Tough crowd

Anyone who thought that Guadalupe’s downtown was finally going to be home to construction activities on the Royal Theater revamp needs to wait just a little bit longer.

After breaking ground in early December, the project hit another snag.

The city needs Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District [APCD] approval to move forward with mitigating hazardous materials in the building.

This time, Guadalupe didn’t wait until the last minute to take care of this issue. Workers collected asbestos, lead, and mold samples about six months ago and sent them off to a lab for testing.

But, plot twist!

“The company that did the testing sent their samples to a testing lab that has since closed for business,” Project Manager Tom Brandeberry said. “The third party testing lab has gone bankrupt. They don’t exist anymore.”

So, the APCD isn’t accepting the test results.

Are we in a sitcom?

The number of snafus and snags this project has hit along its path to renewal is staggering!

So, again, the project is on hold while the APCD gets ready to conduct another site visit and Guadalupe waits for the thumbs up.

Poor new Interim City Administrator David Trujillo (who had only been the public works director for a few months) is probably regretting stepping into the role vacated by Todd Bodem until the Guadalupe City Council hires someone.

Councilmember Whitney Furness gave him the what for on Dec. 9, when he suggested giving city staff a little more time to get their feet underneath them before moving forward with creating the Brown Act committee that will eventually provide theater project oversight.

“We’re already falling behind on things,” he told the council. But Furness wasn’t having it.

“Didn’t we already decide that we wanted to move forward with that though, as a council?” she said.

City Attorney Phil Sinco stepped in to rescue Trujillo, saying that the committee appointment process could move forward.

“So we’re going to move forward with what we already decided in a previous meeting, is that correct? Sounds great,” Furness said.

Oof. Tough crowd. A little terse for Trujillo’s first meeting as the top dog.

You know where else there’s a tough crowd? Anytime Sable Offshore goes before the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. Supes denied the oil company a permit transfer for the Las Flores Pipeline and its associated parts and pieces on Dec. 16.

And then the Trump administration basically gave California and the county the middle finger by taking control of oversight of the pipeline. The U.S. Department of Transportation will wrest the regulatory burden from the state fire marshal, and probably give Sable the go-ahead whether anyone in this state wants it or not.

Fourth District county Supervisor Bob Nelson said it best at the Dec. 16 meeting: “A lot of people out in the public think that by transferring a name on a permit that somehow it’s stopping production of oil at this facility. The truth is they’re already producing oil at this facility.”

It sure seems like Sable’s going to do what it wants, with or without the county’s or the state’s blessings.

The Canary is always wrestling with a tough crowd. Send laughs to canary@santamariasun.com.

This article appears in Dec 25, 2025 – Jan 1, 2026.