CCCoS - CONCERNED CITIZENS COALITION OF STOCKTON

P. O. Box 4548 Stockton, CA 95204 | Email: cccos.citizen@gmail.com

Welcome to CCCoS

Water Privatization Initiative

The Concerned Citizens Coalition of Stockton (CCCoS) is an organization with roots going back to the 1990s. In 2001, this group of citizens became concerned that the Stockton City Council was preparing to outsource the operation and maintenance of the City’s water utilities, without adequate public hearings.

CCCoS lobbied, educated, and finally circulated an initiative to let people vote on any water contracts of $5 million dollars or greater. We won a public vote by over a 60% margin. However, the Stockton City Council rushed to sign the water contract with OMI-Thames, International just 13 days before the public vote.

CCCoS, Sierra Club, and the League of Women Voters of San Joaquin County filed a lawsuit to challenge the City’s action. The basis was that the city failed to perform an environmental report, called CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act), as required under California law. We ultimately won in court – 7 years later – and on March 1, 2008, Stockton’s water was returned to municipal operations. See the above link to “History” for more information.

Sylvia Kothe, Chairperson, CCCoS
Dale Stocking, Liaison, Sierra Club
Diane Park, Liaison, League of Women Voters of San Joaquin County

Public Library Privatization

On Tuesday, February 8th, 2011, San Joaquin County and Stockton closed the book on a deal that will keep the city running the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library.

Thanks go out to everyone for their support of CCCoS and the Friends of the Library organizations in our efforts to halt the privatizing of the Stockton-San Joaquin County Library System. It could not have been accomplished without tremendous dedication of "getting the word out" through letter writing, contacting one's representative, telling a friend, wearing the red "Keep Libraries Public" button, circulating and/or signing the petition.

Ceding operational control of the library to a “for-profit” vendor would have: Undermined the fundamental purpose of a library, which to serve as a knowledge resource for all community members.