The Canary

The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office is getting a new payroll system! Hopefully one that will prevent the overtime cost overruns that have plagued the law enforcement agency for years.  How is it going to do that? Umm, that part isn’t exactly clear.  “We’re still working on exactly how the system is going to be […]

Since last December, Lompoc City Councilmember Jeremy Ball has been asking his colleagues on the dais to join him in doing something about fellow Councilmember Steve Bridge’s predicament.  No, not to help the guy. To slap him on the wrist.  Ball finally got his wish, kind of.  The council agreed 3-1, with Bridge abstaining and […]

Santa Barbara County gave unanimous approval for an oil-related thing.  I know. Pick those jaws up off the ground!  It was fairly routine—the county Planning Commission gave the go-ahead for an ownership transfer of an asphalt refinery near Santa Maria. But the last time an ownership transfer came before the county, it was denied! (Yes, […]

Lawsuits. Santa Maria thinks it can avoid them with a preemptive strike! But mobile home park owners around town are low-key threatening to sue over the city’s new mobile home park ordinance anyway.  The new rule impacts five senior parks in the city and ensures that those parks will continue to cater to the 55-plus […]

Guadalupe, Guadalupe, Guadalupe, what are we going to do with you?  After fits and starts, false starts, and no starts, the city’s calling it quits on the Royal Theater restoration project. I think anyone’s who’s been following my sarcastic commentary on the matter probably knows that should have happened a long time ago—maybe when the […]

Solvang lost some of its Danish charm in a battle over one partially developed lot with nine almost-built little cottages on it. A fight over what the developer calls whimsical and how closely it resembles the permit granted to him by the city landed the two sides in court.  The gloves came off, and the […]

The news this week almost made me want to set down my feather pen and bury my head in the sand, à la my long-legged cousins.  A Vandenberg Space Force Base airman died on base after the heavy equipment he was operating fell down an embankment. Airman 1st Class Cedric Eneluna was 23 years old.  […]

The city of Buellton no longer considers Pea Soup Andersen’s an official city landmark.  After hemming and hawing this spring over what exactly it was going to allow the current landowner to do to the building, the Buellton City Council came up with a solution to the problem it had inadvertently created: Pull the historic […]

Santa Maria’s mobile home park dwellers have been asking the city for rent control for years now, and recently, they again didn’t get what they asked for.  But senior mobile home park residents may breathe a little easier if the Santa Maria City Council does what the Planning Commission recommended: pass an ordinance that would […]

When new ownership and management started making changes to their mobile home park’s policies and rent, residents of Del Cielo Mobile Estates in Orcutt spoke up. First, they went to the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors with their concerns about the park becoming an all-ages community, and the board made changes to local policy.  […]

Local governments have been making and/or crossing some interesting boundaries lately. Lompoc is trying to prevent the too-long arm of the state from taking away the city’s control over where it puts new housing, which hasn’t really been happening in the city of arts and flowers. “Last year we built zero homes,” Mayor Jim Mosby […]

Budget cuts are hitting Santa Barbara County. One reality is an almost $10 million cut to the Public Health Department that’s closing pharmacies and other services in both North and South counties. If you need to use the county-run pharmacy, you’ll have to run to Lompoc. It’s the middle ground—so at least it’s not just […]