It is not true that any board candidate opposed Well #7. Crestview was not forced to import water because a County permit for Well #7 was denied in September 2021; the cause was the board’s bad decisions about Well #4, which went dry a month earlier.
Mr. Chooljian’s letter, which arrived today, implies the current board should be reelected because “seven (7) shareholder households were most instrumental in preventing the approval of our replacement well on Alviso and in forcing our dependence on imported water. . . . Please consider this information when deciding your votes at the annual meeting.”
The letter implies that non-incumbent candidates all opposed Well #7, but that is false. They all either publicly favored Well #7 or took no public position. If we want to base our votes on well projects, we should vote against the incumbents for wasting at least $879,197 on a doomed Well #7 project and for neglecting–for three years–lowering the pump in Well #4.
Crestview understood that getting the Board of Supervisors to approve Well #7 on September 14, 2021 was a long shot because the Planning Commission had unanimously denied it in June 2020. Crestview admitted (at 8:20:43) in the BoS hearing that, because of its own “stumbling and bumblng,” it needed more time to get HOA approval, an amendment to the CC&Rs, and a plan to mitigate the septic system problems. The most likely outcome of the hearing was a denial and the best case would have been more legal and technical fees and then, optimistically, an operational well in 2024. Crestview is neither working to revive Well #7 nor looking for a replacement site.
In light of the fact that Well #7 could not have been operational until at least 2024, the delay in lowering the pump in Well #4 was a serious error costing an unbudgeted $365,000 for imported water between August and October 2021. (The project itself cost only $275,000.) The general manager had been warning about water levels in Well #4 since June 2018. Had it been lowered in the winter of 2020-21 (or in the winters of 2018-19 or 2019-20) the purchased water expense would have been avoided. Even after it went dry, Mr. Chooljian opposed the Well #4 project and was not present at the March 3, 2022 meeting when the board approved it.
Mr. Chooljian’s letter says our newsletter “accuses Crestview of malfeasance and incompetence.” We have searched our website and found neither word appears here. We stand by all of our reporting and leave it to others, including Mr. Chooljian, to summarize his and Crestview’s overall performance.
Quoting Mr. Chooljian’s letter, “please consider this information when deciding your votes at the annual meeting.”
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Good post!