Editordude: The following was submitted by Dan Dennison as a comment to an earlier post about the current crisis with the OB Town Council. We decided to run it on its own.
By Dan Dennison
Ocean Beach genuinely is a community—A unique and rare characteristic for most places where people live and work.
Because of the character, demographics and extraordinary diversity of issues directing community attention and concern within OB we need to have consistent, strong and sometimes assertive advocacy with the City and County. The Ocean Beach Town Council clearly is the mechanism to do this.
The OBTC has proven its ability to pull together multiple and sometimes disparate interests of a wide array of individuals and organizations. It also has proven its ability to diligently work on generally collaborative advocacy for the needs of Ocean Beach with Public representatives and departments.
The OBTC has also evolved at that premier community resource for remarkable Public Services such as the Toy and Food Drive and donations to the economically needy in Ocean Beach.
It is important to remember that all OBTC Board members are volunteers devoting numerous hours of their expertise and time without any compensation. The reward for their hard work is the successful accomplishment of the organization’s objectives and programs.
We are now learning about internal Board dissension arising from a member’s personal behavior and reactions from some Board Members. We are also seeing Social Media posts reflecting significant concern about the viability of the OBTC and what needs to be done.
Now is the time to pause and focus ONLY on why the OBTC is the most important and vital community organization to effectively advocate the challenges and solutions to our collective local community concerns.
The productive direction is for all parties to acknowledge the problems with the OBTC and intentionally drop all of the charges, criticism and personal attacks to reset and propel the OBTC forward. This includes no punitive action toward any other Board members. In this spirit the Board needs to trust the membership with the replacement of vacant Board seats . Let’s have an election for the open seats and freshly move forward. No one benefits until we rise above this morass.
I care about our community and know that until this OBTC controversy is out of site and out of mind the Council’s credibility will be dramatically diminished and Ocean Beach’s influence on public policy deteriorated.
Now is the time pause, take a couple deep breaths and follow the advice of Angelina Jolie “ It’s hard to be clear about who you are when you are carrying around a bunch of baggage from the past. I’ve learned to let go and move more quickly into the next place.”
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Well put. Will they listen?
Thanks OB Man!– Your question is valid. If we collectively care about the viability of the OBTC everyone needs to just stand back, recognize the dysfunctional recent events and hit the re-start button. No-one has or will benefit from all of this angst.
If we don’t collectively understand this and let emotions, personalities and opinions block a rational, productive Re-Start then I’m afraid that it will be a very long recovery process for the Town Council.
Looks like we may be past the point of no return for a productive solution to revitalize the OBTC. If this happens , most unfortunately, the credibility and validity of the articulation of OB’s unique circumstances and needs will be diminished for some time. This would be most unfortunate for Ocean Beach . It likely will demonstrate that we don’t have the collective will to realistically and maturely solve this problem for the greater good of our community.
There is no one OB anymore. OB used to more or less think as a whole about a lot of things. That was when OB was not considered one of the most desirable places to live, as it is now. I used to get it all the time when I worked all over the county. When I said I lived in OB I got sympathy comments about what a rough place it was with bikers and hippies. I did everything I could to reinforce those beliefs hoping to do my small part in keeping as many people out of paradise as I could. But, I knew the world would discover OB one day and it has. This OBTC thing is an illustration of that. There are competing views now, long time residents versus new, young versus old, and people with money versus regular folks. Mix in the complete nastiness and lack of morality, the only legacies of THE LOSER’s time at the helm, and this is no surprise. There are no more compromises, it’s just winners or losers.
I agree OB is a more complex situation as it grows and evolves, but you’re placing your angst about things changing onto a situation that isn’t about that at all. At all. This is a personal life thing that got messy and turned into several resignations. That’s it. It isn’t some culture war.
As I said before, you seem to have a high opinion of yourself now diagnosing me with “angst.” I don’t have any angst. I merely made an observation that may or may not explain the problem with the OBTC. It seems you know more than the rest of us by the certainty of your remark that this is a “personal life thing.” So cough it up, OB GUY.
Just noting your misguided projections, and they are angsty Geoff. If you can’t stand the heat, then don’t comment!
What is misguided here is what you think you are noting. As for your second sentence, it is obvious I can stand the heat because I use my own name on everything I post. Is OB GUY your legal name or is it a way to avoid that same heat?
I have asked “OB GUY” to identify himself. Otherwise his time here is short.
Yea, I saw that. I thought I’d see if he had the courage to do it. We’ll see.