WHEN SMART PEOPLE DO DUMB THINGS: Some people give the devil his due; others dance with him. Me? I’m willing to share a cup of coffee.
The alleged “devil” in this equation is an otherwise soft-spoken, easygoing, overachieving water engineer from Ohio named Floyd Wicks, now leading the charge to take over the Montecito Water District Board on behalf of Montecito’s usual coterie of well-heeled former Captains of Industry who retired there. Droughts have a way of highlighting all kinds of stupidity, and Wicks is running with Tobe Plough as a slate engineered by Bob Hazard, a former hotel chain exec and community-minded Montecito resident who has been pulling out handfuls of hair over the district’s manifold failures in preventing the unimaginable — Lake Cachuma and Jameson Reservoir going simultaneously dry — from happening.
Wicks, Plough, and Hazard are intent on defeating incumbent water boardmember Charles Newman — appointed 15 months ago — and Tom Mosby, who is seeking to reincarnate himself as boardmember after working for the district for 25 years. Mosby and Newman happen to represent fiercely feuding factions of what otherwise might be characterized as “the incumbents,” and they are not running as a slate.