2015 February PASO Magazine

Supervisor Frank Mecham: Focus for 2015
Where to steer San Luis Obispo County
By Bruce Curtis
What will be at the
top for county supervisors,
in 2015? As
revenue issues become, shall we
say, less stressed, the focus for
county board members is clearly
going to be water.
With good reason. District 1
Supervisor Frank Mecham recently
came from a fact-finding
session in Tulare, addressing the
increasing need, and resultant
angst over water supplies across
an increasingly arid West: Paso
Robles groundwater is in critically
short supply, following
six years of drought and heightened
demand.
“I think we need to take a very
close look at a lot of questions
relative to the basin regarding
how one area affects another,”
says Mecham explaining the nature
of water basins; inflow, outflow,
“There is so much to the
hydrology I need to know more
about, so I attended the American
Groundwater Trust Seminar
recently in Tulare.”
The seminar was well attended
with over 500 people, including
stakeholders like farmers, water
district managers, supervisors
from other areas, even attorneys
specializing in water issues, giving
advice and prognostications.
“This water issue has been
coming for some time in terms
of steady decline; it has been a
perfect storm of increased
population, drought, agriculture…facing
all three
isn’t helping at all, in terms
of our water supply.”
Mecham voted for the
recently passed emergency
ordinance that will likely
lead to a Paso Robles
groundwater management district
with the power to restrict use
and control demand growth.
“The interim ordinance gives us
an opportunity to look at what is
going on here.” Mecham says the
county simply cannot keep going
the direction it has been going,
consuming more groundwater as
levels decline, hoping somehow
for a different result.
“That’s the definition of insanity,”
Mecham quips.
Another reason the water situation
has become elevated to the
point where action is needed, are
hints the state is going to act, if
local government doesn’t.
“Sacramento is coming. They’re
telling us: ‘Unless you take care of
your problem, the state is going to
take care of it for you’, and that is
the last thing I want.”
Mecham suspects that any help
from the state will be of the onesize-fits-all
variety; something
that won’t work well on the local
level. Water policy attorneys with
which he spoke urged dialogue
with state officials, warning it
would not be wise to ignore Sacramento
in hopes they would just
go away, He leaves the fact that
state bureaucrats won’t
go away, unspoken.
The obvious answer,
a water district, will
likely require legislative
involvement, even
though both sides: ag
and residents, appear
to be closing in on a
working agreement.
“It is still premature to see
where the water district might
go, where the boundaries would
be, what it might be able to accomplish.
I worked for both ag
and property owner equity; they
were so far apart, but are now
close together.” Mecham suggests
continued incremental steps from
a governance standpoint, will get
everyone to a working relationship.
On the subject of money,
Mecham is cautiously optimistic.
“As we finalize this year’s budget,
it looks pretty good in terms
of actually being close to balanced
at the end of this fiscal year.” He
credits the economic turnaround
still gaining steam. Mecham also
gives kudos to the city of Paso
Robles, now enjoying a AAA
bond rating.
2015 will also be a year of capital
improvements: the Women’s
jail, an expansion to the county
juvenile services center, the Los
Osos sewer, all multimillion dollar
construction projects, are breaking
ground, Mecham hinting his
board will play a role of active
oversight.
Infrastructure, which usually
means highways, gets attention
with the board planning to work
closely with cities and agencies in
SLOCOG, the county council of
governments, to get funding for
road improvements.
“There has been a lot of discussion
about highways; funding
isn’t where it used to be, still, there
is a lot of focus on Highway 46.”
Little funding and many requests
dog road projects, but Mecham
still hopes to work with SLO-
COG to eventually bring four
lanes all the way east to the Hwy
41/Hwy 46 split east of Cholame.
Finally, one big unknown, both
in terms of budget and demand,
will be the impact of Obamacare,
the Affordable Care Act, (ACA)
expected to add 1.4 million Californians
to the state’s Medi-Cal
program. Will it affect county
health workload or costs?
“Probably both,” Mecham admits,
“I don’t know what all of
this will mean at this point, there
are so many questions regarding
ACA and how it will affect people,
we are briefing as we get updates.”
Mecham says to check back
later to get a better idea what the
ACA will do in San Luis Obispo
County.
Community area plan updates,
state water for Shandon,
a new clinic in Heritage Ranch,
all ahead for the board in
2015, too.
22 Paso Robles Magazine, February 2015