Letter: School Board,  Charlie Gardner, and AB1991

The Midcoast Community Council recently held a candidate’s debate for this year’s school board election. Charlie Gardner made two defining comments during this debate.

First, he supported his vote backing the AB 1991 bailout attempt that has now cost the city about 20 million dollars. Many of Charlie’s supporters are members of the groups that demanded that the HMB City Council abandon a sound legal appeal and try an end run through the legislature to skirt Coastal Commission laws.  This secretly negotiated attempt, which was backed by the developer suing the city, failed, and the city is now stuck with the bill. Just imagine what the city and schools could do with that money. Rather than focus the school board on education, Charlie helped it back another community-divisive issue.

Which brings us to Charlie’s second statement of claiming credit for getting the middle school built at Cunha. Charlie and the groups who support him are the folks that blocked the middle school construction for 9 years while the school board backed the big Wavecrest project. Eventually they were forced to build at the obvious location, Cunha. It takes a lot of guts to take credit for getting a school built after delaying that school for 9 years.

I think it’s time for the folks who stuck HMB for $20 Million dollars and blocked the middle school construction for 9 years to stand up and take responsibility for their actions.