How often do you think Santa Maria City Councilmember Michael Moats brings up the house he lives in when discussing city issues?
I know it’s a weird question, but the best skin doctor in town is obsessed with his 3,500-square-foot, five-bedroom, three-bath home and how many H-2A workers could be housed in it. He’s brought it up multiple times—in public, mind you—over the last 15 months.
It’s the ultimate in stupid mathematical word problems. Ugg, I hate those. He has three showerheads in his house. If you need one showerhead for every 10 temporary guest workers, does that mean they can put 30 H-2A workers in the mansion? One inquiring mind really wants to know.
OK, maybe it’s not his house. It’s simply a “hypothetical” house that sounds like it’s identical to the ones in his neighborhood.
Moats, who probs has a couple of boats he really needs an excuse to talk about at a City Council meeting (Can we get an oversized vehicle parking ordinance back on the docket, please?), brought it up at an H-2A forum in August 2018, the April 2019 meeting on a potential employee housing ordinance, and the June 4 hearing where the Santa Maria City Council passed the ordinance. We get it already! You live in a really nice neighborhood. Rub it in, why don’t you.
Should we take bets on whether it will come up during the second reading of the ordinance at the City Council’s June 18 meeting? Do you think he will pull it from the consent agenda so he can query city staff one more time? I might start a pool.
Maybe City Councilmember Mike Cordero can get in on this sweet action. He was poking fun at Moats at one of the recent hearings. Don’t worry, man, Coredero told him. Those agricultural employees aren’t showing up on your front lawn anytime soon.
But still, Moats must be worried.
“To have employee housing come in next door to you without any knowledge, I think is going to be upsetting for some people,” he said in April.
I think he means that he would be upset if they moved in next door to him.
Alexandra Allen from Main Street Produce told the City Council in June that those kinds of houses aren’t quite in the price range of the agricultural industry.
“We can’t go in and rent these 3,000-square-foot, five-bedroom palatial places to house 15 people,” she said. “So I don’t think that will happen.”
Yeah, these guys are running a business over here. They’re already spending way more to bring a foreign labor force in than they would if the workers lived down the street. I don’t think the temporary guest workers that ag is bringing into Santa Maria through the federal H-2A program are moving in next door to your mansion on the “good” side of town. You have to be a doctor to afford those places!
The canary lives in a birdcage. Send your comments to [email protected].
