) takes care of providing basic services, such as sewer and
water, to the community. Complaints to the Santa Barbara County grand jury in
November about the district’s operations prompted an investigation, and on
March 7, the grand jury released a report spelling out everything that’s been
going wrong in the CCSD for the last two decades.
Some of the problems the grand jury detailed in the report
include a heavy workload for CCSD employees, a strained work environment,
“abusive and hostile language” at public meetings, finding a replacement for
the current manager, and accusations of nepotism.
Some of the trouble, according to former CCSD board member
John Mackenzie (and which the report also noted), was centered on the friction
between the former CCSD Manager U.S. Wilson and some of the agency’s staff and
board members.
Wilson, 83, is a former ARCO employee (the oil company that
essentially developed Cuyama) who said he heeded the call to come out of
retirement in Texas and move back to Cuyama to manage the CCSD. He was 55 at
the time.
Wilson called the report a “big bunch of shit” and said at
least half of it was wrong. During his 20-plus years as the manager, Wilson
said he helped bring the district out of the instability of being run by a
private company.
“I put in sewer plants, water plants, water lines. Wells
didn’t have water lines like they were supposed to,” Wilson told the Sun.
“I’ve gotten grants left and right. I can go on and on and on.”
He and the board were able to implement a new arsenic
filtration system, which was completed in 2014.
But during the last few years of Wilson’s tenure, Mackenzie
said things went downhill.
“He ran the district as if he didn’t need approval from the
board,” Mackenzie said.
The district had difficulty replacing Wilson, who resigned
recently, since it was impossible to afford to pay anyone else with his
credentials. It’s a position that requires at least three types of state-issued
licenses.
Knowing that the district couldn’t pay a marketable salary
for the manager position back when he started, Wilson said he’d accept from the
board “whatever they could afford” with the expectation that pay would
gradually increase.
During his tenure, some took issue with how Wilson dealt
with personnel. Mackenzie called Wilson “dictatorial” and “abusive” to the
secretary controller, Vivian Vickery.
Vickery refused to talk about past problems in dealing with
Wilson but mentioned that her workload gradually increased in her past 20 years
of working with the CCSD, causing her to fall behind.
One of the problems on this end, the report said, was the
recording of meeting minutes, of which Vickery made highly detailed
summations—something the grand jury report said was unnecessary. Vickery told
the Sun that she was instructed to provide detailed minutes by Wilson
but not given any guidance on how to phrase or word the minutes.
As noted in the report, and as Mackenzie also pointed out,
Wilson’s son, David, worked directly under and reported to his father. Several
issues followed, as noted in the report, such as inconsistencies in his son’s
time card and using the CCSD truck for personal business—all of which were
addressed in board meetings. David still works part-time for the district.
“It is unusual within a government agency to have a relative
work for and report directly to another relative,” the report noted.
The report said these issues all came to a head during a
board meeting on June 15, 2011. Things became rather unpleasant, and some
not-so-nice things were said, according to the report. Here’s a brief excerpt
of the minutes as recorded by Vickery:
“Ms. [Karen] Adams noted that there are many personnel
issues to be addressed. She expressed consideration of resigning as treasurer
because she felt her efforts were ineffective. Discussion followed, and a very
heated argument ensued. The situation became gravely serious with no
resolution. The meeting became disorderly.”
In July 2015, Mackenzie resigned from his position on the
board. And shortly before the report came out, Wilson resigned, which was one
of the recommendations of the report. New manager James Hampton took over the
district on March 1.
“The district is fine,” Mackenzie told the Sun. “No
matter what happens, it’s in better shape that it has been.”
Still at issue, though, are water rates and filling the
positions on the board, which are elected.
According to newest board member John Coates, who was
appointed by the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors in January, there
are four positions up for re-election in November, including his.
Board positions are unpaid, which could be a problem when it
comes to generating interest, although Mackenzie told the Sun that
candidates must approach it with a community-service frame of mind.
The grand jury report recommended compensating the board
members, but how? That’s where rates come in. A household pays roughly $137 per
month as the base rate for sewer and water, according to Coates. An independent
study by the Rural Community Assistance Corporation in October 2015 recommended
a 29 percent rate increase, which would raise rates to around $170, a
percentage of which could be used to compensate board members. But Coates said
it would be “tricky” to try to implement.
Another compensation issue that the district will need to
tackle is covering the increase in salary it allotted for the manager position
after Hampton was hired earlier this month. The increased salary requires
additional revenue.
One source of money is grants, on which Cuyama is heavily
reliant. Finding the money requires a “complete review of the system on a
technical basis,” Coates told the Sun.
“It’s something that hasn’t been done in a long time,” he
said.
March
30, 2016
Santa
Maria Sun
By David Minsky
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