Canary

By the time you read this, you’ll either be crying, laughing, curled up in the fetal position, clapping, or losing your mind. It really depends on who wins and who you voted for in the presidential election.  I don’t know what’s going on yet, because it’s 3:30 p.m. on Election Day and we’re about to […]

There’s nothing like the feeling of turning a dream into reality, especially after a long wait. Allan Hancock College is right there, on the threshold of bringing a long-awaited goal to fruition for local students.  For the 12 years he’s been at Hancock’s helm, Kevin Walthers has worked to get a bachelor’s degree offered on […]

Wildwood in Solvang is getting wild before it’s even got roots in the ground.  The proposed 100-unit, multi-family, two-story apartment and condo development is running into ye ol’ “we want development, we just want it to be the right kind of development.” Which is code for “This development is going to bring in people who […]

If you’re a newspaper rack in Solvang, it might be time to clean yourself up.  The city’s about to crack down on cracked paint and collect overdue permit fees to keep sidewalk free speech alive and well. At least one City Council member thought it might be best to just do away with the racks […]

Senior mobile home parks across the county are getting protection from the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors to stay senior—forever and always.  Well, most of them should get that protection, if the board continues along its current path, which would put a moratorium on changing 55-and-older mobile home parks to all-ages and specify the […]

So far, Santa Barbara County’s spent about $2.3 million cleaning out the Santa Maria Riverbed. It’s only one of the partners involved in the cleanup efforts, and those efforts have only tackled a third to half of what’s there.  There was still a lot of work left to do, last I checked, and at least […]

Maintaining a city is hard. It costs money. It requires people. They need public safety services, recreation, parking, walkable spaces, city streets, and more—all of which require infrastructure, maintenance, and money. Lots of it.  So why would a city willingly agree to reduce the fees it charges housing developers to pay for all of that […]

This year feels like a rerun in some parts of Northern Santa Barbara County. In Santa Maria, Will Smith is again running to unseat longtime incumbent Mayor Alice Patino.  It’s his third time running for the spot against Patino.  With his checkered past, I’m not sure in what world enough people exist to help him […]

I’m not sure what happened at the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors meeting on Sept. 10. Maybe it’s just been so long since I’ve seen a productive policy discussion about a contentious issue end in compromise and unanimous agreement—but that’s what happened.  What started out as a tense conversation about whether to form an […]

If you Google “Harmony Communities California,” in between the corporate mobile home park owner/operator’s marketing gobbledygook, the headlines are not good.  The company recently purchased Del Cielo Estates in Orcutt—a 55-and-over mobile home community where seniors own their homes and rent the land they sit on—and informed residents that it was planning to make the […]

Should farmworkers make $26 an hour in Santa Barbara County?  CAUSE (the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy) thinks so.  “If you asked any farmworker in our county what’s the biggest challenge they face, it’s low wages,” CAUSE Co-Executive Director Hazel Davalos told the county Board of Supervisors on Aug. 27.  Of course […]

It seems a little strange that Guadalupe is moving forward with its theater renovation project without having all the cash it needs in the bank yet.  The Royal Theater revamp fund is still short $3 million—that’s the same $3 million the Guadalupe City Council declined to ask its residents to fund via a bond measure […]