A silver Weimaraner followed Lorena Orona as she walked out of the rain and into the warm shelter of her Santa Ynez Valley ranch house, a rental that sits a few miles northeast of Solvang. It was a Friday in mid-March, and while the days-long shower had soaked the drought-stricken hills surrounding her home, it had also closed the doors on her family’s primary business, Solvang’s horse-drawn trolley, for the entire weekend.
“The weather,” Lorena said as she walked through a hallway and into her living room, where her husband and grown children waited by a glass display case filled to the brim with trolley-related mementos.
Wind and rain can slow business so significantly that Lorena said it’s often not even worth saddling up the horses, and legally, they can’t work in extreme heat. Even at 85 degrees the Oronas are required to rest their horses in shade for at least 10 minutes between each trolley tour, an issue that recently landed the family at the center of a heated town debate over animal rights and public funds.
After complaints from residents expressing concern for the horses’ well-being, the city of Solvang looked into building a shade structure for the trolley’s horses. That proposal raised the ire of other locals who questioned the city’s plan to aid a private business with public funds. On Feb. 12 the Solvang City Council formed a committee to continue working toward a solution.
The Oronas have owned and operated the business for nearly 11 years, and they refuse to give up hope that Solvang’s blossoming artisan food and wine scene will leave room for traditional tourist attractions like theirs.
“The trolley is not just a business for us,” Lorena said, as she opened the doors of the glass case and one by one pulled out pieces of her trolley souveinger collection. Some items, including the poster advertising $3 rides and a broken plate depicting the original motorized trolley, were decades old and found online, Lorena said. Others, like the handwritten “thank you” cards and stack of books filled with tourists’ signatures, held more meaning.
“We have a passion for horses,” Lorena said, motioning to her collection as proof. “It’s the way we work and it’s the kind of job we like. But also we make sure the horses are OK.”
It’s a sentiment the Oronas have been trying to get some Solvang residents to believe since they first took over the business.
No place to park
For years the Oronas parked their trolley in the same shady spot at the intersection of Copenhagen Drive and First Street on hot days, according to Salvador Orona, Lorena’s husband, who heads the trolley business. But in early 2017, surrounding business owners complained.
Their reasons varied—some didn’t want crowds of tourists outside their galleries and wineries, Salvador said. Others didn’t want horses—and, more importantly, the smell of horses—directly outside their restaurants. In response, the city asked Salvador to park elsewhere.
The demand felt unfair to Salvador, who said his two-year conveyance license with the city allows him to use any public parking spot for shade when temperatures hit 85 degrees.
“OK, these people have the right to conduct their businesses,” Salvador told the Sun later. “What about us? We have rights too.”
Salvador said he hoped the issue could be handled efficiently and sought help from the Solvang City Council. At a council meeting in March 2017, where the Oronas’ license was renewed for another two-year term, Salvador asked City Council members to assign the trolley a permanent parking location, where his horses could rest in shade on exceedingly warm days.
A spot wasn’t chosen at that meeting, according to a city staff report. Instead, months of deliberations between city staff, the Oronas, and other business owners ensued.
Staff first suggested a spot in one of Solvang’s many shaded alleyways, but Salvador said parking off Copenhagen made it difficult to maintain a consistent flow of ridership, even on busy summer days. Other parking spaces caused traffic issues, lacked adequate shade, or filled up spots normally used by tourists and residents, Salvador said.
Finally in July 2017, Salvador found what he said seemed to be a perfect rest stop in front of Sevtap Winery, a quaint tasting room situated in a tall blue windmill on the corner of Copenhagen and Second Street. The building casts a wide shadow most days and sits adjacent to the Oronas’ ice cream shop, a business the family opened to offset profit losses on days the horses can’t work.
But after two or three months of shady bliss, the owner of Sevtap, Ertugrul Sevtap, had had enough. He complained to the city, and Salvador was again forced to move his trolley.
Sevtap said tourists waiting for trolley tours made a habit of crowding around his winery and sitting on the ledge of his windowsill. The view for customers inside the winery, Sevtap said, was less than ideal.
“All you could see from inside were bottoms,” Sevtap said with a laugh. “So that didn’t work for me.”
In theory, it sounded great to have bored crowds outside his business, but Sevtap said the trolley riders—mostly senior citizens and families with young children—weren’t exactly interested in wine tasting.
“They were not at all coming in,” Sevtap said, adding that he moved his winery to Copenhagen in an effort to make his business more visible and accessible to wine enthusiasts. “Not to be blocked in by a horse trolley.”
City staff became desperate to find a solution.
Small town outrage
At a Solvang City Council meeting in December 2017, staff presented preliminary site layout plans for two possible trolley shade structures that, if approved, would have been built in a parking lot a few blocks from Sevtap Winery, according to a staff report.
Each structure would have cost the city nearly $100,000 to construct—and Solvang residents were outraged.
“WELFARE 4 A Owner of 3 Businesses,” read the handwritten signs posted up around Solvang following the meeting. “Salvador Orona wants YOUR TAXES to pay possible $75,000 to provide shade for his carriage horses.”
At another meeting on Jan. 22, 2018, staff presented layout plans for lower-cost shade structures. However, those had the potential to become liability risks on windy days, according to the staff report, and even the cheapest option would have cost an estimated $25,000.
Regardless of the price tag, Solvang residents were fired up, and on Jan. 22, several locals expressed vehement opposition to the possible and inappropriate “gift of public funds.”
“To me it’s absolutely insane that money has already been spent in this regard,” Rochelle Mueller, a Solvang resident, said at the meeting. “I think that it is just a poor use of funds, particularly since it sounds like we don’t even have the funds to direct that way, much less the man power.”
City staff had already spent more than $5,000 and 24 man hours to research the shade structure and develop its various preliminary designs and cost estimates. The money, according to a staff report, was taken from an account intended for Second Street drainage improvements.
Solvang Public Works Director and City Engineer Mark van der Linden said staff used funds from that account because the shade structure would have been built in a parking lot where many of the Second Street drainage improvements were, and still are, needed. The drainage project was also delayed, van der Linden said, creating a funding surplus in that account.
“So we weren’t going to use all the money that was budgeted for it anyway,” van der Linden told the Sun.
But to Solvang residents, the spending looked like a misuse of public funds, and much of the blame landed on the Oronas.
Rumors
As Salvador sat in Solvang City Hall on Jan. 22, awaiting continued council discussion regarding the trolley’s shade issue, he listened as other attendees murmured among themselves. He couldn’t help but overhear the gossip.
Rumors of money grubbing and, worse, animal abuse, were audibly rampant among his fellow residents, and many of the same whispered falsehoods later surfaced during public comment. The meeting culminated when Salvador stood and fervently denied his peers’ accusations.
“I am tired of this situation,” he said, clearly frustrated. “I think we deserve a little respect from the people.”
In March, by the stables where his eight massive Belgian draft horses took cover from the rain, Salvador looked down at his muddy work boots and said that his family has been battling unfounded animal neglect accusations for years.
The trolley owners before the Oronas, Salvador said, had a horrible reputation with both residents and the city. When the Oronas first purchased the business, Salvador said he completely refurbished the trolley, which was practically falling apart, and both Salvador and Lorena worked second jobs to stay afloat.
At that time, Salvador said, ridership was miniscule. Although business has increased significantly since then, the family is still struggling to bury the trolley’s troubled past reputation.
Longtime Solvang resident Janice Butler was the only attendee at the Jan. 22 Solvang City Council meeting who spoke in favor of the proposed shade structure. Butler, a self-proclaimed horse lover, said in a recent interview with the Sun that the horses absolutely need shade.
The horses work on asphalt streets and through humidity, Butler said, both aspects that can increase temperatures dramatically.
“There are a number of us who are very upset because the horses need to be treated humanely,” Butler said. “According to everyone I’ve been in touch with, the shade is absolutely critical or we’re going to have horses dying in the streets.”
If the city wants to reap the trolley’s benefits as a tourist attraction, Butler said city officials should be willing to fork over cash for a simple shade structure to protect the horses.
City, county, and law enforcement officials said they’ve never found any substance behind the various neglect accusations thrown at the Oronas.
Jan Glick, the Santa Barbara County Animal Services director, said that while Animal Services takes every complaint seriously, the Oronas have always been cooperative with investigations and ever-changing best practices. Lt. Eddie Hsueh, chief of the Solvang Police Department, said he couldn’t find a single animal cruelty report made to the department involving the trolley. And Mayor Jim Richardson, in a recent interview with the Sun, called Salvador “a true horseman in every sense of the word,” a man who depends on and cares deeply for his animals.
Still, the allegations hurt, Salvador said on March 16, as he pushed dirt around with his boot. Lorena nodded, pointed to the stacks and stacks of hay bales, and said the horses are well fed, watered, exercised, and loved. They schedule regular visits with an equine veterinarian, she said, and the horses wear special rubber horseshoes while walking on asphalt
“The horses are part of the family,” Salvador said. “They don’t live in the house because it’s not possible,” he laughed, “but if I could, they’d live with me inside.”
Waiting for shade
Despite the meetings and the money and time spent, a suitable solution to the shade problem has yet to surface.
At the Feb. 12 meeting, Solvang City Council members voted to form a two-person ad hoc subcommittee to oversee the matter. Salvador told the Sun that he hasn’t heard from the city since.
City Councilmember Ryan Toussaint, who volunteered to sit on the subcommittee, said these kinds of issues often take time, sometimes months, to handle effectively.
But to the Oronas, who are currently parking their trolley a few blocks south of Copenhagen Drive in a mostly residential area, it feels like they’ve been forgotten and ignored. They don’t have a place to rest in the shade and they certainly don’t have any answers.
“The city wants to please everybody and sometimes this is hard,” Salvador said. “But it feels like they’re punishing us.”
This, despite all they’ve put into the community, Lorena said.
“It’s not just the horses, but everything behind them,” she said, listing off the various other businesses that benefit from the trolley, including the horse shoemaker, equine veterinarian, and farm supply store.
And before wildfires ravaged the state in 2017, making it one of the trolley’s least profitable busy seasons in years, Lorena said the Oronas employed more than 20 individuals to help with the trolley business alone. The Oronas also started a sponsorship program, which helps local businesses advertise, and any profits that haven’t gone back into the horses go toward the family’s other businesses: the Solvang Trolley Ice Cream Parlor and La Sirenita Restaurant.
“So we invest the money from the trolley back into town,” Lorena said.
They own a Solvang staple, she said, and deserve a little respect from the city and its residents, or at least to be heard.
“It’s making memories,” Lorena said, shrugging and smiling at Pancho, one of her favorite horses. “It’s not just a business to take money from the people. We like to give happiness to people, and I think it’s a very special business.”
Contact Staff Writer Kasey Bubnash at kbubnash@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 5-12, 2018.
