Orcutt and Los Alamos soon will have their own community resource deputy who will address quality-of-life issues while working to prevent crime.
Santa Barbara County Fourth District Supervisor Bob Nelson and Sheriff Bill Brown on Friday afternoon announced the new position aimed at serving primarily Orcutt and Los Alamos along with other unincorporated areas in the North County.
The community resource deputy wasn’t included in the county budget adopted earlier this year, and Nelson vowed to keep advocating for the slot and ways to pay for it.
“I’m proud to announce today at Tuesday’s budget hearing I got unanimous support from my colleagues to fund for the first time ever the North County community resources deputy to serve the communities of Orcutt and Los Alamos,” Nelson said Friday after highlighting rising crime and increasing concerns of residents.
He noted the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office‘s website explanation of a community resource deputy as supplement to patrol units “by addressing quality-of-life issues through education, training, crime prevention and intervention.”
“This is huge news for our community,” Nelson said.
“This is the first time that we have ever had a position like this in our agency, and it’s only the second time that an unincorporated area of the county has received a community resource deputy,” Brown said, noting the other being in Isla Vista.
Some cities that contract with the Sheriff’s Office for law enforcement services also fund community resource deputies, including Carpinteria and Goleta. Solvang once funded the slot but dropped it under a prior council.
“The community resource deputy is really a person who personifies our community policing philosophy,” Brown said. “The community policing philosophy aims to improve the quality of life and increase public safety through collaboration between sheriff’s deputies and the community.
“And community policing centers around law enforcement and the community working together to identify and solve problems of crime, fear of crime, neighborhood decay and quality of life issues.”
Brown said the community resource deputy will cover unincorporated areas throughout the North County, including Santa Maria, Santa Ynez, Lompoc and the Cuyama Valley with tasks such as working to address and prevent agricultural crime, provide safety talks to school, organizations, churches and businesses, and coordinate community events.
The deputy won’t respond to routine calls for service, the sheriff added.
“Rather, the goal will be for that CRD to facilitate positive interactions that have a collaborative effect to help prevent or help address crime,” Brown said.
The Sheriff’s Office will conduct a selection process to pick the deputy to fill the job with the position based at the substation on Foster Road in the Santa Maria Valley. Brown said he expected the new deputy to be in place in six to eight weeks.
“I want to say thank you to Supervisor Nelson for his tenacity and his leadership in pushing for this position, and I’m just very, very delighted that we were able to make this a reality,” Brown said.
A combination of funding sources will cover the approximately $200,000 cost for the new position. The sources include Orcutt Community Facilities District funds, required under the Orcutt Community Plan to mitigate growth and address issues, as well as some funds from Proposition 172, which was sales tax dedicated to public safety.
During the budget process in the spring, the Sheriff’s Office also proposed a community resources deputy for Orcutt plus the Montecito and Summerland areas, but both slots remained unfilled because of a lack of funding.
While Orcutt’s was funded this week, Montecito’s was not.
“I did have a discussion with Supervisor (Das) Williams after the hearing, and it piqued his interest to try to find an avenue to leverage local resources … so that something similar might be possible there as well,” Nelson said.
Nelson’s district includes part of Santa Maria plus Orcutt, Los Alamos, Vandenberg Village, Mission Hills, Sisquoc, Garey, Vandenberg Space Force Base, Casmalia and Tepusquet.
— Noozhawk North County editor Janene Scully can be reached at jscully@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.