Looking for a new neighborhood to call home?
I would avoid the Skytt Mesa area of Solvang, if I were you.
Sounds like it’s a neighborhood where neighbors snitch on neighbors and there’s almost nowhere to put a shed. If sheds are your thing, I guess. And if you live in Skytt Mesa, sheds are most definitely your thing—because the houses built in that development have hardly any storage space.
At least 21 households have sheds in Skytt Mesa—and they’re all in code enforcement trouble because one neighbor was not interested in having her neighbor’s recently erected shed so close to her bedroom window! And now everyone’s in trouble!
During the July 12 Solvang City Council meeting, resident Kristin “Get Your Shed Off My Back Fence” Kellner said she never meant for her shed spat to get so out of hand. After trying to put their heads together to fix their shed issue, Kellner and her neighbor decided the city better jump in.
Then, that neighbor apparently complained about all of the other out-of-compliance sheds dotted all over the development, and now everyone’s getting notices from the city to move their sheds or remove them entirely. Who knew sheds could be so controversial?
“It really pains me to know that the fact that I wanted code enforcement to inspect this one property now impacts other neighbors,” she lamented at the City Council meeting.
Those unintended consequences really suck don’t they?
Lucky for her, she’s not the only complainer in the bunch, and neither is her neighbor. Solvang has been receiving complaints from Skytt Mesa residents for some time now. Residents who alter their fences, landscaping, or paint; park recreational vehicles on their properties; or mess around with extra units are all subject to tattle-tales and behind-the-back talkers.
And it sounds like the city—which probably shouldn’t have allowed the developer to build homes so close together—is sick of Skytt Mesa’s squeaky-voiced residents. City Councilmember Robert Clarke recommended that the residents form a homeowners association to deal with their sniping.
This here city ain’t no referee, you hear?
You know who is a referee? The California Coastal Commission, and it’s not afraid to blow the whistle on individuals and businesses in the game of coastal development permits.
And if you’re trying to drop a couple of giant crates full of wine bottles onto the ocean floor off the Santa Barbara County coast, turns out you need a permit from the Coastal Commission! And probably about a dozen other state and federal agencies, to boot. Who thought otherwise, you ask.
Ocean Fathoms, which did indeed park some wine bottles on the ocean floor without getting the proper permits, made it sound unfathomable that they should know the permitting process for something like that. Company co-founder Emanuele Azzaretto swears that nobody knew what permits the company needed!
I think they thought begging for forgiveness rather than asking for permission would be the right way to go with this thing—especially because Coastal Commission staff is saying there’s no way it would have approved such a permit.
“It’s clearly not allowable,” the commission’s Kate Huckelbridge said.
The Canary is Santa Barbara County’s referee. Send whistles to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 15-22, 2021.
