The Canary

When the rooster crows, it gets kicked out of a Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors meeting!  On Jan. 9, during a hearing about future rooster regulations, the cacophony was a little too loud, upsetting the delicate balance of debating deeply held convictions with decorum. Instead of simply enjoying the peaceful boredom of facilitating discussion […]

Oceano is hoping for a brand new 2024.  The little town in southern San Luis Obispo County is hoping that its Community Services District will finally pull itself together, that the governing board will do more than bicker, and that its new leaders will move forward into a more civil era of policymaking.  I wouldn’t […]

We sure did a lot of fighting this year! Maybe it was all that rain in January and March, filling up Northern Santa Barbara County’s streets with mud and debris, causing our reservoirs to spill over, and leaving us with repair needs—some of which have yet to be fixed.  It made us grumpy for the […]

The lack of mental health help in North Santa Barbara County isn’t a new issue. It comes up repeatedly. We don’t have enough inpatient beds for involuntary or voluntary mental health holds. We need more outpatient facilities. If you need emergency help, head to Marian Regional Medical Center’s emergency room and plan to wait a […]

Great news, everyone!  Santa Barbara County’s farmworker resource pilot program is a success!  Why? Well, according to a Dec. 14 presentation, it connected with more than 3,500 farmworkers from July to November—helping them fill out forms for CalFresh and Medi-Cal, get school supplies, and learn financial literacy.  “This could now be the model for the […]

As Larry Ferini takes a bow from the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission, Roy Reed takes his seat on the dais.  Fulfilling the 4th District tradition of supplanting a business-oriented blue-collar type with another business-oriented blue-collar type, Bob Nelson replaced the family farm operator with a rancher and taxpayer advocate. Hey, and both Ferini and […]

One Solvang City Council member is very concerned that her city could attract the next protest where people glue their hands to the streets. Not only is she concerned about that, she’s also worried about the damage that glue could do to the city.  Councilmember Elizabeth Orona was so perturbed about the possibility that she […]

Cuesta College Superintendent and President Jill Stearns has been singing the praises of the 1,300-housing-unit Dana Reserve project in Nipomo, touting the space it’s allocating to a new South County campus for the college, and advocating for all the “affordable” housing it’s going to bring to the area. She’s toured the public meeting circuit, speaking […]

Math might be the subject that confuses all of us at times. I know I’m confused by the numbers that Santa Barbara County Planning Commissioner Laura Bridley proffered during a recent meeting.  During the Nov. 8 meeting, she was the sole commissioner to vote against the new cycle of the Housing Element—a state requirement to […]

Santa Maria Planning Commissioner Robert Dickerson has such spite for the state Legislature’s attempts to facilitate housing development that he refused to vote on the city’s attempts to comply with accessory dwelling unit requirements that went into effect 10 months ago.  “I cannot express any more than I have many, many times in the past […]

Who’s happy that ExxonMobil pulled the plug on plans to replace its aging oil pipelines?  I can tell you who!  The Environmental Defense Center (EDC), for one, and lots of other nonprofit organizations dedicated to Get Oil Out.  Exxon, aka Pacific Pipeline, no longer has plans to put brand new oil pipelines in where lines […]

People in the Santa Ynez Valley really just need to mind their own business.  But they’re too entitled for that, aren’t they?  After burning through several principals in a short period of time, Santa Ynez Valley Union High School still hasn’t replaced the most recent resignation, Michael Niehoff. Niehoff resigned last spring after dealing with […]