Opinion: Another peace offering rejected by Jim Larimer

Coastside County Water District held an extremely informative special meeting to conduct a Water Supply Workshop yesterday, Thursday, June 26, 2008. At the conclusion of the meeting, I offered the following extemporaneous remarks:

Good afternoon.

This has been a very, very informative meeting, and I’d like to congratulate Dave Dickson and your staff in putting this together. I’ve worked with Dave many years ago when he was Manager of Sewer Authority Mid-Coastside and I served on the Sewer Authority Mid-Coastside Board.

For those of you who don’t know, my name is Paul Perkovic and I’m currently President of the Montara Water and Sanitary District Board.

Our District, like yours, faces a number of challenges. Our District, like yours, has been working diligently, to try to resolve those challenges. Our District, like yours, has the goal of trying to meet the needs of the community that we serve with safe, relatively low cost water, given the history of the private company from which we took over the District, in an environmentally sensitive way, and in particular, planning for future emergencies such as droughts. Our District, like yours, serves extremely high quality water, with occasional exceedences and citations.

It serves no one’s interest to harp on shortcomings of either district. It serves no one’s interest to misrepresent the accomplishments of either district. It serves no one’s interest to attack individual board members on political issues that have nothing to do with their service as water directors.

I came to this meeting because I thought we would be looking at regional water needs. Regional water needs are something we would need to consider if we do consolidate. It is unfortunate that some of the Board members, on both sides, have engaged in public displays of hostility towards each other, which are poisoning the atmosphere for working together.

I met with Ev Ascher shortly after I was elected [President of MWSD], and I pledged that we would cease and desist. However, it has been resumed again. I would wish that your board members, and your board member’s supporters, specifically Brian and Terry, be called off; we will do the same. Let us work together to solve the water problems of our communities.

Thank you.

I am posting this so that Jim Larimer, in a more calm environment, might think about the consequences of his continued war on MWSD, which he resumed immediately after returning home from this meeting.

Our communities deserve better.