How will Buellton’s 4th District voters choose between their two candidates in August’s special election?
Former Mayor Dave King and newcomer Carla Mead seem pretty similar when it comes to policy—and they both seem to think they’ve got what it takes to get Caltrans to pay attention to some of Highway 246’s biggest safety issues, including a lack of bike lanes.
“Nobody makes a better squeaky wheel than me,” Mead told a constituent, “and if I have to squeak up and down the 246, so be it.”
She told the Sun that got a chuckle out of a non-chuckler. Although, I’m not really sure how anyone could tell whether someone chuckles on first impression. I chuckle, you chuckle, we all chuckle—but I also have resting-beak face, so first impressions are not a strength if you know what I mean.
King, on the other hand, neither squeaks nor chuckles.
“I know how to talk to people; how to lobby people. … I’m very persistent,” he said.
Both lobbied against letting an In-N-Out restaurant take over the space occupied by a very empty and nonfunctioning Parks Plaza movie theater. Mead filed the appeal against the Planning Commission’s project approval, and King was one of the votes that nailed the project’s coffin shut.
But Mead insists that she’s not anti-In-N-Out.
“A lot of people think I’m against In-N-Out, and that’s not true at all,” she said. “I just did not think the location that they wanted was appropriate for the city, especially for this district, and especially for my neighborhood.”
And King said that he loves In-N-Out.
But I guess we can all agree that In-N-Out’s drive-through line poking out onto 246 maybe wouldn’t be the best idea.
So what separates these two? Well, King lost his mayoral seat to Dave Silva last year, but he also pushed someone out of an elevator to protect Jeff Bridges. This is Mead’s first foray into politics, but she’s also all about helping animals. So, you decide!
Decisions are hard. And so is finding the information you need to be informed and make more decisions.
Santa Barbara County is finding it hard to be squeaky enough when it comes to getting information out of the federal government about what the hell is going on with all of these immigration raids. At least that’s what everyone said at the July 15 Board of Supervisors meeting, where the topic du jour was the ICE and Customs and Border Patrol raid at Glass House Farms resulting in hundreds of arrests, a near riot, and lots of tear gas.
Fifth District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino was candid with his comments.
“I think this is the first time in 15 years that I don’t even know who to go to for information. That’s the scary thing,” he said at the meeting. “I want to be part of the solution, but I also feel like we’re blocked out, and I don’t really understand why.”
“There’s a lot of chaos going on, and it’s very frustrating to kind of ‘be in charge’ and not know what’s going on,” he said.
Chaos is how the Trump administration operates. And sharing information is not on the to-do list.
The Canary has resting-beak face. Send smiles to canary@santamarisun.com.
This article appears in Jul 17-27, 2025.