The mess of the November Election has cleared a little, after the Cayucos Sanitary District Board voted to approve one of two applicants vying for an open seat. But their tenure could be short-lived.
Jim Billings, a retired civil engineer and business owner got the nod over Charles Bergson who is also a civil engineer and former public works director.
Billings takes over the final months of long-time Board Member Shirley Lyons’ Division 2 seat, after Lyons stepped down from the board earlier this year. Her term officially ends in December, and Billings would have to step away if his candidacy is unsuccessful.
Billings and Bergson are slated to run for the full 4-year term in the November General Election and both will appear on the ballot. And while both men’s resume is impressive, only one of them will be able to serve.
Meanwhile, the CSD’s other two empty seats, Divs. 2 and 3 still have no one that has come forward to serve. No one put in nomination papers to run for either seat, and the CSD Board is in the process of trying to recruit applicants to be appointed.
It will go over the applications (the next meeting is Oct. 15) assuming they can find people to apply and eventually make a recommendation to the Board of Supervisors, who will be called upon to appoint someone to fill both of those seats.
Essentially, whoever is chosen to represent two-fifths of the Cayucos community will be decided by a 3-person majority of the Board of Supervisors.
The CSD Board is actively searching for people to come forward and apply for the seats and in all likelihood, barring some disqualifying scandal, potentially be a shoo-in to get appointed to the seat.
Of course, as an appointed member to an elected board, they would have to run for the seat at the next available election, which would be in November 2028. But by then they would have gained experience sitting on the board and be better educated as to what the position entails and all that is required of them to serve.
Again, the question arises as to why are so few people willing to step up and take a leadership role in their community?
Morro Bay also had only three people put in nomination papers for its three opens seats — Mayor and two Council seats — with two of them being incumbents.
But instead of canceling the election and simply awarding the seats to the three who sought them, the City Council voted to go ahead with the election to allow for people to sign up as write-in candidates that will not appear on the ballot.
And in Los Osos, the Community Services District also had only two people seek three open seats, with both of those folks already incumbents, so the LOCSD had to appoint someone to fill an open seat.
Los Osos, like Cayucos, is divided into five districts, called “Areas” in their bylaws, and every board seat represents a specific segment of the overall community, and narrowing down even further what is already a relatively small pool of potential candidates.
But while being a divided community would appear to be a likely reason for why candidates are so few, Morro Bay still elects its leaders on an at-large basis, with the entire town voting for each position.
In 2004, voters were asked to approve Measure F, which would have divided Morro Bay into five voting districts. That citizen’s initiative was soundly defeated with a 76.23% “No,” vote in the March 2004 Primary Election.
So, while Morro Bay rejected the effort to divide the town into voting districts, some 20-plus years later it suffers from the same apparent lack of interest to serve in elective office.
