Great news, everyone!
Santa Barbara County’s farmworker resource pilot program is a success!
Why? Well, according to a Dec. 14 presentation, it connected with more than 3,500 farmworkers from July to November—helping them fill out forms for CalFresh and Medi-Cal, get school supplies, and learn financial literacy.
“This could now be the model for the state, getting boots on the ground, connection people with needs to … our resources. It’s not fiscally conservative to have a bunch of programs and have nobody use them,” 4th District Supervisor Bob Nelson said.
All it cost was a little more than $1 million! Super conservative!
But beneath all the back slaps and congratulations from the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors about how badass the pilot is, I’ve got some bad news.
The state funding that paid for 75 percent of the program’s operating costs is going to run out in May. Not only that, the county’s farmworker population has recently experienced some not so great things, including the death of a field worker in Guadalupe and one in the Cuyama Valley as well as local farms violating the H-2A guest worker program.
The county’s No. 1 industry has major issues that aren’t going to be fixed helping farmworkers fill out forms to receive services.
While connecting people to resources by traveling to them in a mobile unit is great and all, how is the county working to keep farmworkers safe and not defrauded? And what is the county going to do when the funding runs out? I guess we need to wait until March to find out the answer to the latter question.
Just like we’ll need to wait to find out if these accidents that county Planning Commissioner John Parke is worried about happening on Highway 135 in Los Alamos will happen. He’s very concerned about the jaywalking that could result from a cannabis dispensary opening on Bell Street.
“There’s going to be people walking across that street not in the very best of condition, and it’ll be dark,” Parke said.
People already jaywalk back and forth across that street, between the restaurants, bars, and wine that already exists there. I’m sure if accidents were a major problem we’d have heard about it, John!
He’s got “lingering concerns,” especially after sunset. Is he worried about vampires taking evening strolls in the middle of the highway, finally leaving the bar after dark to head over and grab some gummies to help them sleep after the sun comes up? Did no one think about the safety of this project?
I’m almost positive that safety was one of the priorities the cannabis dispensary needed to check off the county’s list to even get the approval to simply start moving through the planning and permitting process. Because we like to make things as difficult as possible to set up a legal cannabis operation.
David Swenk of Urban Planning Concepts, who represented the Haven at the commission’s Dec. 6 meeting, said they spoke with Caltrans about potentially putting a crosswalk near the dispensary site—but Caltrans opted out. I guess they’re not concerned about jaywalking vampires.
Maybe Parke can take it up with Caltrans?
The Canary likes a good vampire story. Send tall tales to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 14-24, 2023.
