Senior mobile home parks across the county are getting protection from the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors to stay senior—forever and always.
Well, most of them should get that protection, if the board continues along its current path, which would put a moratorium on changing 55-and-older mobile home parks to all-ages and specify the areas that fall under said moratorium.
One mobile home park may not be in the clear but is crossing all the fingers and toes it can muster: Del Cielo Mobile Home Park, which received a six-month notice of an upcoming change from senior to all-ages about five months ago.
The county has one month—now less—to get its proverbial shit together and rush this moratorium through to protect the park’s current residents. We might want to cross more than fingers and toes, because to put it frankly: Santa Barbara County is slow as molasses.
“Any action we take generally takes a while for us to accomplish it,” 5th District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino said at the board’s Oct. 8 meeting. “Today you could have an operator change their mind tomorrow and it’ll take us months to get there.”
Lavagnino should know, he’s been a supervisor for a million years (not really, obviously; it’s only been 14 years). Planning and Development Director Lisa Plowman said it wouldn’t take a “substantial amount of time” to get to where it needed to go. I guess we’ll see.
Meanwhile Del Cielo’s residents need to hope that the big bad “management” company—Harmony Communities—sticks to the original notice instead of pulling the plug early and ramming it through.
Santa Maria isn’t ramming through any new revenue opportunities right at the moment but seems to be considering an awful lot of interesting choices to make up for the projected $41 million deficit the city’s looking at over the next two fiscal years. How did we come to this place?
Spending outpacing revenue, obviously. Why is it that deficits are always a “surprise”?
Here are the options: $14.8 million in cuts to city departments, for starters. Nice. The other options include taxing sugary beverages, which 3rd District Councilmember Gloria Soto is interestingly all in on. Santa Maria could tax cannabis, although for that one to work it would really help if cannabis businesses were actually allowed to operate within city limits. They’re not.
“As much as I oppose the introduction of cannabis in the community … . I don’t think it should be something we should not look at,” 2nd District Councilmember Mike Cordero said. You should have thought about that when cannabis was legalized. It’s already in the community, buddy. You aren’t introducing it.
Is it time to start charging residents for the emergency calls they make for medical and fire emergencies? Oof. That sounds super lame. But maybe the firefighters could finally get that raise they want.
Sales tax? A half-cent could generate a cool $13.5 million. Transient occupancy tax? Bringing it up another 4 percent would line the city up with its neighbors.
Sounds like those are the options. But none would happen quickly. They require voter approval. I guess the city better get moving. The molasses is catching up to it.
The Canary thinks molasses makes a great bird seed topper. Send some to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 10-20, 2024.