Santa Barbara County is feeling so fresh and so green, green. So fresh and so green, green. And the reason why is about $3.1 million from a fresh new revenue stream!
That particular emerald goose is supposed to add at least another $2.4 million before the end of the 2018-19 fiscal year. With all this depressing pension liability talk, I’ll cheers to that! All of that gleaming green is brought to you by the devil’s lettuce, aka grass, aka herb, aka kush from a bush.
But it’s not like that’s free money, you know. Letting the demon’s cabbage loose in Santa Barbara County requires enforcement! And that is projected to cost the county a grand total of $2(ish) million—leaving a little more than $3 million greenbacks floating around in the county atmosphere. What are they going to do with all of that moola?
Well, that’s under discussion. We could pay down some of our pension liability—although Santa Barbara County 5th District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino probably wouldn’t think that was visible enough. He made a recommendation during a Feb. 26 Board of Supervisors meeting that the county should use that money in a way that’s visible to its residents.
So, using it to pay down some of that $438 million in deferred maintenance costs that 4th District Supervisor Peter Adam’s been harping on us about since 2012 is probably out, huh? What about a new public safety communication system? At $50 million, it would only take 16 to 17 years to raise the funds necessary to pay for that! I feel like the person whose life gets saved by that new system would think it was tangible.
But fresh greenbacks rarely get put into things that have been on the backburner for so long. What’s a few more years of deferred maintenance costs? Let’s rack that up to $500 million. Then we can talk! A new communication system? Let the state pony up the dough!
I know what we can do! Let’s build an organic farm with that $3 million. We can put it in North County, and the Sansum Diabetes and Research Institute can use it for the soon-to-be-launched Farming for Life program, which is meant to help families with diabetes eat food they normally don’t have access to. Because even though the institute has already completed a pilot program that had participants in Lompoc, and even though the institute has been talking about reaching out to North County residents for at least four months, and even though there are more farms in the area than I can count—Sansum can’t seem to get its food any farther north than the city of Santa Barbara’s Unity Shoppe.
This program is designed for food-insecure folks who can’t afford to consistently buy organic produce. A doctor is going to prescribe them fresh veggies, which these patients will then have to spend money to get down to Santa Barbara, pick up, and then bring back home. Um, it’s not looking promising, guys.
“We absolutely want to come to Santa Maria,” David Kerr, the institute’s director of research and innovation, told the Sun. We’re just having trouble connecting!
Aren’t you guys connected with the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County? The Foodbank does operate branches out of Santa Maria and Lompoc. Those might be good places to start.
The canary has to do everything around here! Send thoughts to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Feb 28 – Mar 7, 2019.