• Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on June 3 that restaurants and bars are permitted to keep their outdoor seating expansions on sidewalks and parking lots as well as continue the sale of takeaway alcoholic beverages with food. “As the state turns to post-pandemic life, we’ll continue to adapt best practices that have helped businesses transform customer experience for the better,” Newsom said on June 3 while visiting restaurants in San Francisco, according to a statement from his office. “With new opportunities and support for businesses large and small, and the California can-do spirit that has carried us through the past year, we will come roaring back from this pandemic.” The state is also encouraging local governments to keep outdoor dining through zoning and programs, according to the governor’s office. “Today’s actions by Gov. Newsom are critical—as they contain some of the most successful elements of emergency pandemic relief—and makes them stick for the longer term as we know that expanded outdoor dining is essential for paving the way towards a restaurant recovery,” California Restaurant Association CEO and President Jot Condie said in the statement. “These actions will be incredibly valuable for so many neighborhood restaurants throughout the state.”
• Local and state leaders released the Vandenberg Master Plan on June 3, a more than 50-page plan that lays out three goals for the recently renamed Vandenberg Space Force Base: “attracting space industry companies to the Central Coast, modernizing and investing in infrastructure, and strengthening the region’s space identity,” according to a statement from REACH, a Central Coast economic development collaboration. The state of California, Santa Barbara County, Space Launch Delta 30, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, REACH, and Deloitte all have a hand in the plan’s creation and implementation. “This plan serves as a cornerstone in sustaining and expanding California’s position at the forefront of the aerospace and commercial space industries, pushing the boundaries of innovation and creating the jobs of the future,” Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development Director Dee Dee Myers said in the statement. “It’s an essential piece in maximizing the incredible assets the state has at what’s now Vandenberg Space Force Base, driving not just private investment but state and federal investment, too.” The plan garnered unanimous, bipartisan support from the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. “The value of Vandenberg to this region is paramount,” 4th District Supervisor Bob Nelson said. “That’s why the Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 to join this partnership and usher in a new era of collaboration and synergy with our longtime neighbors at the base.” Assemblymember Jordan Cunningham (R-San Luis Obispo) voiced his support for the Space Force Base in a June 5 Facebook post. “The Central Coast’s commercial space industry is poised for takeoff,” Cunningham wrote. “Vandenberg’s unique launch capability and mission, combined with the Central Coast workforce and world-class higher education institutions, will lead to more head-of-household jobs and establish our region as the home of U.S. aerospace innovation.”
• In a June 4 Facebook post, Assemblymember Jordan Cunningham (R-San Luis Obispo) said he was relieved to see Assembly Bill 1139 fail to pass the Assembly floor on June 2. The bill would have changed how solar energy customers get credit for the extra energy their rooftop panels produce, which opponents said would have disincentivized the switch to solar. “This bill would have drastically reduced the value of residential rooftop solar installations—systems that cost homeowners tens of thousands of dollars to purchase, finance, and install—and effectively killed the rooftop solar industry and its thousands of jobs,” Cunningham wrote in his post. “With California’s ambitious climate goals bearing down on us, we cannot afford to get rid of yet another way of producing clean energy.”
This article appears in Jun 10-17, 2021.