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Gender Equality Examined
Despite the high visibility of powerful Santa Barbara women — Rep. Lois Capps, State Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, District Attorney Joyce Dudley, Mayor Helene Schneider, and so on — and the fact that females make up 54 percent of county voters, only 30 percent of our elected positions are filled by women. That’s one of the findings put forth in a recent Orfalea Foundation study, which compiled statistics on education, poverty, child care, and compensation rates in Santa Barbara and was released ahead of feminist Gloria Steinem’s visit to the Arlington Theatre this Thursday. Santa Barbara teen pregnancy rates have decreased overall in recent years, but the Latina teen pregnancy rate is 14 times higher than that of white females, the study shows. A single mother earning minimum wage spends, on average, 81 percent of her salary on child-care costs. Of the 412,871 people living in the county in 2012, 10.6 percent were employed women living below the poverty line, compared to 7.4 percent of men. “Clearly, there’s a long way to go,” said 3rd District Supervisor Doreen Farr, adding she has seen enormous strides for women since she was a teenager. “I played sports in high school when it wasn’t cool.” Nine females have sat on the County Board of Supervisors since the first woman was elected to the position in 1989. Former Santa Barbara County CEO Chandra Wallar became the first woman appointed to the chief spot in 2010, and she was recently replaced by Mona Miyasato. At the Santa Barbara city level, women have held administrator positions in the Public Works, Airport, and Parks and Recreation departments and have served as mayor for much of the last three decades. Of the 89 city firefighters, three are women. The police department employs 21 female officers — three sergeants — out of 143 sworn personnel. And of the 616 Sheriff’s Office employees, 166 are females. Violence against women is lower in the county compared to the rest of the state, according to the study. President Barack Obama recently reminded Americans that women make up about half of the national workforce, but only earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. In Santa Barbara, women make up 39 percent of the workforce and earn 81 cents to the male’s dollar. There are 11,000 women-owned businesses, or 28 percent of all businesses in the county. “There’s less overt discrimination and much more structural discrimination,” said UCSB Feminist Studies Department Chair Eileen Boris, who has sat on the board of CAUSE (Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy). “[Santa Barbara] might be a special place, but the county as a whole exemplifies the two Americas. That is incredibly dangerous for the health of democracy.” — Kelsey Brugger
More than two years after it was stolen from the Arlington Theatre’s entryway on Christmas Eve 2011, a one-of-a kind lamp made with valuable Depression glass and crafted around the same time the theater was built in 1931 has found its way home. This Saturday, Michael Junk (pictured left) — who works at Antique Alley and visits garage and yard sales looking for hidden gems — spotted the lamp at a sale hosted by a small home on La Patera Ranch property. He recognized it from the original Santa Barbara Independent report on the theft and from frequently walking his dogs through Arlington’s breezeway. Junk said he bought the lamp from the eager seller for $5 — “I didn’t ask questions,” he explained. “I usually don’t” — and returned it to the Arlington soon after. Theater manager Karen Killingsworth said she’s notified police that the item has been returned. Read more at independent.com. The phrase most used by city councilmembers to describe Ariel Calonne — named last week as City Hall’s new legal top gun — is “crazy smart,” followed closely by “quirky.” But mostly, coun-
QUICK CURRENTS: In his position on the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, Jeff Young has presided over some intensely contentious issues.
Talking Dirty
with Clean-Water Czar
Jeff Young Examines Ag Runoff, Urban Soup, and Diablo Canyon Heat
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cilmembers have been struck by the breadth of Calonne’s experience working for cities similar to Santa Barbara. Since 2007, Calonne (pictured) — who introduced himself to the public at this Tuesday’s council meeting — has worked as city attorney for Ventura, where Santa Barbara headhunters lured him away. “You could say they roped me in,” he noted, shortly after commenting, “This isn’t my first rodeo.” Before Ventura, Calonne worked as city attorney for Palo Alto and Boulder, Colorado. He is expected to start work 3/17, just three weeks before what promises to be an intense courtroom battle over the city’s proposed gang injunction.
COUNTY The county’s Department of Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health Services (ADMHS) is seeking 11 new full-time licensed clinicians or interns to work with foster kids. Five of the positions will be located in Santa Maria and three each in Lompoc and Santa Barbara. The extra jobs come from a recently decided Los Angeles lawsuit that orders California counties to better provide mental-health care to foster kids. Sixty-five of the county’s 375 foster kids are ADMHS clients; 124 more will become clients this year. The Board of Supervisors approved a $1.2 milcont’d page 12 lion loan for an affordable
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BY N I C K W E L S H eff Young has the dubious distinction of having made Julia Child sick to her stomach. For what it’s worth, he wound up getting sick, too. That was about 20 years ago when Young was a budding oyster farmer then celebrating his grand opening with an extravagant chow down at the Wine Cask. Within weeks, environmental health officials would shut him down, citing unacceptably high levels of fecal coliform in tissue samples taken from his oysters. Young — who holds a degree in mariculture — was not inclined to go quietly into anybody’s good night. He would soon discover his oyster barge located off Hendry’s Beach lay in the cross fire of two sewage effluent plumes — one from the Goleta Sanitary District and the other from the City of Santa Barbara’s sewage treatment plant. Neither, he would contend in subsequent lawsuits, had been sufficiently treated. As a result, he claimed, his business was destroyed. Santa Barbara quickly made adjustments. Goleta, by contrast, fought him tooth and nail. Along the way, Young found himself pursuing a whole new dream. Forced to give up oyster farming, he got a law degree. And he became an anti-water-pollution champion. For years, he teamed up with Hillary Hauser to form Heal the Ocean’s one-two punch. By calling into question whether Santa Barbara’s beaches were as pristine as they seemed, Hauser and Young made creek and ocean pollution an issue that neither politicians nor bureaucrats could safely ignore. Young would be appointed to the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, a relatively obscure state agency with significant regulatory and enforcement authority to enforce state and federal clean-water rules. As an activist, Young chafed at the board’s lack of regulatory initiative and enforcement zeal. But late last year, he was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to his third four-year term. And for much of his tenure on the board,Young — distinguished by a calm, open, even-handed style — served as chair. Young recently took time to talk with The Santa Barbara Independent about water-quality issues affecting the South Coast. The following is an edited version of that exchange.
When you look at this area, what are the big issues when it comes to water quality? There
are two — irrigated agriculture and municipal areas, the urbanized areas. Those two land-use practices are the predominant impacts to water quality in our region.
Urban storm-water runoff — how bad is that?
Depending on where you’re looking, it’s bad enough that we have pollutants in some of our surface waters — creeks, rivers, streams — which are impacted enough that they qualify for a federal Clean Water Act listing.
What areas around here? There are 56 unique water body segments in Santa Barbara County that are on the list. It could be a stretch of a creek or river with elevated levels, or you could have, for a given river, multiple unique stretches that may have violations. So what are the typical issues? What we have
for urban pollutants is the oil and grease in gas and hydrocarbons that come off of our vehicles. That gets washed into surface waters. We have heavy metals from brake linings that come off cars that get into surface waters. We also get bacteria; people walk their dogs. Sometimes we have breaks in storm-water lines. We do have breaks that we’re just not aware of, and that can end up in the urban soup. As you look into the urban soup in our area, how significant is this? It depends who you ask.
Ask Andy Caldwell, and he’ll say, “Who gives a shit?” He’ll say, “I can see the water.” I’m being facetious, but he came to the water board and complained that we were even thinking about issuing any limits for the Santa Maria River. He said, “I drive over that bridge every day. There’s no water in that river. What are you guys trying to do? Get a life.” But it’s a concern. The urban soup impacts receiving waters. It impacts that natural assemblage of invertebrates and fish that we would normally have. How well do we understand this? One thing
we don’t have a lot of data on is the ecology of a lot of our streams. The cont’d page 14
february 13, 2014
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