SLO LIFE Jun/Jul 2017

| TIMELINE
Around the County
APRIL ‘17
4/11
The county coroner reported that Andrew Chaylon Holland died as an inmate
at the SLO County Jail after being restrained to a chair for a period of 46
hours. Ruling that the death of the 36-year-old had been “natural,” resulting
from an intrapulmonary embolism—a blood clot originating in a leg vein—
his family was quick to point out that a leading cause of clot formation was
unusually long periods of sitting. Sheriff Ian Parkinson said that jail staff
followed appropriate protocol during Holland’s two days in restraint and that
being strapped to the chair did not cause the clot to form.
4/7
San Luis Obispo City Council elected to give 93 management
employees one-time $2,000 bonuses to make up for an inequity
of contributions to their health care costs. The distribution
totaled $186,000 and came a little more than a month after it
was revealed that the city was facing a combination of sharply
rising pension costs along with lower-than-forecasted tax
revenues, which is expected to leave an annual budget shortfall
of $5 million within the next four years. By 2021, the expected
pension burden is thought to be $19.1 million annually, while
the overall budget should come in around $84.3 million—
meaning 23 cents of every dollar the city spends four years from
now will be on pensions for retired employees.
4/10
After spending $70,000 with a Santa Ana-based law firm
to investigate the “sexy firefighter video” aired at the SLO
Chamber of Commerce annual dinner in January, San Luis
Obispo’s City Council, following a closed-door meeting, opted
to dock the pay of Fire Chief Garret Olson by $5,442, the
equivalent of an eight-day suspension (Olson receives $176,852
per year not including benefits) and City Manager Katie
Lichtig received a one-time fine of $2,659 (Lichtig receives
$230,464 per year not including benefits), an amount she would
have earned for three days of work.
4/19
Frustration boiled over among San Luis Obispo’s City Council when a
“nondiscrimination in housing” effort forced their hand in providing a special
election this summer at a cost ranging from $119,000 to $158,000. The petition
instigated by lawyers Stew Jenkins and Dan Knight along with former City
Councilman Dan Carpenter was originally promoted locally as an effort
to overturn the city’s controversial housing inspection ordinance; however,
when that ordinance was reversed by the city council earlier this year, the trio
continued to push forward with what many suggest is an end-run attempt at
overturning city programs that support housing for the poor and elderly.
4/22
An audit conducted by the State of California confirms what many faculty
members have been claiming for years: Cal Poly has become top heavy with
administrators. The audit, which analyzed the academic years of 2007-08 to
2015-16, arrived at three primary conclusions: the university hired management
staff without justification for the new positions—administration grew by nearly
50% during the audit period (compared to 15% across the CSU system and a
7% increase in teaching staff ); Cal Poly provided administrator raises without
justification—in 2016 alone, 70 managers received increased pay without proper
performance evaluations; and there had been no oversight of moving expenses
allowing compensation for relocation of new hires to rise into the tens of
thousands of dollars—for instance, Jeffrey Armstrong received $50,000 for his
moving expenses when he became the university’s president in 2011.
30 | SLO LIFE MAGAZINE | JUN/JUL 2017