Lonnie Curtis
The Oceano Community Services District Board of Directors voted in a special closed session meeting last week to keep embattled General Manager Lonnie Curtis
On Dec. 23, the board met solely to conduct an evaluation of Curtis’s performance. The performance review was the second in twelve days and the third since Curtis took over as general manager on October 15.
During closed session, Director Karen White motioned to give Curtis a vote of confidence and instruct him to proceed with district business as general manager. The board voted 4-1 in support of Curtis, with Director Jennifer Blackburn dissenting, according to the meeting minutes.
Standard practice calls for agencies to withhold publishing meeting minutes until adopted at a later meeting. However, staff posted the minutes on the district website Thursday, and the next scheduled meeting is in January.
Critics have accused Curtis of violating California’s Ralph M. Brown Act and Public Records Act, as well as of plagiarizing a document.
Curtis took two months to respond to a record request for the job application and writing sample he submitted to the district before acquiring the general manager position. The writing sample he submitted was a PowerPoint presentation created by a colleague of his at a previous job.
