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Let Oceano Residents Decide Their Own Future
The unincorporated community of Oceano, California has been on my radar for quite some time because it’s a community that requires solutions to a number of problems. And more often than not, the proposed solutions we’ve seen lately create more problems and contentiousness to sort through — more than is necessary.
The first time Oceano caught my attention was the controversy surrounding Los Osos developer Jeff Edwards’ haphazard attempts to close down their airport and redevelop it as a mixed use residential and commercial space in 2010. At the time, I had a local politics blog and was contacted by a member of Friends of Oceano Airport after they read one of my posts that mentioned Edwards, his partner Julie Tacker, and their involvement in Los Osos politics. They were concerned that Edwards, who didn’t own property in Oceano, was so deeply invested in telling Oceano residents what’s best for them that residents felt they being preyed on. Naturally, there was widespread opposition. The community overwhelmingly rejected redevelopment of the airport. The county soon followed suit. For a while, we didn’t hear much about it in the press.
13 years later, something unusual happened.
Last month, District 4 Supervisor Jimmy Paulding unveiled what he described as a “unification compact.” The goal behind that compact is to…
