I think Lompoc might have some competition for most drama on an elected body in Santa Barbara County.
Solvang’s recent City Council meeting makes me long for 2017, when the drama involved City Councilmember Jim Mosby—Doesn’t Lompoc’s drama always involve Mosby?—throwing a fit about then Mayor Bob Lingl, who made a finger gun with his hand, pointed it at Mosby one Friday in July, and said, “I’d like to shoot this guy in the head.” Wow!
An investigation followed, there was social media uproar, and Police Chief Pat Walsh had to issue a statement on the matter saying that police found that no crime had occurred. It was a whirlwind!
In Solvang, it seems like Mayor Ryan Toussaint is always involved in the drama. You think he’s been getting tips from Mosby about how to stir up a ruckus? They’re like two peas in a pod, taking up the mantle against the city’s established “political elite.”
Lompoc, though, has always had its fair share of drama and it’s always aired in a very public manner.
Danish-land, on the other hand, has been quiet for so long, I was starting to wonder if city politics had a pulse. Now, the pulse is beating so hard it’s starting to bleed out. At this point, you’ve all heard about the Solvang Conference & Visitors Bureau (SCVB)—or at least I hope you have because you read the Sun breathlessly every Thursday, I’m sure.
That mess seems to be touching everything in the city. The budget. City events. City Attorney Chip Wullbrandt’s time—he even had to wear a bowling shirt to a meeting he was so busy. Valuable hours during City Council meetings. It seems to be leaking into the city’s Board of Architectural Review (BAR), and now council members are pondering whether the city even needs it. Say bye, bye, BARdy if the SCVB saga is any indication.
In a very public airing of political dirty laundry, Toussaint and his rowdy band of rogue council members voted one of the city’s old guard politicians off the BAR. Joan Jamieson, for her part, didn’t go down without letting everyone know exactly who she thinks she is after Wullbrandt accused her of violating the Brown Act.
“I was shocked to see that the mayor wanted to remove me … without discussing it with me first,” Jamieson said during the Jan. 15 council meeting.
Yeah. Do you even know who she is?
She continued her show by laughing from the audience while the City Council discussed her fate. And her cohort of ruffians disrupted the discussion even more by making loud remarks. Rude! City Councilmember Chris Djernaes could barely contain himself, insinuating that he really, really didn’t like her.
“There are other serious issues to get rid of her,” Djernaes said.
Oh really? Like what? Could you be specific please?
Before he could answer the questions that I volleyed silently from my little canary brain to his giant human one, City Councilmember Karen Waite told him to stop.
“For your own benefit, you need to just be quiet,” she said above the laughter.
What the hell is going on?
I, for one, am dying to know the details. I live for this stuff.
The canary sniffs laundry for a living. Send details to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 23-30, 2020.
