Letters to the Editor

Edited by Jim Buckley

(The following is just a trickle of some of the many comments, observations, claims, and suggestions received by Santa Barbara Current, a publication that receives no direct or indirect USAID or nonprofit funding. To enhance your reading experience, please follow the Comment thread that appears immediately after each column. If you’d like to contribute a letter to the editor, please send separately to jim@sbcurrent.com, and add your city/town in your comment.)

Meet The Next President of the United States

May I present to you the next POTUS (in January 2029): James David Vance? He walks courageously into a den of vipers and delivers a diplomatically blistering indictment of Europe's declining commitment to Western values. This is the hallmark of a leader. In speeches such as this, there are usually three occasions for perfunctory standing ovations. That day, the newly minted VPOTUS was greeted with one spate of spontaneously polite applause midway through the relatively short address. On two other occasions, Vance's entourage standing in the back of the hall tried to lead the official guests into insincere applause… unsuccessfully.

President Trump will use his brilliant Vice-President to be his intellectual battering ram before audiences like this over the next four years. Agree or disagree (most participants were stunned and made wordless), everybody present was fully aware the U.S.A. is back on top and leading from a position of strength and wisdom. The adults have returned and taken over. They may not like the fact that Europe is definitely in second place vis a vis the U.S.A., but subconsciously they are secure in the knowledge that push comes to shove the U.S.A. has Europe's back. But Europe must restore its obedience to Western civilization to lay claim to America's security umbrella.

J.D. is learning the art of the deal!

David Samuel McCalmont

Santa Barbara

Keep Talking

I'm just going to keep saying it: Santa Barbara needs a conservative viewpoint on local news and issues, investigative reporting on the crooks that are robbing us blind. We lost the News-Press, I was hoping Santa Barbara Current would fill this gap. but no just local conservatives talking about national issues. Who needs that? Yet another National commentary (everyone has an opinion) while Santa Barbara and Goleta and California corruption drive us into the mud. What a missed opportunity. Sad.

(Editor’s note: Ah well, Bonnie Donovan, Brian Campbell, Peter Adam, and many others who regularly keep watch on Santa Barbara goings-on will be unhappy to hear that! – J.B.)

Randall Forsyth

Santa Barbara

Note to Supervisor Lee

I am a resident of the First District in Santa Barbara County. I am registering with you my opinion that a 48% salary increase for your part-time job is not justified. Frankly, it is just not right. Using a timely vernacular, it is not common sense. You cannot compare your salaries to those of the largest counties in the nation. Please vote NO to this inappropriate increase. Thank you for your consideration.

Harold J. Baer M.D.

Santa Barbara

(Editor’s note: You’ll be pleased to read that former Supervisor Peter Adam agrees with you, as do probably most Santa Barbara County residents. – J.B.)

Is 5G Here to Stay?

I had the opportunity to sit in on the Santa Barbara County Supervisors meeting on February 4h and listen to over an hour of high-level bureaucratic discussion by a 5G company that will be putting up cell towers throughout Santa Barbara County in the coming years.

The committee – chaired by Laura Capps, listened to Santa Barbara County Deputy Director of planning and development discuss elements installing and maintaining these towers over time. It was quite daunting to hear the scope of the many components needed to plan for installation of what may be thousands of towers in Santa Barbara and outlying areas.

Had I had the opportunity to get to the microphone, I would have taken a different tact than most of the opposers; I would have confronted the board with the following questions: 1) Will the manufacturers and the County of Santa Barbara declare eminent domain on any piece of land owned by a corporation or a private residence as you prepare to install these towers? 2) The County of Santa Barbara (or any governmental agency) has the right to refuse a contract based upon public health and safety issues. So, my second question is: Has the 5G manufacturing company ever had any fire problems, sparking or energy pulses throughout any of their systems that are already installed which may fall into this safety category? 3) Has the 5G manufacturer ever been involved in any previous litigation with any other municipality that they have contracted to install their towers?

The board did a masterful job of deflecting concerns based on previous codes, mandates, and contracts. What they did not do was discuss any element of concern for public health regarding RF emissions from 5G towers, which are known to impact biological health and may increase the risk of health issues over time (Scientific Reports, July 2012; Oncology Letters, July 2020). Of course, it seemed that the county supervisors would vote ‘yes’ on the proposal from the onset, which they did. A community member stated that if anything does go wrong, it would be over 30 years before any contractual changes could be made, based on previous agreements with communities such as Malibu.

One of the other community comments was on legal liability. If anything does go south (and probably will) lawsuits will certainly ensue. The resident stated correctly that while there may not be any direct liability to the county, each member bears personal liability, and of course a savvy law firm would certainly exploit the personal Notice of Liability here.

Just food for thought.

Eric Durak, MSc

President and Founder

Medical Health and Fitness

(Editor’s note: Perhaps our new Secretary of Health & Human Services [Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.] will have something to say along these lines! – J.B.)

Open Letter from Former Supervisor Mike Stoker to Current Supervisors

I am writing to you in my capacity as the President & CEO of the Santa Barbara County Taxpayer Advocacy Center. Your board is considering a pay raise of 48% to make your annual salaries roughly $171,000 per year.

In considering the pay raise your staff has given you counties like LA, Orange, San Diego, and Santa Clara counties to use for comparisons in salary. Back in 1991 when I served on the Board of Supervisors, I used 'comparable counties' in advocating for safety retirement and salary increases for county fire and deputy sheriffs. The 'comparable counties" measurement has been used ever since for salary considerations. Initially, those counties included Monterey, SLO, Kern, and Ventura counties with an understanding that Ventura County was a much larger county with a much larger budget. I strongly urge your board to not set the precedent of using counties like LA, Orange, San Diego, or Santa Clara counties for any salary comparisons, including your own.

Additionally, as the story of the proposed salary increase evolved publicly over the last couple of weeks, the question has come up whether the job of a county supervisor is a full or part-time job. I have publicly stated the answer to that question depends on what any supervisor wants to make it. When I served on the Board of Supervisors I certainly made it a full-time job. However, one of my colleagues, Bill Wallace was a veterinarian and he continued to work as a veterinarian 2 to 3 days a week. The bottom line is every elected County Supervisor makes their own decision as to how much time they will allocate to the job. From everything I know, all five of you treat your position as a full-time job. While a personally oppose this pay raise, to the extent you do increase your salaries as proposed, I would encourage you to include a provision with the pay raise that expressly states that County Supervisors shall be prohibited from receiving any outside compensation. I had a statutory prohibition from receiving outside compensation when I served as Chairman of the CA Agricultural Labor Relations Board. There are countless state and federal positions that have the restriction of no compensation other than the compensation received for the specific job. You very well may have a contractual prohibition for your department heads prohibiting them from receiving outside compensation. If you don't you should probably do so going forward.

The bottom line is your board has an opportunity to put aside the question of whether your position is full or part-time by tying your salary into the restriction that you will not receive outside compensation.

Sincerely,
Mike Stoker
President & CEO, SBCTAC

Former Supervisor Peter Adam Also Weights In Salary Increase

Lately, there has been a lot of digital ink spilled on the proposal to increase salaries for the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. As a recent participant in the County Supervisor business, I think I should weigh in on the subject.

Much to the displeasure of my colleagues at the time, I voted against each attempt to raise our own pay. This was because, as I routinely pointed out, we had tremendous unfunded liability and deferred maintenance issues. I told them repeatedly that if they were the Board of Directors of a very successful billion-dollar, publicly traded company, they would certainly deserve the raise. Maybe they’d be cheap at twice the price. But as it was, with over $2 billion of deferred maintenance and unfunded liability, they didn’t deserve any raise at all. Then, when they went ahead despite my objections and approved the raise, they suggested that I not take it if I didn’t vote for it. I declined to take them up on that offer on the theory that if they were going to take it and run the county into the ground, I sure as hell wasn’t going to take less than them for insisting they ran it better.

That was then and this is now.

I can argue both sides of this issue. First, despite what some gadflies say, done properly, being Supervisor is indeed a full-time job. In fact, many of my best ideas came in the middle of the night or in the shower, first thing in the morning. This is not an assembly-line job. Much of the job consists of thinking about how you view the workings of government and its employees and how they should be interacting among themselves and with the public.

As a supervisor, you “work”, i.e., think, involuntarily, most of your waking and some of your sleeping hours each day. Including holidays and weekends. Just because there are no televised meetings on Tuesday does not mean that scheming (in the least pejorative context possible) and planning has been stopped. There are rare but very important events that we are required by convention, if not necessity, to attend to, such as mudslides, fires, and failures of major roads during storms causing human suffering. These, like babies, come on their own schedule and wait for no one. And it does not include campaigning for reelection. That is specifically prohibited on county property with public resources.

The fact is that it is a hard job that takes a lot of energy. We do want the people who serve to be of a high ethical and intellectual caliber. I would think most of us would rather not have someone representing us for whom this would be the highest paying job they could ever expect to attain.

So, on one hand, if not now, when? If they don’t give themselves a raise now, who will run for the office in the future? Only the independently wealthy? It is indeed an act of service. If most people think it should be on a volunteer basis, someone could put an initiative on the ballot and take away all their salary. Who will that attract? That would certainly change the landscape. Perhaps not in a good way.

The optics will always be horrible for Supervisors to raise their own salaries. Yet, at the moment, that is what the system requires. I am not necessarily defending the 48% number. I have always objected to the methodology by which County HR staff suggests such increases. Supervisors do not make this stuff up themselves. The fact is, that system is a ratchet-like system in use for all classifications of county employees. If county X and county Y “comparable counties” pay more for a particular position, then we are expected to increase too. A government version of Monkey See, Monkey Do. And a convenient excuse for an ever-increasing spiral of employee pay. I considered it invalid when I was there, and I still despise it.

I tell you what I would support. That is a less significant raise predicated on the following: that all the supervisors who vote for the ordinance also agree to: 1) Demand transparency from our Behavioral Wellness (BW) department. Make them produce an anonymized report (at least) annually that discloses what the number of distinct individuals who interact with BW is, what level of care they are requiring, and how many of those people become self-sufficient and graduate from the system. In other words, how many people are we actually helping? I asked for this information for most of my eight years and never received any good faith answer at all. This should be unacceptable for staff to stonewall the elected officials until they leave. The elected should be able to have access to legitimate information with which to analyze whether a(ny) county department is being successful. And 2) Commit to reducing the number of funded and filled positions. When I left the county, there were approximately 4300 employees. Now there are 4700. According to the assistant in my iPhone, the population has decreased from 448,229 in 2020 to 438,599 in 2024. If that’s the case, we should be shedding employees rather than gathering them.

These are a couple of difficult things that Supervisors could propose to prove that they are the worthy, responsible, stewards of a 1.6 Billion-dollar company and should be worth a commensurate salary.

The fact is that the situation is different than when I was there. The budget has grown. Costs have risen. Right or wrong, county employees’ salaries have risen. Maybe, in the interest of not having to double or triple the salary at some point in the future, we should allow Supervisors to increase their salaries a reasonable amount, in exchange for a commitment to run the “company” properly, without throwing too many rocks at them? Both paths into the future contain risk.

Peter Adam

Former Fourth District Supervisor

(Editor’s note: The first thing I would do if in your former position as Supervisor is determine how many employees are required to do the work the public expects county employees to do. I’ll bet the answer would be considerably less people than there are now. – J.B.)

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