On June 30, Santa Barbara’s Grand Jury released an historic, scathing report detailing alleged official malfeasance by the Board of Supervisors as it sought to regulate cannabis over the past three years, particularly in Carpinteria but also in North County wine country. By law, the report mentioned no names and took no stand on the […]
Apologies for the misleading headline, but it’s worth celebrating that the Montecito Journal’s six-part series on our town’s complex water politics is finally complete! On June 25, Montecito’s Water Board made history by voting unanimously to approve a deal with Santa Barbara that will guarantee us a local and reliable source of water for the […]
One of them is sits in front of the Montecito Public Library. Another can be found on the grounds of the Knowlwood Tennis Club. Two are located next to the Boy Scout building in Upper Manning Park. Several are scattered along different trails in Montecito’s Ennisbrook and Casa Dorinda open spaces, and all of them […]
It’s been more than three months since the scary reality of the coronavirus threat began to sink in with public officials in California, and unfortunately, the pandemic shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, recent reports suggest the virus is not only spreading thanks to lackluster social-distancing efforts by sun-worshipping millennials, but is possibly […]
Ever since the COVID-19 era unceremoniously ended the 2020 academic year in March, local educators and non-profit groups have been redoubling their efforts to help young people deal with the added stress they’ve been experiencing. AHA!, whose mission is to reduce emotional and physical abuse on campus and has provided counseling to more than 20,000 […]
Anyone carefully watching the progress of MWD’s “Water Supply Agreement” (WSA) with Santa Barbara already knows that it is almost a foregone conclusion that the agency’s board of directors will have already approved this deal by the time you’re reading these words. Yet as historic as today’s vote is, or was, there are still several […]
With the Fall 2020 school year rapidly approaching, Santa Barbara High School (SBHS) is finalizing its plan for how to bring as many of its roughly 2,200 students back to campus as safely as possible. The key word here is, you guessed it, “safely.” Right now, the school is awaiting official rulings from Governor Gavin […]
On June 15, Nick Turner, executive director of the Montecito Water District (MWD), gave a two-hour slideshow presentation to the public which outlined the agency’s proposed rate changes that will impact roughly 4,600 households. Thanks to a proposed 50-year Water Supply Agreement (WSA) with Santa Barbara, Montecito will receive a guaranteed supply of agua secured […]
From 1 to 3 pm on the afternoon of June 15, the Montecito Water District (MWD) will hold an online hearing in which Nick Turner, the agency’s executive director, will explain several proposed water rate changes that will affect roughly 4,000 households in Montecito and Summerland, not to mention several major luxury hotels and private […]
On November 10, 2011, the Montecito Water District (MWD), which was created to provide residents with drinkable water, will celebrate its centennial anniversary. It’s an auspicious occasion, because Montecito doesn’t really have any water, at least none you can find under the soil. In fact, according to countless studies – okay, only 18 studies – […]
An Historic Vote On June 25, the five members of Montecito Water District’s Board of Directors will hold a public hearing – almost certainly to take place via Zoom – to discuss a proposed change in water rates for its customer base of roughly 4,000 Montecito households. The hearing will allow affected ratepayers as well […]
Roxy Lawler had already been in the grocery business for nearly 15 years when she and her family took over Montecito Village Grocery in January 2017. But in the last three years alone, the store has experienced not one but two once-in-a-lifetime (or perhaps once-per-millennium) disasters: the devastating January 9, 2018 debris flows and this […]
In an otherwise dismal end to the academic year, there’s some late-breaking good news for nearly 2,000 local students heading on to college or graduate-school. On May 15, the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara awarded college scholarships totaling more than $6 million, providing an average $3,357 per recipient. The foundation is the nation’s largest community-based […]
Although it houses just 1,162 people behind bars – not to mention a healthy supply of razor wire – Lompoc Federal Prison already has no less than 900 inmates who have tested positive for COVID-19. That’s not only well more than 70 percent of the prison’s population, it’s also roughly half the number of people […]
This month, roughly 4,600 households in Montecito and Summerland received a special insert along with their monthly water bill. “WATER RATE UPDATE!” the flyer declared in urgent all caps, adding that the “Montecito Water District has Plans for Delivering a Secure Water Future.” Stating that its customers “want their drinking water to come from local, […]
On Friday, March 13, yes Friday the 13th, all schools in California, public and private, closed their doors for the foreseeable future. Then Santa Barbara, like much of the rest of the state, had at most a single week to switch to an entirely new, online model of education, by now known to most as […]
This month, roughly 4,600 households in Montecito and Summerland received a special insert along with their monthly water bill. “WATER RATE UPDATE!” the flyer declared in urgent all caps, adding that the “Montecito Water District has Plans for Delivering a Secure Water Future.” Stating that its customers “want their drinking water to come from local, […]
Just how many Montecito residents have the dreaded coronavirus, aka COVID-19? Or to put it another way: Just how much COVID-19 is in Montecito’s collective supply of excreta? Thanks to an ongoing COVID-19 tracing project by Dr. Patricia Holden, a professor of environmental microbiology at UC Santa Barbara, and the Montecito Sanitary District (MSD), we […]
Ever since 2013, the Santa Barbara Beekeepers Guild, an offshoot of the Santa Barbara Beekeepers Association, has dedicated itself to educating children about bees and other important pollinators by bringing live insects to school. The guild, which has about 85 members, both bee enthusiasts and beekeepers, also provides free bee rescues to local residents, so […]
Last Friday, I took a guided tour of a charming abode hidden at the end of a long and curving driveway on East Mountain Road. Located just a block away from the San Ysidro Trailhead, the property included an historical guest cottage (believed to have once belonged to Priscilla Presley), and a home office above […]
Earlier this year, before the COVID-19 emergency, I took a tour of the Montecito Sanitary District’s waste treatment facility, where the town’s collective fecal matter is slowly bio-engineered into top-notch soil fertilizer that ends up on the shelves of our local gardening emporiums (see “Montecito’s Most Unusual Harvest,” Montecito Journal, February 12). Part of my […]
You might recognize the Santa Barbara Coalition for Responsible Cannabis from various letters to the editor and reader-submitted editorials that have run in the Montecito Journal, Carpinteria’s Coastal View News, and other local newspapers in Santa Barbara county. Although the group claims not to oppose cannabis per se, its members have consistently decried what they […]
Much has been made lately in news articles about the effort to provide masks and other emergency preparedness gear to first responders in Santa Barbara. But not all such gear is wearable. To wit: One805, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting first responders, emergency preparedness and response, has just announced the purchase of 45 electric […]
Ever since March 17, the Santa Barbara Zoo has been off limits to the public. That’s not surprising, given California’s stay-at-home restrictions, but it’s a disaster for the Zoo, its employees, and animals. In fact, the 57-year-old institution is facing the most dire financial crisis in its history. For that reason, on Saturday, April 25, […]
When I first met Montecito Fire Chief Kevin Taylor last year, I remember asking him what the biggest challenge was facing his department. “The weather,” he told me, quickly adding that the sheer unpredictability of Montecito’s weather threats, be they fire or rain, made his job uniquely worrisome. This week, I caught up with Taylor […]
Back in the day, if you needed your car worked on for whatever reason, you took it to the one place in town that could do the repair job: your full-service neighborhood gas station. And for several decades in the past century, J&S East Valley Garage on East Valley Road was exactly such a spot. […]
Last Friday morning, around 100 people joined a Zoom conference call hosted by Montecito Journal Editor-in-Chief Gwyn Lurie and Publisher Tim Buckley. The goal of the call was to generate ideas that could help businesses bounce back from the loss of revenue stemming from social-distancing restrictions that were set in place by California a month […]
Plant-Based Nutrition with Personal Roots Perseverance must be all over the Laver family DNA. It was there for tennis giant Rod Laver when he won the Australian Open in five sets, four hours, and one-hundred-degree heat. It was there for Laver’s nephew Richard, who, with his wife Michelle spent years developing their own home-grown nutrition […]
It was mid-March when Pam Peterson, owner of the Hair Lounge of Montecito, realized she was going to have to close her popular salon. It was a more delicate decision than for many local employers, because all eight stylists who work at the shop are independent contractors, and on top of that, although California didn’t […]
For a man who brews beer, Montecito resident Kristopher Parker, the grandson of Fess Parker, the famed winemaker and 1950s television actor of Davy Crockett fame, has a somewhat surprising family background. “I grew up in the wine business,” Parker confirms. “My dad is a winemaker, but winemakers drink beer, and he also did home […]
During normal times, Appleton Partners, the architecture firm founded by Marc Appleton and based in Santa Barbara and Santa Monica, uses 3D printers to build models of custom houses as well as individual design features. But in mid-March, as news began to build of the health dangers posed by the looming coronavirus pandemic, the firm […]
During the disastrous Thomas Fire and debris flows two years ago, the entire Montecito Country Mart was closed for business with the exception of Montecito Natural Foods. That turned out to be a good thing for the town’s first responders, particularly the Montecito Fire Department, because emergency workers were laboring under high stress in unsanitary […]
Thanks to the fact that California has deemed cannabis to be an essential part of the state’s economy, Santa Barbara County’s cannabis industry is one of the few major employers that isn’t either completely shut down or drastically downscaled during the COVID-19 pandemic. CARP Growers, which represents legally licensed Carpinteria cannabis farms such as Autumn […]
Although it had to close its design studio on Coast Village Road and boutique shop inside the Four Seasons Hotel a week ago, Montecito’s Silverhorn Jewelers isn’t letting the coronavirus epidemic stall its preparations for the future. “All our employees are working from home since we are listed as an unnecessary business,” says Anne Luther, […]
In the past few weeks, hundreds of Montecito and Santa Barbara residents have been laid off or furloughed in the wake of the social distancing and shelter at home mandates issued in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. To get a sense of how this has already affected Santa Barbara’s tourism and hospitality industries, we […]
Eagle-eyed readers of this esteemed journal may have noticed the Montecito Sanitary District’s public service ads that have run in the paper the last two weeks urging residents not to flush wet wipes down the drain. “SAVE YOUR PIPES, DON’T FLUSH WIPES!” the announcement reads, informing customers that supposedly flushable disinfectant wipes can clog both […]
Based on the rush of emergency supply hoarding that has gone on for the past few weeks, it seems reasonable to suggest that most Montecito residents weren’t exactly prepared for the COVID-19 crisis when it first hit two weeks ago. Fortunately for us, the Montecito Fire Department (MFD) has been preparing for the event for […]
A decade ago, after working at Nordstrom for several years, Ellen Sztuk took a lunch break one day and called up her husband, telling him she was going to quit her job. That night, when she came home from work, her husband asked her what she could possibly be thinking. “I told him that I […]
Since 1979, Montecito’s non-profit Friendship Center has provided group therapy for senior citizens from Monday through Friday at its rustic headquarters on Eucalyptus Lane. Normally by mid-morning on a weekday, the center would be a buzz of activity, with caregivers dropping off members to enjoy a day full of live music, therapy dog yoga, talks […]
Don’t even try to tell Mary Sheldon about how COVID-19 is hurting local businesses. After all, the owner of Tecolote Book Shop in Montecito’s Upper Village has been a bookseller for 30 years, the last 20 of which had the misfortune of taking place after the unprecedented rise of online shopping spearheaded by Amazon. Technically, […]