Ron Fink

Recently the county Board of Supervisors declined $17.9 million in grant funding and then later reinstated part of a request by the Housing Authority of Santa Barbara to purchase an old motel in Santa Maria and operate it as housing for the homeless. In the process, they reserved the right to deny the project at […]

The newly appointed city manager isn’t wasting any time establishing his priorities. In the first agenda of his administration, there are five consent calendar items and two public hearing items. One of the public hearing items is to restructure the Human Resources Division and make it a separate city department. In the process, the city […]

Lompoc taxpayers and those in many other cities of the county have a problem: The Public Employee Retirement System (CalPERS) is underfunded. This should concern everyone, and I’ll explain why. CalPERS was created to provide public (government) employees with a retirement fund paid by employee and taxpayer contributions. It replaces the federal Social Security program, […]

The past year saw a continuance of teeter-totter COVID-19 rules. It’s hard to keep up with the off-again, on-again restrictions, mandates, closures, and misinformation concerning this disease. All this confusion has led the government to use cash and political pronouncement’s once again as a cure-all for something they can’t fix. In the process of infusing […]

The Lompoc budget, like may other municipal budgets, covers a span of two years. A lot can happen to both revenue and expense predictions during that period. The Lompoc City Council wisely chose to have a periodic review to see where they were with the spending plan. On Dec. 7 they received that update, and […]

One thing you can always count on when an item involving a cooperative agreement between the city of Lompoc and the county of Santa Barbara is that Councilman Dirk Starbuck will oppose it every time. Even though he is usually wrong in his assumptions, at least he is consistent. The other thing you can count […]

When politicians get together to hatch their latest and greatest contributions to society, they sometimes make some unforced errors. Lately local, state, and federal elected officials have made some whoppers. In our county, the political class, who are strongly influenced by their well-heeled contributors, has always sought to lead the nation in environmental extremism. Their […]

Recently Gov. Gavin Newsom mandated that schoolchildren ages “12 to 17 OR grades seven to 12 must be vaccinated starting in the next school term. Date is dependent on FDA approval timelines, but no earlier than January of 2022.” He also said that “all K-12 staff must be vaccinated at this identified time or test […]

When the first plane flew at Kitty Hawk in 1903, it began an era that has produced some very large aircraft—many of those are military aircraft. In 1937, the U.S. Army Air Corp developed the first firefighting vehicle modified specifically to fight aircraft fires from a commercially produced fire engine. Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSF) […]

When either commercial or government missile and space programs are being planned for launch, the team must prepare the rocket for launch, and the military or the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) must approve the launch team’s “flight hazard area analysis.” The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) applies to commercial space programs and specifically says that […]

There have been more than 50 incidents this year in Lompoc involving misguided people shooting a gun who have no regard for the safety of others. Both their targets and innocent bystanders have been hit and either injured or killed in these incidents. Some were gang related, others were committed by thoughtless people with no […]