The Canary

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 […]

Who would have thought that it’d take nearly 20 years to get Santa Maria’s downtown vision on the runway? I’d say off the ground, but it’s still taxiing around the tarmac.  On Oct. 3, the city’s Downtown Specific Plan rolled a little closer to takeoff position, thanks to a 3-1 vote from the City Council […]

Solvang updated its homelessness ordinance.  Starting Nov. 9, you can camp overnight in a number of publicly owned spaces but for no longer than 24 hours at a time. Unless, of course, you do camp somewhere for longer. Then, the city can notify you that you have up to 72 more hours to vacate the […]

While environmental organizations are celebrating a recent ruling in ExxonMobil’s lawsuit against Santa Barbara County, they might also rue the day the judge in the case issued it.  At the end of September, a federal judge upheld the county Board of Supervisors’ right to deny ExxonMobil a permit to truck oil on the county’s highways […]

It sounds like the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office is taking the four cities it contracts with for a ride!  Must be nice to be able to increase the rates that cities pay for through their respective contracts but not really give them the data they’re asking for.  This issue first came up as part […]

Apparently, providing emergency services in Santa Barbara County is complicated. I mean, obviously it is. But for some reason I can’t quite grasp, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors has made it even more complicated in the last six months.  For 50 years, American Medical Response (AMR) has provided emergency medical services to the […]