After Dec. 9 two of the City of San Luis Obispo’s most controversial political leaders will be out of office. One is leaving the SLO City Council having served eight years with term limits, the other by choice, after running for SLO County Supervisor and opting not to run a simultaneous campaign to retain his current gig.
In days gone by, the pair had an almost childish level of public disagreement and bickering from behind the dais, but that’s cooled somewhat in the last two years. In fact, Councilmembers John Ashbaugh and Dan Carpenter have even known to take part in the same charitable events such as the annual “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes” event where they each donned impractical footwear for a gender-role bending stroll around downtown.
The SLO City News had intended to sit down with both for a sort of “exit interview” in the aftermath of the 2016 election but the publication window proved too short for a full debriefing with Carpenter, who took a family vacation after the election lasting until Thanksgiving.
Ashbaugh, however, was on hand for the last meeting of the current Council on Nov. 15.
One of their last official discussions was characterized in an anonymous editorial in the Nov. 16 edition of the New Times as, “run like a grade school recess slap fight, thanks in large part to the fact that outgoing Councilmember John Ashbaugh is completely out of f**ks to give.”
Sitting down with Ashbaugh two days after though, it seems quite the opposite is – maybe always has been – the issue. Both Ashbaugh, and his rival on the Council have taken things very seriously and personally for a long time.
“I still recommend this, for anyone who wants to make a difference,” he said, when first asked to reflect on his time in office. “Get involved.”
While he’s part of the contingent that find themselves “personally devastated” by Donald J. Trump being named president-elect, Ashbaugh said his analysis of local politics was bright, “The vast majority of local Millennials voted in this election and I think the future is brightly progressive.”
However the Council’s progress since he was first elected in 2008, he characterized in “baby steps,” with a Climate Action Plan only adopted in 2012 and minor attention paid to the state’s six year long drought, “it was not as much as needed. We should and could have taken more direct action…renewable energy for instance, assigning a staffer to head up sustainability would have been good.”
He also added that having more publically available electronic means, such as the statistics “Dashboard” devised to monitor numbers on Measure Y and G spending would have helped the City’s overall financial accountability. So, after eight years, baby steps indeed.
Part of the issue with elected office of course is campaigning with a dedicated agenda, or at least a promise to handle items as they arise with a specific decorum. For Ashbaugh it’s never been exactly what his sometime ally and longtime colleague Mayor Jan Marx, or indeed anyone else on the Council, thought was the proper decorum. As a college professor he’s been used to explaining complex ideas, his ideas, at length and without interruption. On Council, they’ve been his ideas or preferred solutions, often involving concepts without consensus support, such as to set up alternative programs or review positions while on a time-limited discussion.
Professor, continued page 4
Professor, from page 3
There’s also a long memory for policy details in that kind of mind. That came out in the Nov. 15 meeting when the reactions of Marx and Councilwoman Carlyn Christianson to the proposed appointment of a new member to the City’s Architectural Review Commission (ARC) caused a fracas.
Since Councilman Dan Rivoire and Ashbaugh had selected local attorney Lydia Mourenza as the would-be appointee, objections were taken quiet personally, and vociferously. As it turns out, Ashbaugh’s long political memory was turning back, as he said, two years earlier, appointments to city bodies in which he had been shot down for objecting to posting and wished to expand the number of candidates. As he saw it, the same scenario played out in reverse.
Speaking of the ARC, Ashbaugh’s condemnation of the Council majority to allow development at 22 Chorro St. over the ARC’s denial led him to admit some other personal truths as well as advice for the, now three, incoming neophyte politicians.
“It’s hard. But you have to be able to carry on working relationships with people who have,” he paused, searching for a word, “offended you. Or, in my case, I try not to offend people, but I do try, very hard to annoy them sometimes. I’m pretty good at that.”
The reason, he added, “Frankly, I feel, that people are too damn comfortable. In this community, I think especially, we have a tendency to pat ourselves on the back. ‘Oh, Happiest city in North America,’ but there are some real problems here.”
With sources of friction in perspective, outside of the two meeting rooms at City Hall, networking and bringing people together are the most important elements of the job and areas where the outgoing Councilman was never openly criticized.
Indeed, for a fledgling reporter in 2009 to 2011, the late night Tuesday meetings were often worth staying to the very end just to see if Councilman John Ashbaugh’s community liaison report might contain a little flavor and a story worth following up.
“Aaron [Gomez] and Andy [Pease] need to know that the most important parts of the job will be,” said Ashbaugh, “the luncheons, the service clubs and the connections that you make with people along the way.”
Presumably the connections include those troubled working relationships.
“Jan [Marx] and I don’t get along all the time, but she was an experienced incumbent that [was] on [my] side 60 percent of the time,” but, he said, later expanding the conversation to included the recently reelected County District 3 Supervisor Adam Hill, “we go toe to toe sometimes, sometimes knock each other aside, but like any good family relationship, in the end you realize that, we’re both going in the same direction and we have a commitment to the same vision for this community, and we understand the importance of government and it’s role in helping people to come together and to make decisions about our land use, about water use, about fundamental issues of fairness or how to solve this extraordinary housing crisis.”
As for what becomes of a former public official,” I’ll probably take a sabbatical or write a book.”
After all, there will be plenty of extra time.
While an academic may enjoy the reading – indeed Ashbaugh has a book club in addition to municipally required reading – a few hundred hours a will be freed up from all the reports prepared and by staff not to mention correspondence and calls from local reporters.
For what’s considered a part time job, officials expend a great deal of personal capital, coming under constant professional and personal attack.
