Cover Story
Summer Guide 2019
I know it doesn’t really feel like summer is right around the corner, but I promise that the sun will come out eventually. Those low-hanging soggy clouds full of wet will part, leaving you with the dog days of summer staring you straight in the face. How will you ever fill all…
Melodrama’s Treasure Island shines, dazzles audiences
You’re minding your own business, running an inn with no customers, when an about-to-be-dead pirate runs in, gives you a treasure map to hide, swears you to secrecy, and then has the nerve to get captured by his own men. It’s a wild goose chase from start to finish, but the Great American Melodrama’s quirky…
With Guadalupe revitalization efforts afoot, residents wonder what will become of the Royal Theater
If Steven Kawano ever wins the lottery, he’s going to buy the Royal Theater in Guadalupe. He was 9 years old when he and his family moved away from Guadalupe, but he’ll always have fond memories of the town he was raised in. The Royal is one he just can’t get out of his mind. …
Cities push back on proposed changes that would make it difficult to annex farmland
Cities in Santa Barbara County could have a harder time annexing farmland to grow their boundaries if the Santa Barbara Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) implements a few proposed policy changes. One of the changes would require the development of prime agricultural land to be mitigated with an equal amount of land preserved. The city…
Spotlight on: Transitions-Mental Health Association celebrates 40 years of helping locals affected by mental illnesses
Forty years ago, Transitions-Mental Health Association (TMHA) was founded with the goal of helping people leaving state mental health hospitals reintegrate into the community by teaching them basic skills such as cooking or budgeting. Four decades later, TMHA has expanded on this goal with numerous other programs offered throughout Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo…
Santa Maria to release police misconduct records
After various court rulings across the state, the city of Santa Maria plans to release police misconduct records in compliance with a new California law that aims to make investigations into police misconduct more transparent. The law, Senate Bill 1421, went into effect on Jan. 1 and requires police departments to release public records relating…
Lompoc moves toward final budget with cuts
In the latest, and often contentious, conversation over Lompoc’s 2019-21 biennial budget, the City Council made it clear the budget would include cuts, but council members also made informal plans to discuss a sales tax measure at a later date. The city held its fourth budget workshop meeting on May 15, where City Council and…
Governor backtracks on plan that would’ve taken millions from county Public Health
Public health officials in Santa Barbara County and elsewhere are celebrating recent changes in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget, which originally included a plan to take funding from several counties to provide health care coverage to undocumented residents. Earlier this year, Gov. Newsom proposed a plan to divert millions of public health dollars from 39…
Public comment period open for Lompoc wind project
A decade after approving a project to build wind turbines south of Lompoc, which were never constructed, Santa Barbara County is weighing a similar project in the same area proposed by a different company. The county Department of Planning and Development recently released a draft of its supplemental environmental impact review (SEIR) for the Strauss…
State moves to ban chlorpyrifos
After years of back-and-forth on the local, state, and national levels, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration announced plans on May 8 to ban the use of a controversial pesticide in California. A recent press release from the California Environmental Protection Agency stated that the state’s Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) will initiate a cancellation of chlorpyrifos,…
Political Watch May 23, 2019
• U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) and Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-California), Kamala Harris (D-California), and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) introduced a bipartisan resolution designating July as American Grown Flower Month on May 14. The move is an effort to encourage consumers to buy “certified American grown” flowers. American consumers spend $27 billion on floral products…
The Titanic is sinking
The May 15, 2019, Lompoc budget workshop was another seance in budget perfidy. The “triad” of Lompoc City Councilmembers Jim Mosby, Dirk Starbuck, and Victor Vega were at it again, nickel-and-diming the budget to get it cut so it will be balanced—again at the cost of city services—but refusing to directly consider a 1 percent…
Andy’s right, sort of
Many spoke at a recent Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors hearing on ExxonMobil’s proposal to restart oil production off the Gaviota Coast. Among them was Andy Caldwell of COLAB (Coalition of Labor, Agriculture, and Business). He said that if the oil doesn’t come from local sources, companies will still find a way. “It will…
Republicans had their chance and blew it
Let me remind Jan Lipski (“We need solutions,” May 9) that both houses had a Republican majority for two years under President Barack Obama and for two additional years under the current administration, and no legislation was passed on immigration reform even though a majority of voters agreed that it was needed. The complicated mess…
Public pressure in Lompoc changes some council members’ minds
Last Wednesday, May 15, the Lompoc City Council had another budget workshop; they have had four of them so far, but the only work that gets done is when the staff tells them once again that they don’t have enough revenue to run the city effectively. At the last meeting, the city manager and his…
CANARY: Legacies die hard
Lompoc. Here we go again. We’ve got gadflies Justin Ruhge and Ron Fink plinking away on their keyboards in frustration to let everyone know how stupid they think City Councilmembers Jim Mosby, Victor Vega, and Dirk Starbuck are when it comes to the budget nonsense that the Sun can’t seem to stop writing about. We…
Original musical JFK ‘n Me gets official album release
Aficionados privy to the Santa Maria and Lompoc music scenes may know songwriters Weston Scott and Christian Schmidt for their work as the pop parody duo The Friendos, who celebrated their inaugural album release in 2017. If you’re curious about what they’ve been up to for the last two years, head on over to iTunes,…
Clinical research confirms that Super Grill makes Lompoc Valley’s finest tacos
There’s a solid chance that most of you reading this have no idea how good you have it. There is so much top-notch Mexican food in Southern and Central California that it kind of becomes a fact of life. Any town big enough to have more than one restaurant is going to have at least…
Target practice in Santa Margarita
It’s Sunday, April 28, and my wife, Anna, and I are fixin’ to shoot some shit. We’re heading out Highway 58, just outside Santa Margarita, to visit our friends Don Lampson—a well-known local musician with a voice that sounds like rusted shovels bouncing in the back of an old pickup truck running down a dirt…
College For Kids offers summer arts classes
College for Kids will be offering a variety of youth classes through Allan Hancock College’s Community Education Program, starting Wednesday, June 10, and running through Saturday, Aug. 10. Students ages 4 to 18 will be able to choose from arts and crafts, creative journaling, sewing, cooking, and dance classes (including ballet, hip-hop, and jazz). The…
Lompoc announces Free Movies in the Park lineup
The Lompoc Recreation Division announced the three films that will be screened during the annual Free Movies in the Park event, which begins on Saturday, June 8, with a screening of Mary Poppins Returns. The series continues with Bumblebee on Saturday, July 13, and concludes with How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World on…
Gallery Los Olivos presents This and That
Gallery Los Olivos holds its opening reception for This and That on Saturday, June 1, from 2 to 4 p.m. The new show, which will run through Sunday, June 30, showcases digital art by Jayne Behman and oil paintings by Patti Robbins. Both artists are Central Coast locals. The gallery is located at 2920 Grand…
