It looks like Allan Hancock College is reaping the rewards of its long-standing effort to bring a four-year-degree program to Santa Maria.
The school launched a partnership with Cal Poly at the beginning of this school year on its first bachelor’s degree program in sociology and just added a business major with two more as-yet-to-be-decided collaborative degrees in the works.
Pretty cool.
This has been a more-than-a-decade effort spearheaded by Hancock President Kevin Walthers, who described a bill that Assemblymember Gregg Hart (D-Santa Barbara) introduced earlier this legislative term as crucial. The bill—Assembly Bill 1462—aimed to give Hancock an opportunity to offer one new baccalaureate program, which could have meant that Cal Poly may not have reaped the tuition rewards (almost $12,000 per year per student).
“That bill he filed was huge,” Walthers said.
I guess Cal Poly didn’t like those odds, so it caved in to the external pressure and the potential dollar signs that its future could hold without competition from a cheaper source of post-secondary education that ends with a bachelor’s degree.
The deal between Cal Poly and Hancock is better than what that bill could have provided for Santa Maria’s students, Hart said, so he’s going to pull the bill.
“I think that the [CSU] system would rather solve the problem that way than to have a legislative fix,” Hart said. “Having the colleges come together and create a win-win solution is the best of all outcomes.”
Pressure is the ultimate provider, you know? That kind of action makes moves.
While that outcome does offer Santa Maria’s potential pool of university students very local options, it doesn’t really provide much in the way of reduced tuition or fees—Cal Poly has some of the most expensive fees in the Cal State system. But at least students won’t have to drive to San Luis Obispo!
And just maybe, Hancock’s Lompoc campus can get its own four-year-degree program. Now that would be something.
Just like it’s something that a city is getting sued over a development project that hasn’t even been approved yet. A Santa Ynez Valley resident group wants a judge to vacate Solvang’s determination that Wildwood’s permit application is complete, as in finished and ready to go through the rest of the planning process.
At issue? Signatures. The developer thinks it doesn’t need them, residents think the development absolutely needs them. And the city seems to be caught in the middle in this battle over whether Wildwood’s application should be filed under a special carve-out known as the builder’s remedy, which allows developments with a certain percentage of low-income units to skirt local building codes.
These lawsuit-happy residents want the developer to refile the application as a regular project. I guess we’ll see what happens.
What’s more clear is Santa Barbara County’s future when it comes to Sable Offshore Corporation’s permit transfer requests for the Santa Ynez Unit. The county’s going to get sued no matter what.
If it approves the transfer request, environmental organizations are definitely suing. If it doesn’t, Sable’s suing. Either way, the county’s screwed.
Action or no action.
The Canary is always in action. Send comments to canary@santamarisun.com.
This article appears in Mar 20-30, 2025.