What can I say about quails?
They’re kind of cute, especially the babies. They can’t fly like I can, but they are native to California.
You can attract them into your yard by sprinkling the right food around and providing them with some thick shrubbery for cover. Which is cool, unless you live in Solvang’s problem neighborhood: Skytt Mesa.
The neighborhood full of neighbors who were telling on neighbors whose backyard sheds weren’t following proper city code has a grate problem. As in, the storm grates in that neighborhood are so big that baby quail and other small birds get trapped behind them somehow.
A Skytt Mesa resident got in touch with the city because of the problem, asking Solvang to do something about the issue. According to City Manager Randy Murphy, installing storm grates with less space between the bars would cost more than $400,000.
“That’s just the one neighborhood,” he told the City Council on April 28.
Plus, he added, new grate bar spacing could screw up the city’s drainage system during storms, which, I’m sure, Skytt Mesa residents really wouldn’t be happy about. Save the quails or flood the block?
Either way, the price was too steep for the council, which opted out of fixing the problem. Baby quails, you’re on your own! It’s a little sad.
“It’s unfortunate because I respect every form of life. You have to look and say, what’s the greater good?” Murphy told the Sun. “If quail were endangered, it’d be a different situation.”
It would be a different situation. State and federal (maybe not for long though) laws would require the city to fix those grates, money be damned!
That damn money is always hitching up the giddyup, you know? In Buellton, a long-planned parking lot expansion accompanying the city library’s recent upgrade got hitched up in a City Council discussion on April 24.
Ironically, Councilmember Hudson Hornick—who was very concerned about congestion in the River View Park neighborhood when the library move was proposed—is the person who said the city should tap the brakes on funding a parking lot expansion.
In 2023, Hornick said he had “large concerns” (different than small ones) that “we’re going to have a serious traffic problem.” People, he said, were going to park in front of people’s houses.
In 2025? Different story.
“It’s a lot of money to be building a parking lot before we have the demand for the parking lot,” Hornick said. “I know that the parking lot was part of the idea of the [library] development, … but I would just be somewhat reticent to spend so much money before we have the demand.”
Hmm. Do you think he forgot about his large-sized worries?
Or that if you build it, they will come?
Maybe the parking lot wasn’t going to cost $1 million in 2023. But in 2025, it’s a different story. Inflation! Mayor David Silva made the point that if the city waited until demand exceeded supply, the parking lot would cost even more money.
And, as we all know, he’s not wrong!
The Canary knows that inflation is the future. Send deflation advice to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 8-18, 2025.
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