Oceano CSD rejects merger with Grover Beach amid cheers. What happens next?
The Oceano Community Services District Board of Directors recently rejected a proposed merger with the city of Grover Beach.
At a contentious April 24 meeting, the Oceano CSD board voted 3-2 to not move forward with a feasibility study that would have looked at the pros and cons of Grover Beach annexing its South County neighbor. Directors Charles Varni and Beverly Joyce-Suneson voted in favor of conducting the study.
The meeting was attended by dozens of Oceano residents, the majority of whom spoke against the proposed study and merger during a lengthy public comment period.
As the vote was tallied, the crowd erupted in cheers.
At the meeting, Varni expressed his disappointment with the board and Oceano residents’ unwillingness to even hear the pros and cons of a merger at the meeting.
“We are powerful here at Oceano,” Varni said. “I don’t think this community has ever been stronger. It’s obviously full of pride. With that pride with that strength, we should not be afraid of getting a little more information.”
Why combine Oceano and Grover Beach?
According to Varni, efforts to merge Oceano with neighboring communities date back more than 40 years. The first Oceano Community Plan included several pages on the option of merging the community with other cities.
As an unincorporated town, Varni said Oceano does not enjoy local control beyond the district, which means residents can’t rely on a city council to make decisions on issues such as repairs for roads and other critical instructure.
Instead, the community has to defer to the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors’ guidance.
“In Oceano over the last decades, a very commonly held belief (is) that Oceano gets shortchanged by the county,” Varni told The Tribune. “The evidence for that is very clear just in terms of lack of code enforcement.”
Varni later told The Tribune, “It kind of blew my mind that there are all these people talking about, ‘We’re going to lose local control,’ as if we have local control. We don’t.”
“The county controls us. The county is mommy and daddy for Oceano, and we have been the kid that they don’t pay much attention to,” he said.
“Oceano gets shortchanged by the county,” Varni told The Tribune. “The evidence for that is very clear just in terms of lack of code enforcement.”
District 4 Supervisor Jimmy Paulding said the latest discussion of merging Grover Beach and Oceano originated from his talks in early March with then-San Luis Obispo County administrative officer Wade Horton about Oceano’s infrastructure issues, storm recovery efforts and upcoming divestiture from the Five Cities Fire Authority.
Oceano has been a member of the Five Cities Fire Authority, but has failed to meet its financial contribution to the agency and is currently in the process of withdrawing on June 30.
The topic of annexation came up as a means of solving Oceano’s fire service problems, Paulding said.
Paulding said he then spoke to several Oceano district board members and Grover Beach City Council members about the idea, with the assumption that Horton would speak to Grover Beach’s city manager to assess the situation.
After that, Paulding said he mentioned the idea of annexation during an email conversation about his Oceano Unification Compact”— a policy outline that aims to set aside Oceano’s debates over vehicle access to Oceano Dunes Vehicular Recreation Area in favor of infrastructure and beautification projects — with Oceano Economic Development Council chair Nick Alter and the council’s board.
The Oceano Economic Development Council aims to “redevelop Oceano based on the land-use preferences of its residents and on regional economic benefits,” according to the organization’s website.
That email with Alter was shared by one of its recipients, eventually reaching the public and media, Paulding said.
Based on the public’s significant interest in the merger discussion, the Oceano CSD chose to take the issue to a meeting, he said.
What would merger of SLO County communities look like?
Merging the communities of Oceano and Grover Beach would have seen Oceano annexed into Grover Beach as part of a larger city.
Doing so would have required a feasibility study from the San Luis Obispo Local Agency Formation Commission, which would likely cost around $75,000, Paulding said during the April 24 meeting. Grover Beach could have paid around $25,000 of that cost.
The feasability study would have examined the costs and benefits to joining the communities’ governments and services, Paulding said.
Varni pointed to the 1964 annexation of Shell Beach by Pismo Beach as an example of how a merger could go.
That merger saw Shell Beach retain much of its local identity — and even its name, Varni said. Meanwhile, Shell Beach has reaped the benefits of Pismo Beach’s government and funds.
“They were unincorporated just like us,” Varni said. “In terms of identity, nobody’s forgotten the term ‘Shell Beach.’ ”
The benefits for Shell Beach have been obvious, Oceano resident Bonnie Ernst said at the Oceano CSD meeting said, as Pismo Beach has upgraded Shell Beach’s sidewalks, street art, lighting, utilities and roads.
“(Merging Oceano with Grover Beach) might be a win-win (or) a lose-lose, but let’s just find out,” Ernst said. “It’s not gonna hurt anything.”
Though a merger have might raised costs for Oceano residents, Varni said, the community might have gained local police, planning and parks and recreation departments as well direct representation on a city council.
Gaining control over local fire services would also be on the table, Varni said.
Grover Beach Mayor Karen Bright told The Tribune that the Grover Beach City Council is “open-minded” about hearing proposals such as a feasibility study.
Bright said a merger would “certainly be a benefit to Oceano,” as being part of an incorporated city would allow Oceano to pursue grants and state and federal funding previously unavailable to an unincorporated town.
However, outside of expanded tax revenues, the benefits for Grover Beach were less clear to her.
“I would be open to hearing from Oceano if in fact they were interested in possibly pursuing such a thing,” Bright said. “Then we would put it to public meeting in Grover Beach as well.”
Why did merger proposal fail?
Oceano CSD board president Allene Villa — whose “no” vote ended discussions of a feasibility study for the time being — said she didn’t support the study because there wasn’t enough community engagement or outreach ahead of the meeting.
Because news of the merger proposal first broke through media outlets such as KSBY-TV, New Times and The Tribune, Villa said non-English speakers were largely uninformed of the coming decision.
“I think that’s why we had such a large turnout, because people had not heard about it,” Villa told The Tribune. “They were upset, so they all decided to go and voice their opinion that the majority of them were against it.”
Villa also said putting community money into a study without widespread community backing poses a problem for what she called an economically disadvantaged community.
District board member Shirley Gibson, who also voted “no” on the study, expressed doubts about Grover Beach’s ability to deliver on the improvements that merger supporters said would come with annexation.
Grover Beach has “been spending years and a lot of money repaving all of their streets,” Gibson said. “Why would they automatically pave ours? It’s as if they’re trying to imply that if we’re part of Grover Beach, we’ll get all of these free things. No, we won’t. It will cost us.”
Gibson said she was troubled by the fact the idea of a merger had originated from discussions between the OEDC and Paulding rather than from the community itself.
“Why is a developer looking into a study on Oceano?” Gibson said. “Is it self interest? Is it really to help Oceano? I really question that.”
Alter previously worked in business and information development but is currently retired, according to the organization’s website.
Paulding said Gibson and fellow Oceano board member Linda Austin mischaracterized his discussion with Alter and the OEDC as a “nefarious” agenda.
What’s next?
In a statement released after the April 24 meeting, Paulding said i that a merger is just one way to address Oceano’s immediate and long-term needs such as fire service, flood control and road and sidewalk improvements.
“I respect the OCSD’s decision not to pursue studying a merger at this time,” Paulding said in the statement. “As I have said from the beginning, I am not advocating for or against a merger. I am grateful that the OCSD provided the public with a forum to further this important community conversation.”
With no official plans for a merger on the distrct’s horizon, talks of a merger are effectively dead unless the issue sees significant public support going forward, Varni said.
However, because the Oceano CSD rejected the idea of learning more about a merger, Varni said he doesn’t anticipate much movement.
“This isn’t a radical idea,” Varni said. “People who do not want other people to have information are of concern for to me — that notion that, no, we don’t want you to look at it. We don’t want to have facts. We just know what we want, and that’s it.”
This story was originally published May 9, 2023 at 10:24 AM.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated Nick Alter was a former real estate developer, and said he met with Supervisor Jimmy Paulding for a discretionary funding discussion. Alter formerly worked in business development, and his meeting with Paulding was about Oceano’s need for more attentive oversight and government and long range infrastructure and capital improvements.
