Wielding a giant pair of scissors is one skill Aeron Arlin Genet now has firsthand experience with.
One of her recent duties as the Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District’s (APCD) executive director was cutting the ribbon at an open house event to celebrate the agency’s new Santa Maria office.
“The scissors were a little awkward, and it was a little harder than I expected to actually cut the ribbon,” Arlin Genet said in an email interview. “The one thing that worried me was that our APCD board chair, Guadalupe Mayor Ariston Julian, was to my immediate left and the last thing I wanted to do was accidently cut his hand.”
Santa Maria Mayor Alice Patino, Solvang Mayor David Brown, and Santa Barbara County 4th District Supervisor Bob Nelson were among the elected officials who attended the April 30 event.
“I loved sharing the new space with everyone who attended our event and providing tours to our board members and agency partners,” Arlin Genet said.
The APCD’s previous Santa Maria office was a rented space on the corner of Cook and Miller streets. In 2021, the agency bought a building on West McCoy Lane and began its efforts to remodel the property through a sustainable lens.
The building features metal-insulated siding and roofing panels, dual-glazed windows that reflect heat, air conditioning with filters for clean indoor air quality, thermostats in each room to minimize energy use, skylights for natural light, and other features.
The retrofitted building also allows for a future solar array installation to feed to a battery for power outages and to offset electrical use. While taking steps to have the office certified as a county-recognized green business, the APCD is also working toward getting electric vehicle chargers on the property.
“I hope this office space helps our agency better connect with the businesses and public we serve,” said Arlin Genet, who’s been with the APCD since 2016.
One of her personal favorite features of the new Santa Maria office is the Point Conception Conference Room—spacious enough for some “indoor yoga during lunch breaks,” she said.
Periodically, her job entails visiting various parts of Santa Barbara County, while a lot of her time is split between the APCD’s main office in Santa Barbara and its Santa Maria headquarters.
“I divide my work weeks regularly, rotating between the Santa Maria office for one week and the Santa Barbara office the next,” Arlin Genet said. “It’s so nice to have a visible presence in the North County.”
Founded in 1970 as an independent agency, the APCD implements programs in Santa Barbara County to help protect residents and local environments from the effects of air pollution.
In early May, for example, the APCD launched its heat clean initiative, a program that offers homeowners certain incentives to replace residential wood-burning heaters with zero-emission fireplace inserts or heat pumps.
The agency’s current board of directors includes the county’s five elected supervisors and a mayor or council member each from eight incorporated cities.
Aside from the elected officials who attended the recent open house in Santa Maria, one of Arlin Genet’s favorite faces she saw at the event was the property agent who helped the APCD settle on the new location back in 2021.
“She worked for us to scout out many office spaces before finding this one [and] hadn’t been to the building since it was purchased,” Arlin Genet said. “It was very nice to see her response to the significant transformation of the office space that we achieved.”
Highlight
• On May 15, the Kiwanis Club of Santa Maria awarded $42,470 in scholarships to 31 local high school students and two college students during the nonprofit’s annual scholarship dinner event. The application period for the club’s 2026 scholarship program will open in January, with submission deadlines to be determined for some time in late February.
Reach Senior Staff Writer Caleb Wiseblood at cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 22 – Jun 1, 2025.