BEN DEWELL

I am running as the two term incumbent for my third consecutive 4 year term as Director with the Stallion Springs Community Service District (SSCSD). This is the third time I have filed as a candidate for the 5 person Board since 2018. No one has ever asked me to file for, nor have I ever been appointed to, an open seat on the Board of Directors. Every current sitting member of the Board, save one, has been appointed by me. No sitting Director has attained their seat in open election, save me. Directors set policy for the District and hire the primary SSCSD staff, specifically the General Manager and the Police Chief. The Board of Directors is directly responsible only to its residents and the laws of  Kern County and the state of California. SSCSD is rare amongst other CSDs in California in the number of vital infrastructure services it provides. These are roads, water, sewer, solid waste, police, parks and recreation. Stallion Springs is one of only five CSDs in California with its own police department.

Why I serve

I ran for my first public office ever in 2018, unsupported and unopposed, for two basic reasons. The first was my observation that the SSCSD Board was packed with appointees, not elected Directors who held themselves to public account by actually running for office. The second was to make the Board, or at least one Director, more visible and accessible to residents, shedding light on the mystery of direct democratic representation within SSCSD.

My goal as Director has been, and will continue, to not only make certain that the problematic model of the semi-rural CSD (i.e., the Special District) survives in an atmosphere of the continual onslaught of unfunded mandates from without, but to make Stallion Springs the paragon of success of Special Districts anywhere.

Lastly, if you have landed here on bendewell.com and are reading this SSCSD Board of Directors campaign statement, you will likely have noticed other, more general campaign content. Because of the current existential threats to democracy by politicians uninterested in keeping their sworn oaths to the Constitution of the United States, I have continued to run as an unsupported non-partisan Independent representing rural Central California for federal and county office since 2022. Please feel free to look around, if you are interested in integrity, compassion, and independence in your represenatatives.

Director Highlights

• 2025 – 2026: There is, at this time, only one Community Service District Director in all of the over one thousand Special Districts within California seeking the support of our California state legislators for his bill (“Special District Fairness & Accessibility”) to attain more funding opportunities for CSDs to survive the onslaught of state unfunded mandates. Me.

• 2025: Successful passage of Measure A to keep our Police Department, at an unheard of overwhelming 85% resident approval. I participated and chaired 2 subcommittees preparing to get Measure A into the Special Election and assure its passage.

• 2023 – 2024: The only Director, in any agency within the entire Tehachapi and Cummings Valleys, to attend Tehachapi–Cummings County Water District (TCCWD) Board meetings. To the best of my knowledge, no other SSCSD Board member has ever attended these sessions. Without water, SSCSD does not exist.

• 2020: Sale of ~15 acres to TCCWD for water recharge at the Pelisier (former Bornt) property.. Allow me to embellish upon the import of this sale. SSCSD benefits from environmentally sensitive use of the land and consistent recharge of water by TCCWD within the aquifer that sustains our CV#3 well.

• 2018: Acquisition of the ~40 acre Bornt Property on Pelisier, including CV#3, the Cummings Valley’s best producing and quality water well, to maintain reliable water delivery to SS residents. At the time this critical purchase was made, Stallion Springs’s water delivery was compromised by insufficient production of wells within the District and two contaminated wells in the Cummings Valley (e.g., Stallion Springs was going dry).

…and literally hundreds of considerably less sexy policy decisions necessary to keep a community as large and with nearly as much infrastructure as a small city vital and looking towards the future.

Committees

Get to know me!

• My brief SSCSD bio: https://www.stallionspringscsd.com/board-directors/directory-listing/ben-dewell

• My personal YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/ROLCFA

• My fine art website: http://www.rangeoflightphotography.com

• My whitewater kayaking site: http://www.kayakwild.com