Mark Patton, venerable sports journalist and Noozhawk columnist, makes a star turn on this week's edition of Newsmakers TV, to decipher the Coastal Commission's galling decision to disrupt the UCSB baseball season two months before it starts.
In the most high-handed state government action since Gavin Newsom last flapped his gums, the commission torpedoed the Gauchos' plan to replace their water-squandering grass field with an environmentally-discerning artificial surface, a move to better advance the latest left-wing hobbyhorse crusade to emerge from Sacramento, capital of the People's Republic of California.
Patton, who covered local, collegiate and professional sports full time for nearly a half-century in Santa Barbara, caught wind a few weeks ago of the startling and unexpected move by commission staff to pull approval of the previously non-controversial change at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium off the agency's mundane consent calendar, reporting which at least ensured the commission's churlish and risible action was subjected to public view. Not to mention ridicule.
UCSB was not alone among notable local institutions to get blindsided this week, as Nick Welsh reports in recounting Superior Court Judge Donna Geck's bludgeoning of the Board of Supervisors' recent vote to transfer the county's lucrative ambulance contract next year from AMR, the private firm that long has held a monopoly on the lucrative business, to a coalition of public agencies led by the County Fire Department. Geck's blistering judicial opinion shuts down the pending change, at least until a trial in the case, scheduled to begin next summer.
And Josh Molina has the highlights of his lively, one-on-one podcast conversation with Lompoc Mayor Jenelle Osborne, who's disrupted the local Democratic Party's typically disdainful plan to secure an easy re-election win for Third District Supervisor and political sect loyalist Joan Hartmann by having the audacity to launch her own, independent, bid for the seat.
Plus: A heart-breaking commemoration for the scores of homeless people who died on the South Coast this year; a big road and infrastructure project aimed at boosting Old Town Goleta; the 50th anniversary of Dos Pueblos Little League; and Mark Patton's multi-generational recollections and tribute to the sadly-departed daily morning newspaper.
All this and more, right here, right now on Newsmakers TV.
JR
Check out the new episode via YouTube below, or by clicking through this link, or listen to the podcast version here. TVSB, Channel 17, airs the show every weeknight at 8 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the program on Monday at 5:30 p.m.
Image: The UCSB baseball team celebrates the 2016 walk-off win that sent them into the College World Series for the first time (UCSB Baseball).
CARTOON OF THE WEEK
Cartoon by Ali Solomon for The New Yorker.