Mayor Randy Rowse and city council colleague Meagan Harmon joined our all-star panel of top local journalists on Friday, for a robust romp through Santa Barbara's most consequential, entertaining and memorable news stories of 2022.
City Hall's ideological odd couple brought their political influencers' perspectives to Newsmakers' Second Annual Rockin' New Year's Special, mixing it up with the Indy's Nick Welsh, Noozhawk’s Josh Molina, Montecito Journal editor-in-chief Gwyn Lurie and our very own executive producer, Hap Freund, for a holiday-sized portion of inside analysis, commentary and insight about the events, people and politics that shaped the year in local news.
(Full disclosure: among all the media and political talent, it was Meagan's kid, Jack, whose celebrity Q-Score shone brightest - and second place wasn't close -- as the stately one-year old ran his consecutive New Year's TV appearance streak to two. But we digress).
From homelessness and housing (hopeful progress on both fronts), school board election culture wars (conservatives swung and missed) and the cannabis industry's colonization of the county (a looming legacy of scandal for the pols who inflicted it), the gang discusses, disputes and dissects the complicated conflicts and complex community cross-currents at play in the city and county's most important public policy debates of the old year.
Plus: AI in Goleta, political musical chairs, an historic police reform, local fall-out over the Dobbs decision, shameful hate speech incidents, new data on debris flows in Montecito, whatever happened with that L.A. Magazine hit piece, tragedy at the dog groomers, a chihuahua cheats death in a mountain lion home invasion, and multiple outbreaks of generational feuding between and among the panelists.
There were no injuries.
All this and more, right here, right now on our Rockin' New Year's Special. Watch the show via YouTube below or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here,
P.S. All best wishes for a happy and healthy New Year from the Fathers Time at Newsmakers. See you in 2023.'
JR
CARTOON OF THE WEEK
Images: Lead illustration by WordStream.com; New Yorker cartoon by Amy Hwang.