Lawsuits. Santa Maria thinks it can avoid them with a preemptive strike! But mobile home park owners around town are low-key threatening to sue over the city’s new mobile home park ordinance anyway.
The new rule impacts five senior parks in the city and ensures that those parks will continue to cater to the 55-plus crowd unless a public hearing process says otherwise. Santa Barbara County did things backwards, if you remember—Del Cielo Mobile Estates in Orcutt was converted to an all-ages park thanks to some new owners/management. The county passed a retroactive ordinance to keep the park for seniors only and got sued.
We don’t know the results of that lawsuit yet, but Santa Maria City Attorney Thomas Watson is confident that the city is on firm ground!
“That’s why we’re trying to do it proactively, so that any park owner who buys one understands what they’re buying,” he said. “With respect to the legal consequences, [the ordinance] is consistent with federal law. … This juncture has the green light from my office to move forward.”
The five impacted parks are not too thrilled with the new rules—three hired an attorney who said she believes the ordinance violates private property rights. She (Lisa L. Toke) told the Sun that her clients believe the ordinance discriminates “against non-seniors,” an argument that sounds so familiar!
Oh, right! It’s the same argument Del Cielo made to the county. The Western Manufactured Housing Communities Association—a group that allegedly represents impacted parks in the city but won’t disclose who its members are—said its members were “evaluating all available options” to potentially challenge the city’s new restrictions.
So, lawsuit? Who knows.
What I do know is that at the same meeting where the park issue passed, the Santa Maria City Council also gave itself a pay raise! Not a good look, everybody.
At a time when the city almost decided to close the Paul Nelson Aquatic Center for six months every year to save $350,000, should the council be getting a raise?
I’m not saying that these particular elected officials shouldn’t be making more, I’m just questioning the timing. As Councilmember Gloria Soto pointed out: The city’s putting a sales tax increase on the ballot because of its budget issues.
Soto voted against it, but she’ll still get the raise!
In Solvang, City Councilmember Elizabeth Orona seems to be regretting a previous vote she made in favor of the city installing several AI-enabled surveillance cameras (they’re not operated by Flock but are similar).
“The cameras have this capability—the facial recognition and license plate recognition,” she said during an Aug. 10 hearing about powering three of those cameras with solar. “Do we have the rights to use that functionality?”
She voted in favor of installing the cameras last September, but the national conversation about these types of cameras has since reached a fever pitch, with several law enforcement officers who have allegedly abused Flock cameras for personal reasons, including stalking, among other things.
Orona must be tuned in, while the rest of her colleagues on the dais were noticeably quiet on the issue. Who gets to access the data?
The Canary wants to know. Send information to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in August 13 – August 20, 2026.
