Tri-tip sandwiches are the bread and barbecue sauce (or salsa) of fundraising in the Santa Maria Valley.
Need to raise money for a school basketball trip? Tri-tip barbecue!
Need some funds for soccer uniforms? Tri-tip barbecue!
Senior center field trip? Barbecue. Nonprofit low on dollars? Barbecue.
Santa Barbara County just made it a lot harder to try to hit those fundraising goals by increasing (nearly doubling) the fees needed to nab a fundraising barbecue permit.
The number of sandwiches that high school athletes now need to sell just to pay the permit fee to have the fundraiser just doubled. Sweet. One youth group called Nelson’s office and told him that the first 50 sandwiches would go to pay the new fee. Sounds reasonable? Not.
How about snack sales at the local Little League game? Fees increased by beaucoup bucks—from $230 to $700 for the inspection. Wow!
“We’re going to raise the rate for our snack bars by almost 200 percent as part of these fee increases here,” 4th District Supervisor Bob Nelson said during the board’s Aug. 26 meeting.
He and 1st District Supervisor Roy Lee were the sole two who voted against the fee increases, with Nelson saying that the raised fees for nonprofits and temporary events “just doesn’t sit really well with me.”
No kidding. Why are they increasing? Staff costs, apparently. Seems like it shouldn’t take that long to approve a fundraiser permit.
I don’t know what the budget answers are for the county’s monetary woes, but raising the fees for those who are trying to fundraise for good causes is not the way forward.
“Is it worth it to us to disincentivize these activities, because that’s what it does,” he added.
He’s right. What the county should be doing is disincentivizing the derelict business owners who actually make staffing costs higher.
Apparently $2 million in penalties for not following air pollution control laws is not enough to dissuade Buellton cannabis operator Central Coast Agriculture from violating the regulations left, right, and center.
Since 2021, the pot farm has been in trouble with the local Air Pollution Control District (APCD) no fewer than 17 times. Things got so bad that the APCD referred something it normally likes to take care of in-house to the District Attorney’s Office. That was after the APCD settled $1.3 million in violations with Central Coast Agriculture.
The DA’s Office sued Central Coast Agriculture and raked in another $620,000 from the lawsuit. What kind of business can afford that kind of excess payment? Probably would have been cheaper to just run the right kind of generators—permitted ones.
So where’s this money going?
Mostly staffing costs. The APCD is hiring more people to do more inspecting of potential violators. Great. Wait, how many inspectors do we need? What happens when the money runs out?
And what does it take to no longer be a suck on the taxpayers? If you can’t follow the rules, get out of the county! It would be cheaper for everyone, all around.
At least some of the dollars are going to local elementary schools and the Boys and Girls Club. How about we cover event fees for some of these teams with some of it, too?
The Canary is trying to buy a new cage. Send tri-tip to canary@santamarisun.com.
This article appears in Sep 4 – Sep 14, 2025.