Search Results

By Melinda Burns The owners of one of the largest cannabis operations in the Carpinteria Valley, leaders in the effort to prevent the smell of pot from drifting into homes, now have turned their attention to a new problem: controlling noise. Ed Van Wingerden, the owner of Ever-Bloom, a greenhouse operation with 11 acres of cannabis under cultivation at 4701 Foothill Road, was sued in 2020 for allegedly releasing “noxious odor” into the densely populated neighborhoods next door. One of the plaintiffs in the case was Paul Ekstrom, a retired firefighter whose property on Manzanita Street shares a backyard fence with Ever-Bloom. In 2022, Van Wingerden, installed 110 expensive carbon filters called “scrubbers,” imported from the Netherlands, that are proven to remove most of the “skunky” smell of pot before it can escape through the roof vents. Ekstrom began to breathe fresh air again. “They’ve done wonders on odor control,” he said this week. “It’s ninety-to-ninety-five percent better, a vast improvement, nothing compared to what it used to be.” But the ink was barely dry on the lawsuit settlement papers last July when Ekstrom began firing off weekly emails to Ever-Bloom representatives, county planners, city officials, citizens’ groups, the local growers’ association and reporters with a new complaint: “LOUD noise.” “I trust you are having a quiet and peaceful Sunday morning. Well, as you already know, I am not,” Ekstrom wrote in one. “I miss using my peaceful back yard and patio … Is this your standard of being a good neighbor?” Ekstrom bought his house in 1976 when the property next door was a lemon orchard. Ten years later, the Van Wingerden family built Ever-Bloom and ran it for 30 years as a cut flower operation. Now the Gerber daisies have been replaced with cannabis. “It is not fair for me to have to live with the 24 hour a day seven days a week intrusion,” Ekstrom said of the noise, noting that it began in late May. Barely legal noise. Under the county’s cannabis ordinance, the noise level at the property line of a cannabis operation must not exceed 65 decibels. In recent months, county planners said, they made numerous visits at different times of day, both announced and unannounced, to measure the noise levels along the southern property line that Ever-Bloom shares with Ekstrom’s cul-de-sac. They said they never recorded a reading louder than 60 decibels at the property line. Inside the greenhouses, the planners, said, they did record readings of 69 or 70 decibels when standing right next to a fan. In an email this week, Phil Greene, the president of Ever-Bloom, said the noise at the property line is indeed coming from the greenhouse fans and not the scrubbers. Fans are used to mix the air inside greenhouses and help homogenize the temperature and humidity, he said, adding, “This system has absolutely nothing to do with scrubbers.” The company took several measures to lower the noise from fans in response to Ekstrom’s complaints, Greene said, and because “we felt the system was too loud” although the company was not exceeding the noise standard at the property line. Ever-Bloom turned off its fans at night from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., Greene said. The fans were mounted on rubber bushings to reduce any noise caused by vibration against the greenhouse walls. The sound-proof boxes for the fans were redesigned to further lower the noise at the property line below the county standard. Also, he added, “We have tested a new fan and will be retrofitting the boxes with the new, even quieter fan.” For Weed Wars, a rare happy ending. Since Thanksgiving, Ekstrom said, the noise level has improved and he’s stopped sending emails. “I’m really happy with what they’ve done so far,” he said. “Things have calmed down there a lot. The noise is more like a little bit of a freeway hum, not an industrial hum.” Earlier this year, the county also investigated a noise complaint from neighbors of Pacific Grown Organics, five acres of cannabis under cultivation at 5892 Via Real. There are no scrubbers at this operation. For odor control, fans on one side of the interior of the greenhouse blow air toward a “misting” system located on the other side. Here again, county planners found no noise readings above 65 decibels at the property line. Melinda Burns is an investigative journalist with 40 years of experience covering immigration, water, science and the environment. As a community service, she offers her report to multiple publications in Santa Barbara County, at the same time, for free. Image: Paul Ekstrom near the fenced lot line he shares with Ever-Bloom (Melinda Burns).

The Democratic Women of Santa Barbara political organization on Sunday presented its Woman of the Year award to Montecito Journal editor Gwyn Lurie, whose acceptance speech included a stinging rebuke of feminist groups for their muted response to the Oct. 7 Hamas strike on Israel. "Dem Women" is the most -- perhaps the only -- independent-minded group among the federation of partisan clubs in the Democratic Party coalition that dominates local politics, and so it seemed appropriate that Lurie's distinctive address departed from the usual political cheerleading that typically characterizes such affairs. The 60-year old editor, screen writer and human rights activist espoused the organization's mission of electing more women to office, but said that doing so is merely "performative" -- unless women exercise a "different kind of leadership" that "more courageously" engages in and encourages "difficult dialogue." "In the wake of Hamas's terrorist attack against Israel, where women were raped, babies and grandparents were slaughtered or kidnapped, or unspeakably worse, we didn't hear a peep from any of the Women's organizations," said Lurie, whose mother is a Holocaust survivor and was among a crowd of 155 gathered for the event in the coiurtyard of the Santa Barbara Club. "There we were on October 7th. Once again rape is used as a weapon of war. Young women bleeding from their crotches, paraded through the streets of Gaza," she added. "Yet I was not seeing a single statement from a feminist organization in this country about it. Not one gender studies department has defended even one victimized woman. The silence was defeaning," she said. "As a woman and as a feminist this offends me. As a mother of two daughters, it terrifies me." Political intelligence. As a matter of community affairs, Sunday's event was a professional and personal triumph for Lurie; it has been just four years since she led a group of investors in purchasing the weekly Journal from former owner Jim Buckley, a pro-Trump right-winger, and began to steer the paper as editor-in-chief into Santa Barbara's center-left mainstream; during the same time, as CEO of the Montecito Media Group LLC, she has led a significant expansion of the company's publishing operations and revenue streams. As a political matter, the public celebration of her achievements carried several notable and intriguing undercurrents. Nearly every member of the city and county's Democratic establishment was present or represented - with the noteworthy exceptions of Board of Supervisors President Das Williams and Darcel Elliott, his chief of staff who, conveniently for him, doubles as chair of the Santa Barbara County Democratic Party. Dem Women not infrequently is at odds with the Democratic county central committee, most often over the issue of campaign endorsements. The former group often backs different candidates than the latter, as it did four years ago, when the women's group endorsed Laura Capps over Williams in her challenge to his re-election in District 1. Capps, who introduced Lurie on Sunday, now represents District 2 as a supervisor. In a dubious, two-track vocation, Elliott oversees partisan operations and organization of the local party's central apparatus, while she also draws an annual public salary of $115,295, in addition to about $75,000 in benefits, according to data provided by county public information officer Kelsey Gerckens Buttitta, for her "public service" working in Williams' supervisorial office; moreover, Williams also has put on the public payroll, as his administrative assistant, Spencer Brandt, a former longtime paid Democratic Party operative, at an additional annual cost to taxpayers of $85,505, plus about $55,000 in benefits. Since taking over the editorship of the Montecito Journal, Lurie often has been critical of Williams, including the cozy relations between his office and the Democratic Party, and the. public underwriting of their intersection. Most recently, she lambasted the board of supervisors president, who is seeking a third, four-year term next year, for his failure to lend support to the effort to keep and maintain the debris-collecting steel ring nets that were installed in creeks above Montecito following the deadly 2018 debris flow. After the county's refusal to pay for maintenance of the nets, financed by private donations, the non-profit group that raised the money for them was forced to remove them on Nov. 1. "And to Supervisor Williams I say this," Lurie wrote last week, "Montecito needs a County Supervisor that has our back. One who works hard in the calm moments to make sure that we’re okay in the storms. A representative because of whom, not despite whom, we can feel safe. "We need a Supervisor who sees us, and values us, and works with us to understand our needs," her editorial column stated. "One who shows up every day. Not just when political pressures build; and not just when an election looms." Siloes and pussy hats. While making a critique of women's groups for not speaking out forcefully about the horrors of the Hamas attack, Lurie also pointed to the suffering and deaths of Palestinians, especially following Israel's military response to the Hamas attack, as one reason for the silence. "Some, I think, were afraid to speak up. Maybe for fear that it would seem like they were saying that the Palestinian people and their plight doesn't matter. Which of course it does," she said. "But for some reason in that moment, it became too difficult for so many to hold more than one thought at the same time." She pivoted from the "hold more than one thought" theme to the need for women leaders to advance hard, if respectful, discourse to break through the algorithm-driven, media and news siloes via which many Americans receive their infomation, fueling the toxic red-blue culture and politics of the nation. "Women are not monolithic," she said. "Like any group, there are many strong opinions among us. We will never, all of us, agree on any issue...But we can agree on the rules by which we are going to have these vital conversations," she added. "We can agree on the importance of respecting the different paths each of us has traveled. We can agree to encourage difficult dialogue, We can agree to not cancel one another,. We can agree to commit to the absolute rejection of violence, in all its forms, against all women. And men. We can agree to lead with compasion," Lurie said. Referencing the millinery fashion popularized at feminist rallies during Donald Trump's term, she concluded: "I believe we have the chance to get this right...And I say, let's do this. Let's do this differently. It's time to dust off our pussy hats." JR Images: Gwyn Lurie addresses the crowd on Sunday; Lurie with Democratic Woman leader E.J. Borah; Lurie with former Supervisor Susan Rose (photos by Marian Shapiro).

Behind-the-scenes scheming and manuevering -- including secret development consultations with land owners, special treatment for cannabis growers, and a refusal to make use of publicly-owned property -- were key factors in producing Santa Barbara County's skewed and shoddy new state Housing Element. The critical and controversial long-range housing strategy, adopted this week on a split vote of the Board of Supervisors,jams thousands of projected new housing units into swaths of Goleta Valley long preserved for agriculture by local planning guidelines; the vast majority of foreseen new housing development is sited in the county's Second District, while the Housing Element largely spares Montecito and other communities in the First District from the build-baby-build frenzy ignited by decrees handed down in the past few years from Sacramento. As every school child knows, the First Distrist is represented by Supervisor Das Williams, now seeking re-election, who enlisted Lisa Plowman, the pro-development Director of Planning and Development, in crafting a state-required plan that now allows him to preen as a champion of new housing while not inconveniencing his own constituents with the aggravatations and declining quality of life being foisted on residents elsewhere in the county. On this week's edition of Newsmakers TV, Josh Molina breaks down the raw politics behind the Das-Lisa alliance, while Ryan P. Cruz forecasts some no-holds-barred. battles over rezoning decisions necessary to enact the new housing plan, which now is to be submitted to the state for sign-off. Nick Welsh also joins the genial host with more scandalous -- not to mention downright bizarre -- news arising from the County Administration building, as the county Public Works Department copped to two counts of criminal negligence and 12 civil charges extracted by the, um, county District Attorney in the long-running and tangled case of a persistent oil spill befouling Toro Canyon Creek. Jarndyce v. Jarndyce has nothing on these guys. Plus: Some green shoots of progress on mental health care for inmates of Sheriff Bill Brown's jail; SB councilman Mike Jordan enjoys the sound of his own voice in the renoviction controversy; a septegenarian self-reinvention by former councilmember Brian Barnwell; a how to help the homeless stay warm this winter crusade; and the gang ranks the biggest windbags in the local political landscape. All this and more, right here, right now on Newsmakers TV. JR Check out the new edition via YouTube below, or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here. TVSB, Channel 17, broadcasts the show every weeknight at 8 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. KCSB, 91.9 FM, airs the program at 5:30 p.m. on Monday. CARTOON OF THE WEEK Cartoon by Lila Ash for The New Yorker. Must-read of the week. "A Trump Dictatorship is Increasingly Inevitable. We Should Stop Pretending," by Robert Kagan in the Washington Post: "Let’s stop the wishful thinking and face the stark reality: There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States, and it is getting shorter every day. In 13 weeks, Donald Trump will have locked up the Republican nomination. In the RealClearPolitics poll average (for the period from Nov. 9 to 20), Trump leads his nearest competitor by 47 points and leads the rest of the field combined by 27 points. The idea that he is unelectable in the general election is nonsense — he is tied or ahead of President Biden in all the latest polls — stripping other Republican challengers of their own stated reasons for existence. The fact that many Americans might prefer other candidates, much ballyhooed by such political sages as Karl Rove, will soon become irrelevant when millions of Republican voters turn out to choose the person whom no one allegedly wants.... "The Trump dictatorship will not be a communist tyranny, where almost everyone feels the oppression and has their lives shaped by it. In conservative, anti-liberal tyrannies, ordinary people face all kinds of limitations on their freedoms, but it is a problem for them only to the degree that they value those freedoms, and many people do not. The fact that this tyranny will depend entirely on the whims of one man will mean that Americans’ rights will be conditional rather than guaranteed. But if most Americans can go about their daily business, they might not care, just as many Russians and Hungarians do not care." Read the whole thing here,.

Hundreds of Dos Pueblos High School students marched out of school on Friday morning, protesting on behalf on their teachers, who are seeking substantially higher wages from the Santa Barbara Unified School District. On this week's edition of Newsmakers TV, Josh Molina and Callie Fausey report that students shouted chants calling out Superintendent Hilda Maldonado by name on the march to Girsh Park, an indication of how far and wide the dispute between the district and the Santa Barbara Teachers Association has spread - and how personal and rancorous it has become. Melinda Burns returns to the show to reprise her reporting on the breakdown of an agreement between Carpinteria cannabis growers and neighbors, fed up with the inescapable skunky odors from cannabis cultivation -- and to break down a new political alliance at the Board of Supervisors that suddenly has put county pot ordinance masterminds, and Supervisors, Das Williams and Steve Lavagnino on the defensive. And Ryan P. Cruz has the latest from City Hall on Santa Barbara's plans to meet state mandates for new housing, as well as the most recent report on bed taxes collected from tourists staying at hotels, which once again came in under forecast. Plus: details of a novel new program to learn practical techniques for helping to cope with climate change, questions over the sudden resignation of an SBUSD school board member; and the genial host's modest proposal for filling the unexpected vacancy. All this and more, right here, right now, on Newsmakers TV. JR Check out the new edition on YouTube below or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here. TVSB, Channel 17, broadcasts the show at 8 p.m. on weeknights, and at 9 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. KCSB, 91.9 FM. airs the program at 5:30 p.m. on Monday. Next best thing to a Pulitzer. Many thanks to the Santa Barbara Independent for including Newsmakers on this year's list of honorees for its Local Heroes Awards. Hap and Jerry felt privileged to be included along with such an outstanding roster of individuals and organizations providing community services, from college assistance to first generation students and coaching for girls playing to flag football, to rescue operations for cats and a publishing outlet for local poets. Also: Susan Rose and Roger Durling! Much gratitude to Marianne Partridge, Brandi Rivera, Sarah Sinclair, Nick Welsh and the rest of the gang at the Indy. CARTOON OF THE WEEK Images: Newsmakers photo by Ingrid Bostrom for the Santa Barbara Independent; Cartoon by Corey Pandolph for The New Yorker.

By Melinda Burns It’s been more than two years since the Santa Barbara Coalition for Responsible Cannabis signed a peace treaty with a leading growers’ organization in the Carpinteria Valley. Today, the coalition says, that agreement is in tatters. The agreement of August 2021was an odor-control pact signed by the coalition, a countywide advocacy group of about 200 members, and the Cannabis Association for Responsible Producers, or CARP Growers, representing most of the valley’s greenhouse owners. The coalition’s assent was a tacit concession that suing the growers and challenging their permits had failed to halt the wholesale conversion of the flower greenhouses ringing the beach town of Carpinteria to smelly, industrial-scale pot. Now, however, the coalition has gone back to court. In September, the group filed a class action lawsuit in Santa Barbara County Superior Court against Case and Alex Van Wingerden, a father and son who are members of CARP Growers. They own 19 acres of cannabis at Valley Crest Farms and Ceres Farm on Casitas Pass Road. The lawsuit alleges that the “ever-present noxious odor” and “thick, heavy, strong stench of cannabis” in the neighborhood from these operations is a violation of the state Clean Air Act. Valley-wide, the coalition says, the growers are dragging their feet and failing to adopt state-of-the-art clean-air technology in their open-vented greenhouses. Carbon filters called “scrubbers” have been shown to be effective in preventing the “skunky” smell of pot from wafting out of the roof vents and into urban neighborhoods. Yet only four of 20 active “grows” in the valley are fully equipped with them, county records show. In all, that’s 28 acres of cannabis greenhouses with scrubbers out of a total 116 acres under cultivation, or not quite one acre out of every four. “We’ve been played,” Lionel Neff, a coalition director who signed the 2021 agreement, said this month. “We thought we were all working together on an answer to the problem, on the same track, going to the same destination. Everybody was rejoicing. We’d share beers together. Now we’re looking at this as promises made, promises broken. We kept our promises and they broke theirs.” However, as the private agreement breaks down, the politics of public policy may be shifting in favor of requiring the use of scrubbers in cannabis. For the first time, during an impromptu discussion at the county Board of Supervisors meeting this week, three out of five supervisors signaled that they were open to the idea. “There’s good technology out there,” said Supervisor Laura Capps, who represents the Goleta Valley and has long advocated for stricter regulations for cannabis. “If it were any other industry, we would be requiring it.” Growers deflect, dissemble. Seven greenhouse operations totaling 30 acres are slated for scrubbers next year in the Carpinteria Valley, records show; the growers agreed to install them as a condition of their zoning permits. That means that 58 acres, or half of the acreage under cultivation in the valley, could be equipped with scrubbers by the end of 2024. But that’s only 36 percent of 162 acres of greenhouse cannabis approved for permits to date. There is no requirement for scrubbers on the remaining acreage, with the exception of 13 acres at Vista Verde, an operation at 3450 Via Real that’s not yet online. These figures do not include about eight acres in the valley approved for processing, the smelliest stage of cannabis production. Growers who are processing have installed carbon scrubbers inside their processing rooms and warehouses. These structures, unlike the greenhouses, are sealed and do not have open roof vents. Under the 2021 agreement with the coalition, CARP Growers committed to “continuously employing the best available control technology” so that the smell of pot could not be detected beyond the growers’ property lines. The association also agreed to a protocol for responding to odor complaints that, depending on the scope of the problem, could lead to a requirement to install state-of-the-art equipment. In return, the coalition agreed not to sue the growers or oppose their project applications at county hearings, and even pledged to support them. CARP Growers hailed the agreement as “historic” and sent out press photos of their representatives smiling and clasping hands with coalition directors. During the year that followed, the coalition spent $150,000 helping the growers test odor-control technologies. “This is the first I’ve heard of any collapse of an agreement with the coalition,” Graham Farrar, the CARP Growers president, said earlier this month. “We’re still certainly operating as if it’s intact. We’re all doing the things we said we would do. Many people are working on scrubbers on their own volition.” Farrar is one of the largest cannabis growers in California, with 125 acres of greenhouses in Ventura County and 11 acres in the Carpinteria Valley. The intention of the agreement, he said, was not to impose a one-size-fits-all technology on CARP Growers members, but rather to find a solution tailored to each site. Some greenhouses are not in close proximity to homes, he noted. “There’s nowhere in there where it designates a specific model, technique or odor technique,” Farrar said of the agreement. If neighbors complain about the smell, he said, the intention was that growers would “work with the community until the problem is solved.” No mandate. Although the smell of pot is less noticeable in the valley than it was five years ago, residents say, hot spots persist in neighborhoods around Foothill and Casitas Pass roads; Padaro and Cravens lanes; Via Real; La Mirada Drive; and the polo club on Foothill — including neighborhoods near greenhouses owned or operated by present and past presidents of CARP Growers. Carpinterians have filed more than 3,000 odor complaints with the county — including 350 this year — since the county Board of Supervisors opened the doors to a “green rush” in 2018. Many residents have complained of health problems such as asthma, sore throats, headaches and eye irritation that they believe were brought on by the smell of pot. The Van Wingerdens did not respond to requests for comment on the recent lawsuit. But in a court filing, they stated that they were operating in compliance with state and local laws. They also submitted a plan to the county earlier this month, proposing to install scrubbers at Ceres Farm, at 6030 Casitas Pass Road, by the end of 2024. They have not submitted plans for scrubbers at their Valley Crest operation at 5980 Casitas Pass Road, next to the Rose Story Farm. What’s most frustrating, Neff said, is that the county Board of Supervisors to date has not identified carbon scrubbers as the “best available” technology for odor control or mandated them for use in the valley’s greenhouses. “All this is brought on by the county,” Neff said, noting that the coalition has spent more than $1 million on lawsuits, appeals and the agreement with CARP Growers. “Look at the amount we’ve spent to do what the county should have done. I’ve put in at least $75,000 of my own money. It troubles me that the county doesn’t want to embrace scrubbers as a palliative and as a showing of good will.” Most growers in the valley, including Farrar and the Van Wingerdens, are still using “vapor-phase” systems — perforated pipes around the perimeter of the greenhouses that release a perfumed mist into the outside air. They are designed to “mask” the smell of cannabis after it escapes from the roof vents. Judging from the growers’ project descriptions, these systems are collectively releasing several hundred tons of the deodorant, a non-toxic mix of plant oils and water, into the valley air every year. Some residents have complained that the “laundromat” smell is as bad as the smell of pot. A big shift at supes. On Nov. 14, the Carpinteria City Council, which has long pressed the county to enact stricter regulations for the industry, voted 5-0 to send a letter to board Chair Das Williams, chief architect of the cannabis ordinance and a Carp resident, asking the county to require carbon scrubbers in new and previously permitted cannabis greenhouses as the “sole best available” technology for odor control. And on Tuesday, Supervisor Bob Nelson for the first time introduced the subject, during a board discussion on cannabis tax revenue. He represents a portion of the Santa Rita Hills west of Buellton, where a number of outdoor cannabis operations are under cultivation. “There should be at some point a shift to best available control technology,” Nelson said. Nelson requested that the board revisit the question of cannabis odor at a future hearing. Supervisors Capps and Joan Hartmann, whose district also includes part of the Santa Rita Hills, enthusiastically agreed. Supervisor Steve Lavagnino of Santa Maria, a co-architect of the cannabis ordinance, cast the only “no” vote, suggesting that requirements for new technology would put growers out of business and trigger layoffs. “Do we regulate any other odor in agriculture?” he asked. “You’re not going to be able to put odor control in outdoor grows … I think we’re opening a Pandora’s Box.” Although he voted to revisit the question, Williams has long favored seeking the growers’ voluntary cooperation; he has said he believes it is the fastest way to get scrubbers installed. Williams said again on Tuesday that it would take two years to change the ordinance to require scrubbers. He noted that the county can require them if growers are unable to resolve odor problems through the complaint response protocol — though, admittedly, the county has never taken that step. “The only thing that has stood in the way of it has been knowing the source of the odor,” Williams said in an interview. And he added: “Mandating a specific technology is a bad idea …We might have a technology in a year or two that’s even better. We don’t want to have a system that we then have to unravel.” Mike Cooney, the county planning commissioner for the valley and Williams’ appointee, takes a different view. At the commission level, he said, “We’ve constantly called for an amendment to the ordinance to require scrubbers.” “I’d rather have someone stop growing than not put the scrubbers in,” Cooney said. “I would like to see the county be more aggressive. If we say a year and they don’t have them in, there ought to be at that time a revocation letter that goes out and says, ‘Thirty days from now, your permit will be invalid.’ ” “Act like neighbors.” As part of its negotiations with CARP Growers two years ago, the coalition agreed to put on hold a “nuisance” lawsuit it had filed in 2020 against Ed Van Wingerden, the owner of Ever-Bloom, an 11-acre cannabis operation at 4701 Foothill. Ed Van Wingerden heads a separate branch of the large farming family in the valley and also is a member of CARP Growers. In November 2022, Ed Van Wingerden and his partners released the results of a $750,000 controlled study, paid for by Ever-Bloom and conducted in Carpinteria, showing that a three-stage carbon scrubber engineered by Envinity Group, a firm based in the Netherlands, could eliminate, on average, 84 percent of the smell of cannabis inside a greenhouse before it could escape through the open roof vents. The scrubbers cost $22,000 each, and the recommended density was 10 per acre — an expensive proposition, now that the price of wholesale cannabis has dropped to $500 per pound, down by more than half since 2020. “That’s the cost of doing business,” Neff said. “Growers have the choice of spending the money on attorneys or putting in scrubbers and doing a service to the community.” In 2022, Ed Van Wingerden installed 110 scrubbers at Ever-Bloom, or 10 per acre, at a cost of more than $2 million. He and his partners also purchased 100 extra Envinity scrubbers to sell to other growers, without much success so far; 12 have been purchased for a processing building, but none for greenhouses. Last June, Neff said, the coalition dropped its 2020 lawsuit against Ever-Bloom. Van Wingerden paid $185,000 to cover the group’s attorney’s fees; $45,000 to cover the moving expenses to Ventura incurred by Greg and Marllus Gandrud, former neighbors of Ever-Bloom and former plaintiffs in the case; and $5,000 to Paul Ekstrom, another former plaintiff, in recompense for the air ventilation system he installed at his home on Manzanita Street. Yet as of today, county records show, only two “grows” in the valley are equipped with Envinity scrubbers in their greenhouses, and both are owned by Ed Van Wingerden — Ever-Bloom on Foothill, and Roadside Blooms at 3684 Via Real. At Farmlane, two greenhouse operations at 1400 and 1540 Cravens Lane, an earlier brand of scrubbers is in use. The owners, Cindy and David Van Wingerden, were the first to adopt the technology, three years ago. They are not members of CARP Growers. Winfred Van Wingerden, Ed’s brother and a CARP Grower member, plans to install Envinity scrubbers early next year at Maximum, four acres of cannabis greenhouses at 4555 Foothill. And Farrar plans to install Envinity scrubbers early next year at Glass House Farms, a three-acre greenhouse operation at 5601 Casitas Pass Road, though not at the recommended ratio of 10 per acre. They will join six scrubbers of a different model that are currently in place at Glass House. Glass House is one of five “grows” at the eastern end of the valley, where administrators at Cate School, a private boarding school on Cate Mesa Road, have complained that the smell of pot is a daily aggravation. In the past, Glass House has spent long stints at the top of the county’s odor complaint list. “I want more people to get Envinity scrubbers,” county board Chair Williams said. “Am I satisfied with the progress? I’m not. But I think things are moving in the right direction. Within the hot spots, most growers are making changes. I understand that it’s not as rapidly as some folks would like. “In my judgment, we’ve gone sixty to seventy percent of the way and it hasn’t really changed some people’s minds, and it’s frustrating. I hope if we get to a larger reduction in odors, it will allow for people to act like neighbors again.” But for now, the matter is back in court. And members of Concerned Carpinterians, a loosely-knit organization with 350 residents on its email list, say they welcome the coalition’s decision to rejoin the fray. Concerned Carpinterians has continued to file appeals of cannabis projects during the past two years. “What ended up happening was that every appeal I made, the coalition refused to take a stand and actually spoke in favor of the growers and in opposition to what I was saying,” said Jill Stassinos, who belongs to both groups. “That was really difficult for me to understand, after having contributed money to the cause. I’m happy that, finally, they are becoming more supportive of Concerned Carpinterians.” Ongoing complaints. This year to date, among 350 odor complaints filed with the county, Carpinterians have described the stench coming from cannabis greenhouses as “very, very strong,” “overwhelming,” “foul,” “very unpleasant,” “nauseatingly disgusting,” “gross,” “miserable” and “revolting.” At the top of the list, with 98 complaints, is Farrar’s G&K Produce, eight acres of cannabis at 3561 Foothill Road. Farrar has not submitted a plan for scrubbers at G&K. The county renewed his annual business license for G&K in May. “I’ve made complaints to this office before,” wrote a resident of La Mirada Drive who has filed 30 complaints against G&K so far this year. “However, the odor issues have yet to go away. I had stopped making complaints as they take up time and have not led to a decrease in odors. Nevertheless, I do not want my lack of reporting to make it appear that the problem has been solved. As such, I am again reporting the issues …  to make it known that the problem still exists.” In an interview, Farrar said he specifically picked his Foothill location for cannabis because it is not near homes or schools. There are other greenhouse operations in the vicinity, he said, so it’s impossible to know who is causing the smell in the La Mirada neighborhood, which lies in the hills above Foothill. As for the smell on the road in front of his operation, Farrar said, that’s not regulated by the county. Farrar said he had been held up until now by state Coastal Commission review of a processing warehouse at G&K. Now that the warehouse has been approved, he said, he is “committed to addressing odor” in the greenhouses, adding, “Now we will have the ability to talk about what comes next.” Other greenhouses near La Mirada include Autumn Brands, owned by Autumn Shelton; and Ocean Hill Farms, owned by Kelly Clenet; together, they are growing nine acres of cannabis at 3615 Foothill. Shelton was president of CARP Growers when the group signed the agreement with the coalition in 2021; she has not installed scrubbers and did not respond to a request for comment this month. The latest lawsuit. Case and Alex Van Wingerden, the defendants in the coalition’s latest lawsuit, own nine acres of cannabis greenhouses at Valley Crest and 10 acres at Ceres, two of the operations nearest Cate School. William Hahn and Danielle Dall’Armi, owners of Rose Story Farm next to Valley Crest; and Chonnie Bliss Jacobson, a neighbor at 6217 Casitas Pass Road, have joined the coalition as plaintiffs in the recent lawsuit. They allege that the stench of cannabis from the two greenhouse operations has lowered their property values and reduced the rental and business income at Rose Story Farm. According to Marc Chytilo, a former coalition lawyer, the odor response protocol in the CARP Growers agreement broke down at Valley Crest and Ceres. The coalition reported to the operators dozens of instances of odor problems at the Rose Story Farm in windy conditions, Chytilo said, with Valley Crest and Ceres as “the most likely cause.” “Sometimes they had excuses, and other times we just didn’t get a response at all,” Chytilo said. “Over time, it was clear they were unwilling or unable to take steps to control their odors. At times, it seemed they didn’t believe they were generating odors.” Case and Alex Van Wingerden “have shown little concern for the citizens of Carpinteria,” the coalition’s lawsuit alleges. “Instead, they have focused on lining their pockets with profits from this modern-day cash crop.” In a recent court filing, the Van Wingerdens responded that the damages claimed by the plaintiffs were “speculative and uncertain.” In plans submitted to the county this month, they proposed installing CleanLeaf scrubbers, a model that sells for $4,500. The company is headquartered in St. Louis, Mo. Neff is not impressed: “It’s nothing but a stalling tactic,” he said. “Why are they looking at other scrubbers when Envinity works?” Tristan Strauss, the Valley Crest and Ceres operator, a past president of CARP Growers and the CEO of Headwaters, a bulk cannabis supply company in California, did not respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit. Strauss played an active role in drafting the agreement with the coalition; and in turn, the coalition put on hold an appeal of one of Strauss’s five cannabis active “grows” in the valley. None of Strauss’s operations are equipped with scrubbers. At a county hearing on the Valley Crest project last year, Strauss said: “The cannabis market is in a place of peril right now. The cost of scrubbers is prohibitive. Politicians in Santa Barbara County have to decide if they want us to stay here.” The view from the Netherlands. Simon van der Burg, the co-founder and managing partner of Envinity, has made 15 trips to the Carpinteria Valley during the last two years, visiting greenhouses and talking to all the growers. On his last trip in March, he said, he came away empty-handed, with no orders for scrubbers. He plans to return on Dec. 3. “I’m definitely disappointed because we spent three-quarters of a million euros ($800,000) doing everything CARP Growers wanted,” van der Burg said, “and in the end, we were the best proven technology.” “I wish they saw it as more like an investment project that also solves odor,” he said, adding that the scrubbers also remove dust, mold, viruses, bacteria and pesticide drift. “We want them to buy it from us because they want to buy it and not because the government is pushing them to buy it.” If all the cannabis growers in the Carpinteria Valley were to place orders today, delivery could start within five or six months and Envinity would deliver the scrubbers before the first of June 2024, van der Burg said. But he said the growers have told him they’re struggling to meet payroll and avoid layoffs. “The market went down, so the money is gone,” van der Burg said. Envinity’s main business is air filters for petrochemical firms and for companies such as yacht building firms that do a lot of spray painting. Envinity also sells scrubbers designed for hothouse lettuce and tomato operations. To meet the challenge in cannabis, a new industry for his firm, Van der Burg said Envinity tested 500 filters to develop a model that worked. Figuring out what odor is and what it does was “a very, very, very difficult question,” he said. Inside the Envinity scrubbers, greenhouse air is pre-filtered to remove both large and small particles before they can clog up the works. Next, the air passes through a carbon filter, where it is exposed to titanium oxide and ultraviolet light to oxidize and reduce the smelly gases. In the final stage, another filter captures any remaining gases. The technology is the first of its kind and the only model to be tested in a controlled study in the Carpinteria Valley. Van der Burg’s own government, while tolerating the illegal sale of cannabis in coffee shops, has proceeded with caution when it comes to cultivation, which is still illegal in the Netherlands. After a four-year period of research on the cultivation, supply and use of cannabis; growers’ banking problems and potential crime and public health problems, the government will allow the first two growers in the Netherlands’ “Controlled Cannabis Supply Chain Experiment” to start growing marijuana in December. They will be delivering to coffee shops in two Dutch cities. The shops must be owned by residents of the Netherlands and can sell cannabis only to residents of the Netherlands. In all, 10 growers and 11 cities will eventually participate in the pilot project. “They want to be sure if cannabis is being produced, it’s being produced the way the government wants it to be produced, with all the correct permits,” van der Burg said. “It is really organized.” Melinda Burns is an investigative journalist with 40 years of experience covering immigration, water, science and the environment. As a community service, she offers her reports to multiple publications in Santa Barbara County, at the same time, for free. Images: Weed Wars (facebook); Graham Farrar (Melinda Burns); Das Williams (courtesy "Santa Barbara Talks with Josh Molina"); In 2021, CARP Growers President Autumn Shelton, far left, and member Tristan Strauss, far right, signed an odor-control pact with Santa Barbara Coalition for Responsible Cannabis directors Lionel Neff, center left, and Rob Salomon, center right (courtesy); Simon van der Burg, co-founder of Envinity (Melinda Burns); Chart compiled from Santa Barbara County data.

Donald Trump isn't making any secret about what he'll do if he wins next year's presidential election: Install an authoritarian government loyal to him, not the Constitution. Parroting fascist political rhetoric, Trump in recent weeks has attacked domestic opponents as "vermin" who must be "rooted out," amid reports that right-wing allies are preparing policy plans to rescind the independence of the U.S. Justice Department, to install loyalists throughout the government while dismantling the Civil Service system, to round up undocumented immigrants and imprison them in "sprawling camps," to unilaterally send federal troops into Mexico to fight drug cartels, and to fulfill his fervent desire to use the military to put down domestic protest. Or, as Trump famously told erstwhile Chief of Staff John Kelly, "Hitler did a lot of good things." Being somewhat partial to Democracy ourselves, Newsmakers has been unnerved by recent, state-by-state polls showing Trump now leading President Biden in key battlegrounds -- and so reached out to Mark Z. Barabak, the most experienced and trustworthy political reporter we know, in search of a level-headed view of these developments. "It's like a weather forecast a year out," shrugged the Los Angeles Times political columnist, suggesting that while you might trust a meteorologist's prediction that next winter will be cold, it's probably not a good bet to accept their prognostication about exactly how much precipitation will fall on the first Tuesday after the first Monday next November. As with every other recent election, added Barabak, who has covered every presidential campaign since 1984, the 2024 result likely will be determined by perhaps 100,000-200,000,or so total votes in the handful of states that remain truly competitive: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsyslvania and Wisconsin, for starters. His bottom line: Current polls reflect the public's perspective solely as a referendum on Biden, as Trump benefits from not being constantly in the public eye., By next fall, as voters focus more fully on the reality that whatever the president's flaws, he is all that deters the toxic menace of Trumpist extremism, the contest will transform into a choice election,. In our conversation on this week's episode of Newsmakers TV, Barabak also offers insights on the upcoming state of play for control of the Senate and the House, the contest for California's open U.S. Senate seat and the possible political implications of the curent wars in the Mideast and Ukraine. He also talks about "The New West," his terrific recent series that reported in depth and detail the stories of how and why key Western states, from the Rockies to the Pacific, rapidly transformed from steadfast Republican to loyally Democratic electorates. The series represents a hiding-in-plain sight perceptual scoop that explains a critical feature of the U.S. political landscape that has been all-but-overlooked by other national political reporters overwhelmingly festooned with East Coast blinkers, winkers and blinders. JR You can watch our interview with Mark via YouTube below, or by clicking through this link, or listen to the podcast version here. TVSB, Channel 17, broadcasts the show every weekday at 8 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. KCSB, 91.9 FM, airs the program on Monday at 5:30 p.m. CARTOON OF THE WEEK Brendan Loper cartoon for The New Yorker.

Lily Dallow was in fourth grade when the disastrous Tea Fire broke out 15 years ago this week, destroying her family's home, along with 209 others in Montecito and Santa Barbara, and forcing them to flee the ferocious flames with little warning. Now the Digital Content Director for KEYT, Lily recounts the personal terror of that November evening on this week's edition of Newsmakers TV, and reprises her reporting on the aftermath of the blaze, including improvements in emergency communicatitons strategies in the city and county of Santa Barbara. Josh Molina returns with an update on the latest public demonstration of anger by teachers in the Santa Barbara Unified School District against Superintendent Hilda Maldonado and her executive cabinet, following another stormy school board meeting which included a thwarted bid to roll out a controversial new buy-out program. And Nick Welsh has the latest on efforts to team police officers with mental health professionals, in an effort to prevent law enforcement encounters with troubled people on the streets of Santa Barbara from escalating, along with a small measure of good news about the county's supply of psychiatric beds for those in need of emergency care. Plus: more on that City Hall dispute over banning citizens from offering public comment remotely; the bitter feelings left behind after the removal from Montecito creeks of protective ring nets installed after the deadly 2018 debris flow; and how the owners of one downtown restaurant got royally screwed by the city. And the panel remembers former Santa Barbara poet laureate, and longtime social justice advocate, Sojourner Kincaid Rolle, who died this week at 80. RIP. All this and more, right here, right now, on Newsmakers TV. JR You can catch the new edition via YouTube below, or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here. TVSB, Channel 17, broadcasts the program at 8 p.m., Monday-Friday, and at 9 a.m. on weekends. KCSB, 91.9 FM, airs the show at 5:30 p.m. on Mondays.

Hilda Maldonado has been treated to fierce criticism almost since her first day as Superintendent of the Santa Barbara Unified School District, back in the summer of 2020, after she was hired via Zoom during the worst pandemic in a century. Much vituperation, both public and private, has focused on the departures of virtually every experienced executive she inherited from her predecessor, amid subjective complaints about her personality, inexperienced management technique, and allegedly abrasive personal style. Now, however, she's being chastised by SBUSD teachers over a far more objective matter: a doltish financial blunder that effectively screwed teachers of $6 million in salaries due last year, a foolish miscalculation that has suppurated already seething emotions as the teachers union heads into negotiations with the district this month. On this week's episode of Newsmakers TV, Josh Molina and Callie Fausey discuss their reporting about the simmering conflict - while the genial host awards Lily Dallow a victory lap for Maldonado's recent praise for flag football in Santa Barbara, the subject of Lily's upcoming multi-media special report, the production of which she's been chronicling on our show. In other local news, the panel deconstructs the conviction of Jerry Boylan, captain of the dive boat Conception, which burned and sank, killing 34 people, in an inferno that erupted near Santa Cruz Island in the early morning of Labor Day, 2019; applauds county schools supe Susan Salcido for tossing a splendid, formal bash at the Music Academy for local teachers of the year; and recounts coverage of the latest demonstrations in SB stemming from the war raging in the Mideast, which was triggered by a savage terrorist attack on Israel. Plus: a rave review for the "Fields of Funk" festival at Elings Park and a warm welcome for the new baby giraffe at the zoo. All this and more, right here, right now on Newsmakers TV. JR You can watch this week's edition via YouTube below, or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here. TVSB broadcasts the program on Channel 17, every weeknight at 8 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. KCSB, 91.9 FM, airs the show at 5:30 p.m. on Monday.

At the peak of her power, journalists described Pearl Chase as "the presiding genius of Santa Barbara" and the city's "Guardian Angel," whose relentless effort to shape and protect her town was fueled by "righteous indignation poured on thick." Those descriptive nuggets, valiant but insufficient efforts to portray the force of nature that was Pearl Chase, arise in the encyclopedic research of public records, private correspondence and long-forgotten files underpinning a first-rate new biography by Santa Barbara writer and historian Cheri Rae, "Bright, refined and cultured, Pearl Chase lived up to her name in every way," Cheri writes. "Small town Santa Barbara was her oyster, and as she polished her skills and added layers of knowledge, experience, and wisdom, she eventually became a priceless addition to the local community." Rae will be signing and discussing her just-out book, titled "A String of Pearls: Pearl Chase of Santa Barbara," at Chaucer's Books this Wednesday (Nov. 8) at 6 p.m. Mining the vast trove of Chase's papers at the UCSB Library, she has produced a wonderful read that not only presents a character study of a fascinating woman, who overcame family tragedies and personal heartbreaks to gain influence and wield power in a domain then thoroughly dominated by men, but also provides a lively historic narrative that shows the extraordinary extent to which Chase's vision of Santa Barbara as a singularly special place, abides today. It's also a cautionary tale for makers of public policy, As City Hall orators inveigh today about a presumed "housing crisis," for example, Rae reports how Chase tackled the very issue -- in 1917! -- keening over the unyielding law of supply and demand that meant not everyone who wanted to live in Santa Barbara was able to do so. The book is a must-read for anyone who cares about Santa Barbara - past, present, or future -- particularly as it demonstrates clearly that the superb built environment of the town did not just happen: it arose from the rare sensibility and values, caring, and hyper-vigilance that Chase combined to prevent the city from becoming another overbuilt, over-congested California burg. At one point, Rae recounts how Chase was inspired and energized by a speech delivered here in 1923 by her friend, the journalist Charles Fletcher Lummis. Titled, "Stand Fast, Santa Barbara," the words of his address still echo, and are worth quoting at length, amid the build-baby-build development and housing battles of today: "Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin Santa Barbara of her romance! They are sure to do it, unless you watch and stand fast. This is essentially the Vandal Age. Romance is the greatest asset California has. It has been, for more than 350 years. To all this centuried romance Santa Barbara is the legitimate and favorite heiress - about the only town left that has yet to trade away her birthright. Beauty and sane sentiment are good business as well as good ethics. Carelessness, ugliness, blind materialism are bad business. The worst curse that could befall Santa Barbara would be the craze of GET BIG! Why big? Run down to Los Angeles for a few days - see that madhouse! You'd hate to live there! By all that is fine and reverent and high -- faith to patriotism -- get together! The honor of Santa Barbara is in your hands -- and do not fancy for a moment that her good name will stand if you let the materialists strip her of her romance and leave her nakedly common. It is up to you to save Santa Barbara's romance and save California's romance for Santa Barbara. I would like to see Santa Barbara set her mark as the most beautiful, the most artistic, the most distinguished and the most famous little city on our Pacific Coast. It can be, if it will, for it has all the makings." Amen, brother. JR You can watch our interview with Cheri Rae via YouTube below or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here. TVSB, Channel 17, broadcasts Newsmakers TV at 8 p.m. every weekday and at 9 a.m. on weekends. KCSB, 91.9 FM, airs the program at 5:30 p.m. on Monday.

Private sector solutions cannot meet the demand for workforce housing, says Dick Flacks, progressive warhorse and Santa Barbara's leading public intellectual of the Left, calling for a new “social housing” policy financed by a city hotel tax increase. “Supply and demand is not what (private developers) are about,” UCSB Professor Emeritus Flacks said on this week’s edition of Newsmakers TV. “It’s what the market will bear.” Flacks has been a central figure in virtually every social welfare campaign and crusade on the Central Coast since his arrival at the university in 1969; that’s when then-Governor Ronald Reagan famously compared his hiring to employing a “pyromaniac (for) a fireworks factory,” a tribute to the roles of Dick and his late wife, Mickey, in founding Students for a Democratic Society. Mickey Flacks, who died in 2020, was Santa Barbara’s most prominent grassroots advocate for greatly increased construction of rental housing, specifically housing for workers in the “missing middle” income bracket, as well as for lower-wage service industry employees. She was politically instrumental in the city’s 2013 adoption of the AUD (Average Unit-Sized Density) program, which eases density and parking regulations for developers who build rental units. To date, the AUD program has enabled the building of 697 rental units, with another 742 in the pipeline,; however, they have proven 20 percent more expensive than median rents in the city. Dick Flacks said that this data shows that, although the AUD effort has been a success in jumpstarting rental unit construction, the program is insufficient to what he views as the scope and scale of the problem. Invoking a policy that his late wife dubbed “social housing,” Flacks proposed the city divert a new revenue stream, such as an increase in the current 12 percent hotel bed tax (aka Transient Occupancy Tax, or “TOT”) and earmark it for a special housing fund which SB's city council in 2022 created with several million dollars of budget surplus. The city’s Housing Authority then could “leverage” the endowed fund to partner with non-profit organizations to expand apartment construction, ensuring that rents remain affordable for middle class workers, he said. In a conversation with Josh Molina and the genial host on Thursday, Flacks also bemoaned the failure of UCSB to meet its long-delayed commitment to build thousands of new units to meet the needs of expanded student enrollment and faculty housing, citing this as one of the underlying pressures on Santa Barbara’s tight housing market. In large part, he blamed this on the “Munger Mystery,” the university’s secretive, years-long, and ultimately failed, dalliance with investor and philanthropist Charlie Munger, who offered to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars for a personally-designed student housing monstrosity dubbed “Dormzilla.” Plus: Amazing but true, Dick also sees some rays of hope about the 2024 presidential election, despite current polls showing Donald Trump running even, or ahead, of Joe Biden. Spoiler alert: keep an eye on next Tuesday's elections for the Virginia state legislature. P.S. The Santa Barbara County Action Network will honor Dick and Mickey Flacks for their decades of organizing and advocacy, at a special "Making History/Making Blintzes" (the title of Dick and Mickey's 2018 joint memoir) brunch fundraiser on Sunday, Nov. 12. See flyer appended below for details. You can watch our full conversation with Dick Flacks via YouTube below or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here. TVSB, Channel 17, broadcasts the program at 8 p.m. on weekdays and at 9 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. KCSB, 91.9 FM, airs the show at 5:30 on Mondays. CARTOON OF THE WEEK Cartoon: Ali Solomon for The New Yorker.

On September 27, more than 600 people concerned about the state of local news packed into the Marjorie Luke Theatre for a two-track presentation: a look back at how Santa Barbara became a semi-news desert – and a thoughtful conversation about pathways to the future. Now, TVSB is rolling out two new productions that document Newsmakers' special local news event last month, which not only limned the past -- with a big-screen showing of the remarkably prescient documentary "Citizen McCaw" -- but also explored what lies ahead, amid the transformation of the local media landscape and the collapse and bankruptcy of the Santa Barbara News-Press, the community's 155-year old daily newspaper. Many thanks to TVSB Executive Director Erik Davis for the station's partnership and sustained support of Newsmakers' efforts to spotlight top local journalists and their stories, to provide our viewers and readers analysis and commentary about their work, and to stimulate a community conversation about the over-arching importance of comprehensive and credible local coverage of public affairs. Mega-kudos to TVSB Producer Ellie Stayner, for a terrific job of capturing and packaging the content, energy and sp[irit of last month's event, marking the 15th anniversary of the sold-out premiere at the Arlington Theatre of "Citizen McCaw," the best narrative account of the extraordinary events of 2006-07. On November 5 and 12, at 6:30 p.m., TVSB (Channel 17) will present a three-hour special, a video record of the Sept. 27 event which features the documentary, book-ended by contemporary commentary and the introduction and recognition of key players in Santa Barbara's long-running journalism saga. On Nov. 1 and Nov. 9 at 9 p.m. the station premieres its one-hour production of our post-movie panel presentation on "The Future of Local New," which brought together experts on theory, practice, media business strategies, and on-the-ground digital era journalism to explain the revolutionary changes in the news industry over the last decade-and-a-half, and discuss how they will shape the ways citizens are informed about community affairs going forward. The futures panel included UCSB media studies professor Jennifer Holt; Sarah Sinclair, advertising director of the Independent; Gwyn Lurie, CEO of the Montectio Journal Media Group; Lily Dallow, Digital Content Director of KEYT; and Ryan P. Cruz, staff reporter for the Indy. The show will repeat on Nov. 9 at 9 p.m. In addition to TVSB's presentations, you can find it on our YouTube channel, or by clicking through this link. TVSB’s three-hour special, which we’ve dubbed “SB Media: The End of an Era Tour” (Shout-out Swifties) is also available in our singular archive of Santa Barbarbara current events. If you missed the event, you can check out the evening on YouTube below,or by clicking through this link. And if you prefer simply to watch the documentary, it's here, or click through this link. Why it matters: At a time when local newspapers are disappearing across the country, Santa Barbara is at once a case study of what happens when a community loses its daily paper, as well as a kind of civic petri dish for cultivating alternative forms of local news. At the time of the 2006 meltdown, there were about 60 full-time reporters assigned to cover the basic way stations of public affairs in Santa Barbara - the Board of Supervisors, local city councils and school boards, the police and sheriff, the courts, local business, as well as sports, arts and entertainment. Today there are perhaps a dozen in total. At the film screening, we gave shout-outs to staff members and leaders of the enterprising local news operations – the Independent, Noozhawk, the Montecito Journal, KEYT and Edhat -- who labor every day to keep our community informed. The steep decline in the sheer amount of local news coverage, however, has brought a shroud of opacity to many local government operations, which in past times were closely scrutinized daily by beat reporters assigned to serve as watchdogs on behalf of taxpayers, voters, consumers and residents, whose lives are directly affected by official debates and decisions. The list of urgent and important local issues which call out for more investigative reporting and analysis -- the failure of local officials to deal satisfactorily with the most basic functions of municipal governance; the waning of competitive elections amid the takeover of elected offices by one political party that enforces ideological groupthink; the scandal of the county's cannabis ordinance; the lack of transparency over fiscal matters; the connections between campaign contributions and public policies, for starters -- is long and growing. Our Future of Local News panel was a first step in trying to define the dimensions of the problem. We invite your thoughts, insights and feedback about ways and means of moving forward to expand and improve the quantity and quality of local news in Santa Barbara. Write us at newsmakerswithjr@gmail.com. P.S. Many thanks to the hundreds of folks who attended the "Citizen McCaw" event, turning out on a Wednesday night when they could have stayed home to watch, for example, a debate among all the Republican presidential candidates not named Trump (each of them magically thinking and secretly praying for an exogenous event -- one too many Big Macs? federal prison? - to make them the GOP standard bearer. But we digress). We also are deeply grateful to Monie de Wit, a talented photographer and indefatigable advocate for public education, who provided a visual record of the Sept, 27 event. Check out some of her images in the photo gallery below. JR

Public dramas and behind-the-scenes intrigue at City Hall take center stage on this week's edition of Newsmakers TV, as the genial host debriefs Josh Molina on Santa Barbara's latest policy and politics predicaments and problems. With other panel members variously AWOL, MIA or on the IL, the dynamic duo soldiers on, breaking down the arcane but important proposed changes in bidding procedures for big ticket, taxpayer-financed public works projects, which suddenly emerged at this week's council meeting. The change from the historic low-bid process, now required by the charter, would have to be approved by voters at next year's November election. Good luck passing this if there's a batch of zillion dollar bond issues on the same ballot. (BTW: Why, oh why, would we ever suspect there's some Project Labor Agreement type mischief lurking in the background of this one? But we digress). As if the political sinkhole of State Street needs more controversy and confusion, Downtown Santa Barbara's Flag Program, a mom-and-apple pie project if ever there was one, meanwhile got caught up in the toxic fury of the Israeli-Hamas war. The River-to-the-Sea crowd assailed the regularly scheduled display of the logo used by the non-profit Jewish Federation of Santa Barbara as an inflammatory gesture of support for the Israeli government's deadly response to the savage murders of 1,400 civilians by Hamas terrorists; and when the flags came down, as scheduled, on Tuesday night, some pro-Israel factions perceived it as a cave-in to an anti-Zionist protest earlier in the day. Which left Robin Elander, the saintly executive director of the Downtown Association, to issue a pair of statements explaining the, um, Actual Facts of the matter, amid a terpsichorean display of finely parsed language that tried to steer clear of tilting towards either side in a bitter and bloody clash that's been going on for 2000 years or so. As if. Plus: high-powered suits who manage Paseo Nuevo have apparently decided there's just too much damn commerce going on at the troubled mall; Pony League grandparents (we name no names) fret about a possible future parking shortage at Mackenzie Park amid another sign-off for the good-to-go American Indian Health Center; and Noozhawk's top man on the city beat explains why he's suddenly become the Boswell of the Harbor Commission, All this and more, right here, right now on Newsmaker TV. JR Watch the new episode via YouTube below or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here. TVSB, Cox Cable Channel 17, airs the show at 8 p.m. every weeknight and at 9 a.m. Saturday and Sunday. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the program at 5:30 p.m. on Monday. Image: Logo of Jewish Federation of Santa Barbara, used in the State Street Flag Program. CARTOON OF THE WEEK Cartoon by Pia Guerra for The New Yorker.