Regarding the April 28 article, “Trial Ordered for Santa Barbara Man Accused of Murdering Girlfriend’s Toddler Daughter,” why weren’t the toddler’s parents each charged with neglect and abuse for knowingly allowing their daughter to be abused and ultimately killed?
A tortured, unwanted toddler was killed with both of her parents aware and facilitating her abuse. Where’s their parental responsibility and accountability? Where’s the justice?
This voiceless toddler needed a court-appointed special advocate, an outsider, a caring somebody to protect her from parental neglect.
Now she needs both parents charged and tried for her abuse and neglect, and any siblings on our radar.
Denice Spangler Adams
Montecito
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So sad to hear the Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club is having to move after 50 years, as reported in the April 27 article, “Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club Getting Displaced After 50 Years on the Mesa.”
With all the help the club has provided in emergencies, it seems the city could work with the club. A temporary facility should be set up for the organization, especially when cell phone towers are down in emergency situations.
What will be next? I hope Santa Barbara and other cities think long and hard about special resources and history, rather than their pocketbooks, politics and government overkill.
B. Hines
Lompoc
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Regarding the April 23 article, “Facing Financial Peril, Santa Barbara Looks to Charge ‘Pay-by-Plate’ Downtown Parking Fees,” I just got an update from the City of Santa Barbara about the potential increase in parking rates and new parking meters downtown.
This could deter shoppers with all nearby centers offering free parking.
Likely, it’ll push parking into residential areas, affecting locals adversely and reducing downtown business revenue.
Seems like a lose-lose for everyone!
L. Paul Cook
Santa Barbara
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My question to Mayor Randy Rowse and the City Council is: What has caused the $7 million to $10 million deficit?
Michael Schaumburg
Santa Barbara
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Regarding the April 30 article, “Santa Barbara County Supervisors Consider North County Properties for Housing Rezoning,” in 1969, my class from Santa Barbara Christian School walked the beach after the Santa Barbara oil spill. I was 6 or 7, and remember seeing all the tar and the oil-stained dead fish. That was the start of the modern environmental movement.
17 years ago, two teenage girls saw a 21-acre Orcutt open space that needed protection and gathered 1,300 signatures to stop a mixed-use development. With letters of support from the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Center, etc., the Tree Amigos, as they were called, were born.
The girls saved an open space that thousands upon thousands of commuters have enjoyed on their way to work every day to Lompoc and Vandenberg Space Force Base. This open space is at the corner of Clark Avenue and Orcutt Road, seven miles south of Santa Maria.
The Tree Amigos proved that North County teenagers are not powerless, do have a voice, and can work with government to protect environmentally sensitive areas. The Tree Amigos were able to get the California Department of Fish & Wildlife to put a pause on the development, resulting in almost two decades of visual relief for weary, hard-working commuters.
With stunning views, abundant wildlife, incredible scenery, Key Site 11 is a peek into the past of what Orcutt used to look like. That undeveloped, western, oil “boom town.”
Because Santa Barbara County supervisors are poised to pass an affordable housing plan based on 100% build-out of all open spaces in Orcutt, Key Site 11 is slated by developers to become 150-plus apartments and ball fields.
No longer a wildlife corridor, it will be a gleaming mixed-use development full of old-fashioned themed retail and grocery stores, ironically with the theme of “Boom Town.”
Birds of prey will soon be replaced by the cheers of parents in baseball stands. Coyotes will be replaced with gas-powered mowers, delivery trucks and shopping carts.
I guess you can’t blame the owners of the carwash next door for building this project. Everybody’s entitled to get the biggest return on investment, aren’t they?
But, wouldn’t it be nice, for once, if we all stepped back and told developers and the county that you got 99% of what you wanted in Orcutt open space. Why don’t you just save us one little piece of the past.
Ryan Schwab
Father of the Tree Amigos, Orcutt
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Regarding the May 2 article, “BizHawk: Little Alex’s Mexican Grill Cooks Up New Hot Spot in Santa Barbara Shopping Center,” after too long an absence from the local restaurant scene, Little Alex’s returns (in the location previously occupied by Fresco Café) with familiar faces, familiar menu items and lots of outdoor dining.
My first bite of my tostada salad immediately returned me to Little Alex’s in Montecito, a location it occupied for many decades.
The food was great, the service spectacular, and it was a pleasure watching old friends enter and everyone receiving a hug from Linette. Good job, guys.
Michael Diamant
Santa Barbara
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Just a few thoughts about Tim Hayes. He was an extraordinary man and above-excellent ocean swimmer. He regularly swam long distances at Goleta Beach and other beaches in town. He was an amazing long distance swimmer.
Tim cared deeply about the coast, the sea and the beach. One time he gave a defense of Goleta Beach and its erosion. It was eloquent … so eloquent that he got a standing ovation from the swimmers in the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors hearing room at a meeting about Goleta Beach.
He was so convincing that the supervisors adopted his proposal. It was a poignant swim moment in the room.
The swimmers ruled that day and Tim led the way. A true Santa Barbara moment. You just had to be there.
Tim was eloquent, intelligent and funny. He beat death for a while. He died doing what he loved most besides his family — swimming. He will be missed deeply.
Irene Russo
Santa Barbara
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San Marcos High School’s production of Singin’ in the Rain is spectacular.
The four leads — Milo Bustany, Sebastian Marin, Elise Tsouklas and Naomi Voigt — are brilliant both singing and dancing. The choreography was outstanding, and the 26 students did a brilliant job both singing and dancing.
I thought I was watching a Broadway production at The Granada Theatre.
Hats off to San Marcos High, the staff, the orchestra, and the actors and dancers for a superb rendition of a Broadway show.
You will dance out of the theater as I did “Just Singin’ in the Rain.”
Jim Coombs
Noleta
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Carol Redhead’s April 26 letter to the editor asserted that airplane “contrails” are really “chemtrails” intended to alter the climate. I think the letter was tongue-in-cheek, but if it was serious, there are problems with the claim.
Consider who must participate in the conspiracy, starting with the airplane manufacturer, including the designers and factory floor assemblers of the airframe and engines, plus the makers of other supplied parts.
Then comes the chemical manufacturers and delivery chain people and the airport ground crews who fill the airplane tanks.
The pilots who must account for the takeoff weight in their calculations and release the chemicals would have to participate as would the ground crews who follow rigid, written maintenance procedures.
In the end, the people who operate airplane museums would have to participate since they would receive either the chemtrail system or a suspicious empty space on the airplane.
Tens of thousands of people must have joined the conspiracy but none of them ever give away the secret. No one blabbed to the pretty girl sitting next to him at the bar and no one got cold feet.
Even harder than the many participants all keeping the secret is the many more thousands of people who must have been asked to join the conspiracy but declined to be a conspirator and also agreed to keep silent.
George Lehtinen
Carpinteria
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Boy, Ron Fink’s April 30 commentary, “Who Should Pay for Cannabis Odor Control?” hit the nail straight on the head regarding Santa Barbara Countys non-enforcement of Air Pollution Control District Rule 303.
It is outrageous that people have to put up with the stench and the county sits on its hands. The cannabis regulations have been a joke from the beginning. The foxes were guarding the henhouse with the growers seemingly driving the boat.
It sure seems that the county has no intention of giving the issue anything but lip service.
Kent Richards
Montecito
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The suggestion by Frank Sanitate in his May 1 commentary, “Forbes’ Billionaires Should Ask Me for Help,” that if only the billionaires of the world would pony up substantial portions of their wealth and direct those funds to causes identified by the United Nations, or Sanitate himself, must be satire or naïve to an extreme.
Over the years trillions and trillions of dollars, not just billions, have been directed to the most deprived countries to fight poverty, disease, lack of infrastructure development, poor or nonexistent educational systems, and all the other problems that qualify a country to be classified as Third World.
The big problems in those countries cannot be solved by a flood of money because those fundamental problem are the result of uncontrolled corruption, poor governance, dysfunctional or nonexistent legal systems, property rights, inadequate enforcement of laws and anarchy, internal wars, tribalism and many other deficits that prevent a general prosperity and well-being of the citizens.
Fundamentally, all of those problems stem from deep cultural influences that do not foster qualities that would promote better lives for those populations.
Money has been tried but can never solve the big problems that Sanitate and all of us are concerned about.
Glenn Dorfman
Montecito
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Ross Lloyd’s April 26 letter to the editor echoes a familiar Republican Party assertion regarding voting by ineligible individuals.
However, the truth remains: illegal voting is and has always been an exceedingly rare and inconsequential occurrence. It occurs infrequently and has never swayed the results of any election in the United States.
Nevertheless, the GOP persists in promoting this fallacious narrative to justify imposing unnecessary barriers that hinder the voting rights of those who are least equipped to navigate these unlawful obstacles.
Interestingly, these restrictions disproportionately affect legal progressive voters, shedding light on the true motives of the GOP. Don’t be deceived.
Rob Egenolf
San Diego
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The Los Olivos community’s engagement in deciding whether we need a sewer system for the entire district is crucial.
In 2018, the Los Olivos Community Services District was formed, and five board members were sworn in to address the perceived need to replace aging and failing septic systems on the 390 parcels within the district’s boundaries.
Today, six years later, many neighbors share concerns over escalating assessment fees and escalating costs of professional services, projects, planning and studies totaling approximately $1 million in taxpayer dollars.
There are also concerns that a large system will lay the groundwork for unchecked sprawl that will pave over our bucolic town.
At the same time, the existing business community clearly needs more restrooms. Addressing the aging septic concerns by starting with the downtown commercial property owners has obvious advantages.
“The lots in the downtown core, on average, generate more wastewater effluent,” according to the Santa Barbara County Environmental Health Services’ Los Olivos Wastewater Management Plan from 2010.
The district board’s last proposal, unveiled in 2022, included construction of a sewage treatment plant.
The proposed site for the sewage plant, located outside the district and complete with effluent ponds and 24-hour lighting, raised a host of concerns.
The farther away the treatment, the more expensive it gets. Costs for engineering, construction, environmental review, and operation and maintenance for such a large project are estimated to be well more than $100,000 per parcel owner.
While owners would have to pay that cost in the form of increased assessment fees, every parcel owner would also be required to pay up-front and out-of-pocket for their lateral connection to the deep, gravity-fed sewer system.
After repeated neighbor complaints and concerns that such a large and expensive system did not seem warranted, the elected board finally listened, stepped up and agreed to perform groundwater testing six months ago.
Even before the groundwater monitoring data started to come in, there were warring factions about the size of the problem and the size of the solution. Ultimately, the debates come down to “Who should pay?”
The controversies have devolved into mistrust, with threatening messages mailed anonymously, neighbors stopping talking to one another, attacks on people’s character on social media, and a board that views with suspicion donations for a sound system that will help elderly community members hear what is being said during public meetings.
Is there hope for a unified path forward, or is Los Olivos on track to become the next Los Osos? The answer might lie in the results of the groundwater testing.
Fifty years ago, the tiny, historic town of Los Olivos was designated a “Special Problems Area” based on 1974 groundwater monitoring data showing the potential for increasing nitrate levels.
It is important to note that wells within Los Olivos were not showing levels exceeding the maximum contaminant level for nitrates, but the concern was that, because Los Olivos was on septic tanks, it was very likely that the nitrates in the groundwater under Los Olivos would continue to increase to dangerous levels.
It is important to acknowledge that the presence of high levels of nitrates in groundwater is not just a concern, it is a significant threat to our health and the health of our environment.
The maximum contaminant level for nitrates in groundwater is 10 mg/l.
Just last month, the results from the district’s five new groundwater monitoring wells were presented to the public.
Three of the wells show levels well below the MCL of 10 mg/l. The other two wells (near the downtown core) reflect nitrates at 11 mg/l. That is one point above the MCL.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the MCL for a contaminant is based on the MCLG (maximum contaminant level goal), which is “the maximum level of a contaminant in drinking water at which no known or anticipated adverse effect on the health of persons would occur, allowing an adequate margin of safety.”
In other words, there are no known or anticipated adverse health effects — none — when nitrates measure at or below 10.
So, the Los Olivos Special Problems Area has two wells with nitrate readings at a single point over the MCL, but it seems reasonable that one point means that the readings are still well within the “margin of safety.”
Questions arise with the first of the two wells showing nitrates at 11 mg/l is at the very northeastern corner of the district’s boundaries, and the second well with an 11 mg/l located immediately south of that first well.
In fact, the test results leave many with the impression that the groundwater is already contaminated with slightly elevated nitrate levels when it enters Los Olivos from the north, and it is leaving the district to the south far cleaner.
The scientific consensus is clear: Aging septic systems are not the sole, or even the primary, source of nitrates in groundwater.
Nitrates enter groundwater from various sources, including septic systems, animal feed lots, agricultural fertilizers, manure, industrial waste waters and landfills.
Community members are beginning to question whether the path forward might include revisiting whether residents living inside the district’s boundaries — those who have already paid several years of district assessment fees for this undertaking — should now be able to look to other sources to help remediate contamination that is very likely not generated by residents of the township.
In other words, if sources north of the district are causing the nitrate levels in two of the town’s monitoring wells to exceed the MCL, that could alleviate a lot of the pressure on the owners of the 390 parcels inside the district’s boundaries to solve the problem with a large sewer system and to pay for it all on their own.
The next general meeting of the Los Olivos Community Services District is scheduled for 6 p.m. May 15 at the Los Olivos Grange Hall, 2374 Alamo Pintado Ave. Please attend.
Michelle de Werd
Los Olivos
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