70 degrees this weekend? That’s my kind of winter.
Rumor has it that the long-shuttered Coral Casino Beach & Cabana Club may even reopen. What’s Santa Barbara coming to?
Noozhawk had a relatively quiet week, largely — but not entirely — free of roadway carnage for once.
As longtime readers of my Best of Bill columns know, that mayhem and other breaking news generally draw the most readership. But our professional journalists are quite adept at investigative reporting, too.
This past week, three stories — two on Santa Barbara County data tracking by South County editor Josh Molina and executive editor Giana Magnoli’s review of County Jail mental health statistics — stand out for their thoroughness and insights.
With such a small news staff, we can’t always carve out the time to do that deeper reporting, but we’re determined to do more of it this year.
Scroll down to my Good Reads section for more details on Josh and Giana’s three stories. True to form, the trio didn’t quite make the Top Five articles that 133,156 of you were reading this past week, according to our WordPress analytics.
What follows is my own take on the five that did, however. In case you were wondering, this is my opinion column. It’s not a news story.
1. How Much Rain Did Santa Barbara County Get? And How Much Is On the Way?
For the second straight year, January rains have been generous to Santa Barbara County.
After last weekend’s storm, our Rebecca Caraway reported, Lake Cachuma is nearly 91% full, with silt-clogged Gibraltar and Jameson reservoirs at 99.2% and 100% full, respectively.
As usual, San Marcos Pass was the soggiest place in the county, logging 3.04 inches of rain from the three-day storm as of Jan. 22.
Santa Barbara recorded 2.27 inches of rain, Goleta 1.87 inches, Carpinteria 1.52 inches, Santa Maria 0.85 inches, Lompoc 0.82 inches and Santa Ynez 0.5 inches.
According to the county Flood Control District, we’ve already reached 96% of “normal to date” annual rainfall.
2. Bill Macfadyen: Joe’s Café Family Grapples with Double Loss of Popular Employees
Third week in a row in the Top 5, which may be a first for me. I’ll have to doublecheck with Josh Molina, who keeps track of our friendly fourth estate competition in these columns.
3. Goleta Committee Recommends No-Parking Zones for RVs, Other Large Vehicles
After a year of complaints about RVs parked overnight in residential neighborhoods, the Goleta City Council’s “Ordinance Review Standing Committee” is proposing “no parking any time” zones for all large vehicles on Phelps and Pacific Oaks roads.
As our Serena Guentz reported, residents of the neighborhood along the two streets near Girsh Park have filed some 30 service requests and more than 100 emailed complaints about the number of oversized vehicles parked in the area.
The reports alleged various nuisances linked to the vehicles, among them noise, trash, human waste, exhaust emissions, blocked views, public indecency and the safety of young children using the park.
At its Jan. 23 meeting, the committee heard a range of public comment from frustrated residents, but also from citizens who wanted “reasonable use” maintained for daytime parking, especially as it relates to park activities.
The proposed “no parking any time” zones aim to clarify and reinforce existing City of Goleta regulations, which already restrict oversized vehicles from parking on any public street during the day on weekdays.
“We recognize there is an issue, we recognize there is a problem,” Councilman Stuart Kasdin said.
“This is not the place where these vehicles can be parked on a permanent basis, using this as a homestead.”
The full council will vote on the committee’s recommendation at a later date.
4. BizHawk: New Cannabis Dispensary Opens at Prominent Corner in Old Town Goleta
The former tenant had to have seen this coming, but the longstanding fortune-teller at the corner of Fairview and Hollister avenues in Old Town Goleta has been supplanted by the city’s fifth cannabis dispensary.
As our Josh Molina reported, Megan’s Organic Market has opened at 5999 Hollister Ave.
Owner Megan Souza told Josh that she and her husband, Eric Powers, are “passionate about food and cannabis.”
There’s a one-liner in there, but it’s too obvious, even for me.
Anyway, the Pismo Beach native said they got started in marijuana cultivation in 2010, started a retail delivery service in 2013 for the North County and San Luis Obispo County, and opened their first shop in 2020 in San Luis Obispo.
They now own five throughout Southern California.
Souza says the dispensary is designed so customers will feel as if they’re shopping at a market.
The products — gummies and other edibles, flowers, topicals, concentrates and vapes — are not behind glass or counters.
“It’s a college town, it’s a coastal town,” she said. “Our brand seems to do very well on the Central Coast.”
5. Santa Barbara City Council Denies Appeal to Block Hotel Project at Site of Press Room Pub
The Santa Barbara City Council on Jan. 23 dismissed two appeals of a 66-room downtown hotel project on the northeast corner of East Ortega and State streets.
The project, proposed by SIMA Corp. and previously approved by the Planning Commission, would raze and replace the Restoration Hardware building at 710 State St., along with parcels at 714 to 720 State St.
It also includes 15 E. Ortega St., the home of The Press Room, which has been central to the pushback on the development.
As our Josh Molina reported, filmmaker Gareth Kelly was one of two appellants who took their case to the council.
Kelly’s impassioned plea included a six-minute clip of his Press Room fan film while he pointed out larger, systemic issues.
“History has illustrated that rules, regulations and even sometimes laws are not necessarily moral or ethical, and are often written by the wealthy and the powerful as tools to protect their own self-interest,” he said.
Got it.
The other opponent was community resident Steven Johnson, who criticized the project as unsound community planning.
Council members Oscar Gutierrez and Kristen Sneddon picked up on what Kelly and Johnson were laying down.
“I don’t believe we’ve contemplated the really large impact to our whole downtown of this ability to automatically merge lots,” Sneddon said, adding that it gives developers excessive power.
However, since the project meets the zoning ordinance and no modifications were requested, the council had no legal reason to deny it.
Mayor Randy Rowse and council members Eric Friedman, Alejandra Gutierrez, Meagan Harmon and Mike Jordan voted to reject the appeals with Oscar Gutierrez and Sneddon in dissent.
Vanguard Planning principal Jarrett Gorin, who represents SIMA, was undeterred by the spectacle.
“We want to bring a hotel that is compatible with the area into the downtown, bring visitors downtown and avoid another vacant space on State Street,” he said.
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Good Reads
Don’t miss these six stories before you go:
» Santa Barbara County Agency Using Electronic Smartphone Data for Transportation, Housing Plans — South County editor Josh Molina dives into Santa Barbara County’s comprehensive analysis of local commuter and purchasing trends. It’s a useful and insightful project, but I’m not sure some of the objectives — like convincing much more than a paltry 2% of the public to ride a bus — are all that realistic.
» Travel Data Show Lots of Commuters Into Goleta, But Majority of Trips Are Under 8 Miles — In a follow-up story to the above, Josh examines the commuter patterns that are a factor in Goleta’s emergence as the hub of South Coast employment.
» Santa Barbara County Report Reveals 60% of People in Jail Custody Have Mental Health Conditions — I can’t be the only one not surprised by executive editor Giana Magnoli’s findings from new Santa Barbara County Jail data. The question is what are we going to do about it?
» Sisters of St. Francis Breaks Ground on Housing, Hospice Project in Santa Maria — North County editor Janene Scully reports that the Sisters of St. Francis are parlaying a generous gift into an even bigger one for the Santa Maria community the nuns serve.
» Local Surfers Set to Compete in 42nd Annual Rincon Classic Surf Contest this Weekend — Sports editor Diego Sandoval previews this weekend’s Channel Islands Surfboards Rincon Classic, and says conditions are likely to be swell.
» Santa Maria Forum Raises Awareness About Dangers, Trends of Human Trafficking — Speakers at a Rotary Club of Santa Maria South forum on human trafficking explain how frighteningly easy it is for youth to get sucked in. Janene has the details.
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Last Year on Noozhawk
What was our most-read story this time last year? Santa Barbara Police Arrest 4 Men in Fatal Shooting Near Stearns Wharf.
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Bill Macfadyen’s Story of the Week
Well, it was a helicopter of a run: NASA’s Historic Mars Helicopter Ingenuity Grounded for Good After 72 Flights.
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Best of Bill’s Instagram
My Instagram feed was an eclectic mix this past week.
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Watch It
Of Mice and Mess is a tidy tale.
