Squidfry 07.14.22: Served Cold

SERVED COLD… Squid tends to believe in coincidences more often than conspiracies, as the sea is too vast to allow for elaborate plots – creatures hunt for lunch, other creatures are lunch; it’s quite simple.

But Squid can’t help but think something ain’t up between the city of Monterey and former employee Jeanne Colletto, who sued the city in 2016 for sexual harassment and retaliation after working in the Harbormaster’s Office; it’s now being led by Brian Nelson, the man who allegedly harassed her.

Colletto settled with the city in 2018 for $750,000 – and they paid about $320,000 to outside attorneys to litigate the case – but a curious thing happened in 2020. Colletto got a collection notice from Pacific Credit Services, the city’s debt collector, for about $3,400, supposedly related to her (former) employee-related benefits, despite having signed a “global settlement” in 2018, meant to allow both parties to walk away scot-free. Colletto disputed the claim with PCS, and it went quiet.

Then Squid wrote about Nelson becoming Acting Harbormaster in May 2022. And the following Monday, Colletto got an alert that her credit score had tanked – and it was related to the allegedly unpaid debt.

Colletto immediately filed a complaint with the state Attorney General’s Office, and within days, the collection request was dropped.

Coincidence? Squid can’t say.

SLOW ROLL… Some things get better with age. Others do not, such as government agencies’ half-baked efforts to address big problems. Monterey County has been toiling away at its rules for short-term vacation rentals for the better part of the last decade. A running tally of the county’s work shows a collection of 119 different reports, financial and legal analyses, draft ordinances and public feedback collections, amounting to thousands of pages of work on this issue since 2014.

The county is still working on it, including in Coastal Zone areas such as Big Sur, Carmel Highlands and Pebble Beach where pro-public-access California Coastal Commission has jurisdiction.

Then this year County Counsel Les Girard said the county would no longer proactively enforce against short-term rentals in the coastal zone, unless the rental owner wasn’t paying its taxes or received at least three nuisance complaints in a year.

So all that work over the last decade led to… nothing. Even that decision came slowly. Monterey County’s non-enforcement decision, made in June, was based on a Santa Barbara court case from May 2021, in which an appellate judge ruled jurisdictions could only take action against short-term rentals in the coastal zone if there were complaints. Sometimes it’s just easier, if not faster, to copy someone else’s work.