In a race that will determine who takes Etta Waterfield’s (I hope Montana doesn’t send her back!) seat on the Santa Maria City Council, we’ve got one candidate with very specific ideas about city issues and one candidate with somewhat specific ideas about education. Are they running for the same office?
I guess you’ll have to ask them. But if you read this week’s story about the 4th District race, it’s pretty clear which of the two candidates is best prepared for the job. Maribel Aguilera-Hernandez and Carol Karamitsos speak for themselves.
Current Planning Commissioner Aguilera-Hernandez spoke about how she believes the city can fill Santa Maria Police Department vacancies and reduce youth violence, how the city could partner with Santa Barbara County to better respond to mental health crisis calls, and her desire to streamline the affordable housing development process and see large corporations bring jobs to town.
Karamitsos wasn’t keen on giving out specific policy ideas, although she did say the city needed a new high school, which I’m pretty sure is under the purview of her current seat on the Santa Maria Joint Union School District board and not the City Council.
For issues that the city can control, Karamitsos couldn’t give a straight answer.
When talking about homelessness, she said, “People experiencing homelessness is very challenging and become more complex because we have people who are experiencing homelessness for different reasons.” No shit! Thanks for that info.
“We first need to know how many people are experiencing homelessness and why they are experiencing homelessness,” she added. We have that data. We’ve been collecting it for many moons, Carol.
“I know they do the homelessness counts, but the hard thing about the data is when you put somebody into that category, what does that mean?” she asked.
Gosh. I think it means whatever the data category says it means. They have definitions. But I’m not sure, because I don’t think I understand her statement. I’m not 100 percent sure she does either, but she does know that the city should be partnering with organizations like the Pacific Conservatory Theater to build more arts and entertainment venues so Santa Maria’s restaurants get more business.
Interesting. So affordable housing? Gang violence? Why is she even running?
Those issues are complicated, you know?
Vote for Canary for Santa Maria City Council. I’m running for whatever seat is left over at the end of this election!
And I’m staying away from Santa Barbara County Planning Commissioner Larry Ferini! I had no idea he hated birds so much. Did you?
“As a grower birds are horrible,” he said during a recent cannabis cultivation project hearing, lamenting that it might be illegal to shoot them. “The concern that birds can spread is the one we’ve all heard of, of course—salmonella. That’s a big food safety concern.”
For the record, you won’t get salmonella from reading my column.
But why did birds come up in this little marijuana hearing? Well, the county requires a “vegetative screening” to shield the public and nosy neighbors from seeing this barely legal crop! And the property in question has blueberries, and the farmers around the property have other crops, and nobody wants the birds to come, and birds are attracted to vegetative barriers. Got it? And Ferini, apparently, got triggered.
The Canary is horribly attracted to cannabis crops. Send comments to canary@santamariasun.com.
Edit note: This article was edited to correct the spelling of Maribel Aguilera-Hernandez’s name. The Sun regrets the error.
This article appears in Oct 20-27, 2022.