Ron Fink

Renewable energy has been the poster child for politicians and celebrity personages for the last few years to replace fossil fuel energy sources. In their quest to rid the Earth of the well-paying, job-producing, general-fund pot-of-gold fossil fuel industry, they think that solar/wind power is the answer. The primary justification for their concern is that […]

On Feb. 2, the Lompoc city manager tried to justify using fees collected to operate and maintain the drinking water utility to pay for homeless camp cleanups in the riverbed by saying that “funding the ongoing costs for cleanup and patrolling from the water enterprise fund would be a legitimate use” because the homeless population […]

So, after nearly a year of COVID-19 related closures, let’s give the Lompoc Unified School District (LUSD) a “progress report”; how is it doing and what grade would it get if this were a classroom project? I am not an educator, but I think we can figure this out based on the progress made so […]

Some Lompoc City Council members might think that a CIP is what you do with a cool beverage, but that’s not the case. As a city service area grows, additional facilities and equipment are needed to provide citizens with an adequate level of service. The capital improvement program (CIP) is the long-range overarching management tool […]

Anyone who works for a living gets paid to do it; the amount they receive depends on what the employer feels the job is worth. Most employee unions, large employers, and government agencies employ experts to establish what they call “pay equity.” But how do they do it? This is important information when worker representatives […]

As 2020 comes to an end, it’s time to look forward. This year was one of the most chaotic of any in my adult life. Hopefully, the problems caused by a disease pass by and we can return to what was normal before politicians got into the doctoring business. In September 2017, the Lompoc City […]

When I was a young man, I bought several Dr. Seuss books to help teach my children how to read. These were wonderful little stories, cleverly illustrated with words young children could easily learn in a few minutes each evening. One of the characters was a cynical grump Seuss named “Grinch” who wanted to steal […]

Everyone follows a path through life; some paths are littered with traps and dead ends, others with an easy ride/walk/run and nothing but positive outcomes. In Lompoc, the city used a transportation grant to build a paved path with all of those things wrapped up into one project. Dubbed the Riverbend Bike Path it was […]

By all accounts, the recent election had the highest level of participation in anyone’s memory—a stunning 85 percent countywide! Maybe this is the only positive outcome of the COVID-19 virus pandemic. I think that our county handled this well by allowing four in-person days of voting and counting vote-by-mail ballots as they arrived to provide […]

By time this is reaches newsstands, the election should be decided; some will celebrate, and others may complain that the process wasn’t fair. No matter the outcome, we are stuck with those elected for another couple of years.  Press deadlines prevented any commentary on local elections until my next submission, but I thought you’d like […]

 I have been following Lompoc politics for about 30 years; anytime an elected official had a monetary interest or conducted business with the city, he/she would always recuse themselves from any discussion pertaining to their business interest. I have also been following City Council meetings closely for the last six years; Councilman Victor Vega hasn’t […]

When you flush your waste down the drain it doesn’t just “disappear”; it eventually finds its way to the Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTW), otherwise known as the wastewater treatment plant. Before your waste can be released as effluent into the Santa Ynez River, it must be treated to remove harmful substances. The treatment process […]