Maybe I’m just a little biased, but when it comes to where I like to perch, Santa Barbara County is the ideal. It’s the reason I don’t fly south for the winter. Why would I? People come to vacation here. I happen to live here.
That’s why I was so disappointed to see that Santa Maria—the birthplace of Santa Maria-style barbecue—was ranked 161 on a list of best and worst cities in which to live, out of 240 California cities. Lompoc in all its arts, wine, and flowers glory was ranked 177. That’s a little too close to the bottom rung for me, and I admit, it kinda ruffled my feathers.
The ranking was by WalletHub, in one of those link bait online posts designed to ultimately sell something. Through a complicated methodology, WalletHub rated each city by its opportunities for family fun, education, health and safety, affordability, and socioeconomic environment. Each of those scores was weighted, and voila! Santa Barbara County cities end up behind places like Folsom—which ranked as the No. 1 best place to live, by the way.
I don’t need any wonky rating scale to tell you where the best place to live is. It’s right here, where we’ve got one of the finest wine growing regions, we’ve got the beach, and perfect weather. Well, we had the perfect weather—until now. Suddenly we’ve become as hot as the cheese that gets stuck on the roof of your mouth when you bite into a pizza. Santa Barbara County has become one stifling hot sauna, and the exit door is locked. At least that’s what it feels like when I’m trying to get some shut-eye. It makes a bird want to ditch her feathers.
This heat’s getting to me. It’s getting to a lot of people.
I’ve heard of some residents finally dishing out the funds for an air conditioning system. Air conditioning on the Central Coast! Others have outfitted every room in their house with fans.
Local high schools were closed two hours early on Oct. 9 because of the heat. District Superintendent Mark Richardson said that high temperatures create less-than-desirable learning conditions in the un-air-conditioned, older permanent classroom buildings of some of its schools. He said that dismissing students before the temperature spike was one way to mitigate that situation.
District Public Information Officer Kenny Klein said the district is looking at options to improve and install air conditioning at all school sites.
Santa Maria-Bonita School District teachers also want that promise. And if the school district has plans to address the issue—which at press time there was no word it had—the district better work fast because heat tends to agitate people.
Word has it that as our paper went to press teachers and students were gearing up to attend the district school board meeting on Oct. 14 to complain about the effect the heat is having on teachers, students, and learning.
Research has been done on the effect of temperature on classroom learning showing that a too-warm environment can negatively impact memory and complex decision-making. Ultimately, that affects test scores and learning retention.
According to one little birdy I know—who happens to be in the know—the district has several million dollars that aren’t earmarked for anything that teachers hope can be used for updating air conditioning systems. Meanwhile teaching staff has been filing reports to maintenance for unsafe working environments and taking pictures of thermostats. Rumor has it the thermostats stopped reflecting the temperature, they just read: Sizzling.
It’s hot. Real hot.
Maybe it’s time to rethink my strategy and fly somewhere where winter means cooler weather.
The Canary really needs a long splash in an ice-cold bird bath. Send comments to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 15-22, 2015.