The Canary

If things weren’t spicy in Buellton before the November election—with a sitting City Council member running against the sitting mayor—they are now.  The council is split down the middle, with two council members on one side and the newly elected mayor and another council member on the other. They couldn’t decide on who to appoint […]

The Santa Barbara County jails’ health care contractor has paid the county back $1 million since 2017. Why?  Well. The California Forensic Medical Group—aka Wellpath—hadn’t employed all the staffers it was contracted to employ and was paid for it anyway. That $1 million in credits is Wellpath’s way of reimbursing the county for unfilled positions.  […]

Santa Barbara County is finally doing something about an issue that’s garnered 3,700 complaints since 2018, and zero enforcement.  Can you guess what got residents so fired up that they sent what amounts to almost two complaints a day to their elected officials over the past six years? Here’s a hint: It’s green. It’s legal. […]

In Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors news, the changing of the guards is complete!  Second District Supervisor Laura Capps took the chair’s gavel from 5th District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino, and new 1st District Supervisor Roy Lee took his seat on the board on Jan. 7.  I don’t know about you, but I’m going to […]

In 2020-21, an estimated 2,000 Western monarch butterflies were counted at overwintering sites. In 2022-23, that count hit 300,000.  But this winter is expected to be super low, with the count ongoing and a little less than 200 counted at Pismo State Beach Monarch Butterfly Grove this year—and more than 10,000 counted last year. So […]

This past year was a bit of a rough one. Starting in Guadalupe—the littlest city that could, but only if the deadline is tomorrow and staff has to overnight something to a state agency after City Council approves it tonight.  Talk about last minute! That city is flying by the seat of its pantaloons.  The […]

Old Town Lompoc is about to grow up. At the ripe age of 150 years old, the city is primed for a good ol’ fashioned growth spurt—from 45 feet to 50 feet tall. Lompoc is aiming for increasing its housing density, both to comply with state law and some city goals. To do that, the […]

In a first for Lompoc, the city now has an environmental justice element. City staff may have swung this one through the council in the nick of time!  Mayor Jenelle Osborne is on the way out and Mayor Elect Jim Mosby is on his way in. I can’t imagine any sort of environmental justice anything […]

Tourism is the answer to all of our budget woes!  Even if the economy tanks, tourists will still be here—oh wait, probably not.  But still, they should be paying for our needs! At least according to voters in the Santa Ynez Valley and Santa Barbara County, who voted to increase bed taxes in Solvang, Buellton, […]

In Lompoc, there are more than 2,700 children under 2 years old and only 186 child care spaces available in the city. “This translates to the potential unmet need for 93 percent of children ages 0 to 2,” according to a needs assessment from the local school district, adult school, and First 5 Santa Barbara […]

At least one person made a salient point at a recent Santa Barbara County ad-hoc committee meeting about farmworker conditions, specifically when it comes to the concept of implementing a $26 minimum wage for farmworkers in the county. “Say I’m Driscoll’s. I could buy from Santa Barbara County, I could buy from our neighboring counties, […]

Protecting seniors means discriminating against everyone else, according to Nick Ubaldi with Harmony Communities, the company that’s now managing Del Cielo Mobile Estates—the once 55-and-older mobile home park in Orcutt. I say once because Ubaldi said it is no longer. Not only is it now an all-ages community, Ubaldi said in a statement, the park […]