In a move that was expected, the Local Agency Formation Commission approved the CCSD’s Municipal Services Review (MSR). I was in SLO Thursday morning for the meeting, along with Jerry McKinnon, Director Peter Chaldecott, President Joan Cobin and General Manager Tammy Rudock. Sitting in the Board of Supervisor’s Chambers, there were six commissioners (including Mayor Allen Settle, and Supervisors Gibson and Achadjian), the Commission Clerk(Donna Bloyd), the Executive Director (Paul Hood), Legal Council (Ray Biering) and the Deputy Executive Director (David Church).
The meeting moved along swiftly and the MSR was being considered by 9:30 or so. All the Commissioners had copies of the final MSR and the public comments submitted during the comment period. After a brief presentation by David Church, comments by Directors Cobin and Chaldecott, Ms. Rudock, Jerry McKinnon and me, a brief statement by Supervisor Gibson and some questions, the Commission unanimously approved the MSR. Download the LAFCO documents here. Download the LAFCO documents here.
Unless you are a government groupie or other flavor of slightly unbalanced person, you’re probably already nodding off. So let me cut to the chase…
Why should Cambrians care about the MSR? (Or what did LAFCO ever do for me?)
- The MSR a useful “biography” of the CCSD and the services it provides. LAFCO is an experience author of these kinds of biographies and can explain issues that are often complex and overlapping in a straightforward, comprehensible way. The Municipal Services Review is a great place to learn the basics about your local government agency. Call it CCSD 101: enough detail to be useful, not so much you get overwhelmed. It can point you in the right direction when you want to get more in depth information. (AboutCambria.com is one of the resources noted in the references section of the MSR.)
- Policy decisions and Board actions are not directly reviewed, nor is it part of LAFCO’s mission to judge whether the Board’s policies are appropriate or correct. While LAFCO includes statements (called “determinations”) in the MSR, the purpose of it is to gather information and compile it into a useful overview that might need to be used later. An MSR does not explicitly say the CCSD is “doing a good job” or is “doing poorly”, although a reader might infer one or the other based on a complete reading of the MSR and their own knowledge and views of the community. Actually, after participating in the process as a private citizen, ” municipal services overview” would be more accurate a description than “municipal services review”.
- LAFCO accepts the documentation and information it receives as correct and valid. Limits on time and money make independent evaluation of the various content of those documents not only unrealistic, but next to impossible. If there is any weak point in the process, this is it. LAFCO makes the assumption that the Board has evaluated the information and found it to be correct and reliable.
So what now? Unless someone makes an application to LAFCO to change the CCSD’s sphere of influence or to consolidate the CCSD and CCHD or change the services provided by the CCSD, we won’t hear from LAFCO until the next Municipal Services Review – which are supposed to be completed about every five years.
Read more about LAFCO and what it does visit this post from November: More About LAFCO or visit the SLOLAFCO website.
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