Sheds. Homeowners can’t live with ’em and they can’t live without ’em. And in Solvang, regulators seem to be having a hard time with the unintended consequences of a shed regulation situation caused by shed-stirrer and Skytt Mesa resident Kristin Kellner
She complained about a neighbor’s shed not following city code guidelines, which eventually put a bunch of other noncompliant shed users under the city’s microscope and now sheds all over her neighborhood are in danger and homeowners are up Shed Creek with only the city’s proposed new shed code changes as a paddle.
And even those aren’t good enough! The suggested changes still leave half of the Skytt Mesa homeowners with shed violations—as well as imperil the shed of a Solvang planning commissioner. Oh no!
Can’t we just approve these things on a case-by-case basis, Skytt Mesa resident Chris Horn asked commissioners. And then he proceeded to throw sheds all over the city under the bus, claiming that it would be unfair to target Skytt Mesa’s shed-using homeowners, when hundreds of sheds across the city aren’t up to snuff.
Does that mean hundreds of sheds would need to go before the Planning Commission and possibly the City Council if an approved shed decision gets appealed? Sounds like a quality use of public resources.
“What about the common sense proposals?” Solvang Planning Commissioner Justin Rodgriguez asked fellow commissioners during a Feb. 7 meeting, criticizing city staff’s proposed shed rule changes as “pretty cookie cutter.”
Yeah. What this world needs is common sense solutions to shed issues—the most important problem facing Solvang residents, apparently. They’re complicated, too, and need more than a standard one-size-fits-all solution, apparently. This “problem” has gotten so much public meeting time in the last year that I’m starting to wonder if Solvang has any real issues.
Rodriguez supported the case-by-case suggestion, but the jig is up! All his comments really came down to was the fact that if the Planning Commission passed the changes, Rodriguez was going to have to “fix” his own backyard shed situation.
“It doesn’t seem like a burden to the community to do so on a case-by-case basis, to see which ones are within compliance and which ones are without,” he said.
Oh? It doesn’t? This conversation is a burden to the community, but hundreds of individuals pleading their individual shed cases to city staff isn’t? Why are we even talking about this?
Shed politics are intense! What we need here is shed freedom. Liberate the sheds from government tyranny and nosy neighbors!
This is ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as the Santa Barbara County grand jury’s report on state-funded programs that created more housing during the pandemic. Projects Roomkey and Homekey provided an influx of funding across the state to create “quick” solutions to homelessness, such as turning hotels and motels into housing units. And it was a success!
High fives all around, the report said.
However, it turns out, if the county wants to see similar successes in the future, it needs to find permanent funding sources. Thank you, Captain Obvious. Any suggestions on where that funding might come from? No? Great.
The canary is full of snark and snot. Send suggestions to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Feb 10-17, 2022.