Grover Beach citizens are heroes. The media makes them out to be ‘drama queens’ | Opinion

In 2024, direct democracy won battles in San Luis Obispo County. Atascadero voters decided to continue to elect their city treasurer. In Morro Bay, voters said no to a battery storage facility near the waterfront.

But nowhere in the county were citizens more active than in Grover Beach, where thousands fought for direct democracy.

They repealed water rate hikes through Measure G-24, a nonpartisan citizen ballot initiative, and they stopped a flawed water project, Central Coast Blue.

They won a lawsuit when city officials illegally blocked their recall efforts and went on to recall one council member (only 17% of local recalls succeed).

After the city blocked their recall efforts for three months, they went to court, where a SLO County Superior Court judge determined the city violated election law and commanded the city clerk to release the petitions. Come January, the court will likely demand that the city pay the citizens’ legal bills, an amount that could total up to $200,000 to cover the city and citizens’ legal expenses.

In 2026, voters will get to decide if they would prefer to elect their city clerk, who is the elections official, rather than having one appointed by the city manager. This happened because over 1,000 Grover voters worked to put this citizen’s initiative on the ballot.

They are not done yet. A group of citizens created a ballot initiative asking their community if they would prefer to elect their city attorney rather than have the attorney appointed by the council. They have until June 2025 to gather those 1,000 signatures.

How it started

It all began back in September 2023, when Grover Beach water consumers received letters from the city saying water bills would quadruple by 2028 to finance the Central Coast Blue water reclamation project. Just a year earlier they had been reassured by the city manager, Mathew Bronson, that 2021 increases would fully fund the project.

The letter was the first notice in the Proposition 218 process, whereby rates go up unless at least 50% plus one of the water customers oppose it in writing — a process referred to as a protest vote.

In a city that is 45% rentals and has large number of industrial and commercial water customers, that was a nearly impossible task. Several citizens banded together to send a template for a protest letter to all 5,000 water customers, including those with out-of-town addresses.

The city then realized it hadn’t mailed out-of-town customers the notice of the rate increase, and the City Council voted to start the process over. Water customers were told that protest votes sent before the city do-over would not count. Then the City Council directed that they would count.

Despite the odds, 2,000 households sent protest letters in time for the Proposition 218 hearing on Dec. 11, 2023. Three (male) hydrologists and a civil engineer spoke at the meeting, advising the council that the project was flawed and should be dropped. At least one speaker told the council they would be recalled if they voted for the increase. The council did not heed their warnings and approved the water rate increase.

The citizens, who had by then banded together as a non-partisan political action committee, called themselves Grover H2O. They were responsible for investigating and advocating against the Central Coast Blue project, which is not and was not a viable solution to increase Grover’s water supply. (It is questionable whether Grover really has a water problem — the Local Coastal Program states that Grover has sufficient water for its build-out population of around 15,000, but they do want to increase and broaden their options for additional water.)

Women singled out for ridicule

Without this group’s tireless commitment to the truth, the Grover Beach and Arroyo Grande city councils would have not pulled out of the project. Grover Beach taxpayers would be stuck with large water bills, torn-up streets, ugly pumping stations, neighborhoods disrupted by large drilling cranes and a project that would provide very little water at exorbitant prices.

Yet rather than reporting on these unprecedented, grassroots success stories of the “little city that could,” the local press disparages the group and calls its members names.

Although many of the protests have been raised by men, only the women in the movement are being singled out by the press. They have been ridiculed, denigrated and dismissed by misogynistic writers in the local papers.

In a bizarre twist, while Grover H2O has stuck to the issues and embraced a year-long, nonpartisan campaign to save their community thousands of dollars, the press and fans of the City Council call Grover H2O leaders liars and hateful.

If you are going to attach labels to the women in the movement who have researched, walked, authored and petitioned, I say they are heroes, champions, leaders or advocates. People usually say, “You can’t beat City Call!”

Maybe it’s time to give credit where credit is due. My New Year’s wish and hope for 2025 is that democracy will thrive and City Hall will listen and say “You can’t beat the people!”

Cheryl Storton is an Arroyo Grande resident and the past president of the South County Democratic Club.

This story was originally published January 13, 2025 at 5:57 PM.