March 5, 2008

“Bob Colven’s sour grapes”

By Danielle Seckler

   Two years ago, the power shifted at the Big Bear City Community Services District (CSD) when John Day became president for 2007 and Rick Ollila as president this year. The president decides who will be on what committee. This has left Bob Colven pretty high and dry, as he has not been appointed to more committees and he is not happy. For multiple meetings, Colven has found ways to voice his discontent; especially since this is an election year. Bob Colven has been on the CSD board for over 15 years and made indications that he will run again for another term.

   At the last meeting of the CSD on Monday, Mar. 3rd, Colven abstained from voting on the conformation of a consulting firm to do the Water Master Plan. The reason he gave was that he believe that a full CSD board workshop should have been planned to interview the different consulting firms and that the water committee made the decisions. The water committee has Ollila and Jeff Newsome on the committee and though other CSD board members may attend, they may not participate in the decision process because of the Brown Act. Further Colven stated that the full board must depend upon the information given to them by the committee.

   We believe this is more of Colven’s sour grapes philosophy, which simply stated is that if Colven isn’t on the committee, he can’t trust the other board members to give accurate information or make any decisions without him. That certainly wasn’t his attitude when he was on the BBARWA board. He made decisions at BBARWA that would directly affect the CSD taxpayers, yet he didn’t come to the CSD to get their input before making decisions. In fact, there is a very large group of people against the BBARWA recharge project, however Colven has repeated several times that he sides with the Big Bear Lake representatives that want the project, against his own constituents.

   Colven seems to like to micromanage everything, which means that he must be in the middle of every decision, which is the usual top-down kind of management of his time. As a retired officer of the law, that kind of management style is typical and is very effective in an emergency situation. However, today management styles have changed to team orientated type. Why have employees or committees if you don’t trust the people?

   Like so many people in this valley, Colven just can’t change with the times. To prove that fact, Colven doesn’t have a TV, a computer, or even a cell phone. The valley is changing and many more people who are more in tune with the times deserve a chance to make their mark. Colven is out of touch with his constituents, though they personally like him. In his last election, he had it pretty easy; the Old Fire had made us evacuate and he had recently lost his wife. This election may prove to be much harder for Colven.

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