Public Comment In Person Only

County Government Center

1055 Monterey Street

San Luis Obispo

CALL TO ACTION:

Speak generally about your concerns with Offshore Wind.

OR

Speak to the Environmental Disaster on the East Coast and how it is easily replicated on the West Coast with the proposed OSW project.

OR

Speak to the decision by the Port San Luis Harbor District regarding moving forward with Offshore Wind.

OR

Speak Specifically to Item No. 36 - Requesting to Approve a Sole Source Contract with Motto Macdonald to Prepare an Offshore Wind Operations and Maintenance Infrastructure Study for Port San Luis and Morro Bay. 

This item is basically to use grant funds to have Mott Macdonald (through a sole source contract) prepare an Offshore Wind Operations and Maintenance Infrastructure Study.  It seems like this is the second step after the initial work done by this group and published as the REACH study in 2022.  This report apparently will provide more information and data.  There are not too many things to pick apart in the proposal, but a few are added below.    

However, the biggest concern, and it is stated below, is the County of San Luis Obispo moving another step forward on the potential industrialization of the two ports in the county with very little (if any) public outreach.  Industrialization of these two ports is potentially the single largest project this county has ever seen and for the County Government to basically ignore their constituents is abysmal. 

 Overall

1.       The contract is awarded as a sole source, meaning that no other companies were able to provide a proposal for consideration.  The staff report states that Mott Macdonald has done prior work with the County and REACH for OSW – prior work is not a compelling reason to sole source such a large contract amount. 

2.      While it is stated that 3 sites are being looked at, actually only two sites are being looked at – Morro Bay and Port San Luis.  While Cal Poly owns the Cal Poly Pier structure, the Cal Poly Pier in on Tidelands under the jurisdiction of Port San Luis.

 3.      Just to be clear, these grant funds are being used to further support offshore wind ports located in the County of San Luis Obispo.  However, the County has completely failed to provide any public engagement opportunities  to the residents regarding their  concerns/input, etc. about the industrialization of these two ports.  This lack of concern/transparency for the general public from the County of San Luis Obispo is poor government.

 4.      Further a portion of these grant funds are being used to pay for engagements between Mott Macdonald and the foreign wind companies – termed “lease holder engagement” while the County has failed to conduct a “county resident engagement”.

Morro Bay

1.       Section 4.6 states that “up to 3 outreach meetings will occur – either firmly state that 3 meetings will occur or 2 or 1, but not “up to 3” which is meaningless and vague. 

 2.      Section 4.6 also states that Mott MacDonald will answer “technical” questions.  This should be amended to “a question and answer session will be conducted during the outreach meetings”.  Any aspect of the proposal should be included, not just the “technical aspects”. 

 3.      Under Project Assumptions, the public engagement meetings for Morro Bay have been reduced to 2 vs. “up to three” in section 4.6.

Port San Luis

1.       There is no mention of any public outreach meeting in the Port San Luis/Cal Poly section.  Why would Morro Bay be allowed up to 3 sessions and Port San Luis, who’s district boundaries encompass over 80,000 residents (vs. the 10K residents in Morro Bay) not be granted a similar number of public outreach sessions.   

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