UCSB Happy, but Sex Fears Exist
health care
Twenty-three percent of UCSB students, faculty, and staff said they had experienced exclusionary or intimidating conduct on campus, according to a recent study administered by the University of California. Seven percent of respondents said such adverse conduct interfered with their ability to work or learn on campus. Those results and others were part of the system-wide Campus Climate survey made public last month at a UC Regents meeting. On the plus side, 84 percent of UCSB respondents said they were comfortable or very comfortable with the climate on campus, putting the school second in the system behind UC Merced, and 84 percent of undergraduate students and 69 percent of graduate students indicated that many of their courses this year had been intellectually stimulating. But especially noteworthy for UCSB was that 8 percent of respondents reported unwanted sexual contact while at the school within the last five years, the highest rate among the 10 UCs. In the 300-page report, 153 respondents offer additional comments about those experiences. Some experienced gender discrimination in the workplace, others experienced unwanted sexual contact in Isla Vista, several noted instances on Halloween (“even in a modest costume”), and a few males complained that their complaints are not taken seriously. UC Office of the President (UCOP) spokesperson Dianne Klein explained the data was “not scientific enough” and “just a starting point,” but that campuses will start planning to enact measures around the results. “This was the first time we have ever —Kelsey Brugger done anything like this,” said Klein. “Was it perfect? Far from it.”
“failed to negotiate a curve” on the road, causing the trailer to hit the shoulder and nearly flip over. The California Highway Patrol said alcohol and drugs didn’t play a role in the crash, which remains under investigation.
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COUNTY
County supervisors decided in closed session on Tuesday to pay $30,000 to former Search and Rescue volunteer Valerie Walston (pictured), according to county counsel Mike Ghizzoni, “in return for her general release of claims or potential claims” against the county and its current and former employees. The payout is related to her allegations that former undersheriff Jim Peterson sexually harassed her. Walston lost her job in October, shortly after Peterson abruptly retired. Walston’s original claim, filed in November, exceeded $10,000. Ghizzoni added there is “no direct connection between the settlement and any personnel action,” such as possible effects to Peterson’s pension. Drought conditions persist despite the recent rains, so a coalition of four South Coast water agencies are trying to buy 6,200 acre-feet of state water that would otherwise irrigate rice fields from a district near Sacramento. The price is substantially lower than previous state
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water auctioned off throughout the state — about $600 an acre-foot as opposed to $2,200 — but the delivery is far more problematic, as it’s unclear whether the water will be allowed to flow through the environmentally devastated San Joaquin Delta, and if so, how much would be siphoned off as a “carriage cost.” The Montecito Water District declined to participate in the iffy deal, instead pursuing 1,000 acre-feet from a source south of the delta; the water-strapped district’s rationing measures are working, though, said manager Tom Mosby, noting that two of its three biggest water users have cut back drastically. Meanwhile, the City of Santa Barbara is evaluating applications from three engineering firms to reactivate the desalination plant, with interviews scheduled to commence next week. County supervisors agreed to spend $30,000 to update the seven-year-old hotline about human service agencies as the first step in an effort to rehabilitate 2-1-1 telephone service, which was started as a nationwide effort in 2000 by the Federal Communications Commission. Santa Barbara County’s Family Service Agency launched it in 2005, but now the Community Action Commission will handle it, although it’s still unknown where the $190,000 in annual operation costs will come from. Several cities are no longer interested in supporting it. Aside from Supervisor Peter Adam — who suggested the decline may be due to the rise of the Internet — the supervisors agreed that the directory desperately needed updating. Argued Supervisor Steve Lavagnino, “We spend half a billion dollars annually on social services. We need to spend [the $30,000] to let people know where to access the services.” The Mission Canyon Community Plan, in the works since 2006, received its final approval on Tuesday, when the supervisors voted unanimously to adopt it. The supervisors previously certified the plan’s environmental documents in February, and the Santa Barbara City Council — the area is in the county but adjacent to the city — approved it in March. The plan for the area, cont’d page 15
TREATMENT NOT JAIL: Nancy Speer, whose mentally ill son nearly died in county jail after having stolen a Food Bank truck, argued on Tuesday that alternatives to jail are cheaper and more humane.
Mental-Health ‘Hijacks’ Hearing
Advocates Call for Treatment, Not Incarceration
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BY N I C K W E L S H n a well-orchestrated surprise attack, mental-health advocates quietly stormed the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors’ chambers this Tuesday, and in the words of one critic, “hijacked” the meeting to demand a range of treatment options for the mentally ill rather than just putting them behind bars. For more than an hour, more than a dozen people — including at least one mentally ill person, several mothers of mentally ill children, and many religious leaders — focused on an issue that wasn’t even on the board agenda. The group, which was led by Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) and Families ACT, did so by taking advantage of the time at the beginning of public meetings that state law reserves as an open forum on any issue. Frequently, this time is monopolized by political eccentrics and crackpots, but activists of various stripes have recently been seizing it for their own agenda. In this case, it was to hammer home the conclusion of a recent CLUE report showing that at any given time, 250 inmates at the County Jail are locked up for nonviolent offenses tied to mental illness rather than criminal intent.“Putting people in treatment would cost $20,000 less per year per person,” said Nick Beeson, the report’s author, estimating the county could save $3 million a year with just 150 of those being given different treatment.“To do the right thing,” he said,“would cost us less.” People have made this point repeatedly for 30 years, and in 2008, Sheriff Bill Brown’s own task force on jail overcrowding concluded similarly. In 2011, the Grand Jury complained that the jail’s revolving door for the mentally ill was unsustainably expensive and destructive to all. Tuesday’s move was politically timed to Sheriff Brown’s ongoing race for reelection, which is likely to devolve into a referendum on his efforts to build a new North County jail. While Brown has secured a significant state grant to provide some services for the mentally ill, mental-health advocates remain decidedly
skeptical. Said one speaker,“If you build it, they will come.” Additionally, the supervisors will hear a major progress report next month on the reform of the county’s underfunded and often dysfunctional mental-health-care system. Conspicuously absent from either the new jail or the mental-health reforms are provisions for new assisted-living facilities, and that’s the gap these mental-health advocates seek to fill. Prior to the hearing, Families ACT! members privately provided the supervisors a draft plan to build 70 units of supervised housing for those suffering from a mix of mental illness and addiction problems, funding the operation with a combination of rental income, tax breaks, and social-service dollars. Fueling Families ACT! for the past several years has been the abiding grief of parents who’ve lost their adult children to a combination of mental illness, incarceration, and drug overdoses. But adding real-estatedevelopment expertise to the operation is Frank Thompson, a bona fide wheeler-dealer when it comes to getting affordable housing built. Thompson’s proposal, dubbed “Next Steps .,” also suggests that it will cost millions to build but even more not to. Conservative political watchdog Andy Caldwell took exception to the whole event, pointing out the supervisors’ bylaws limit the public comment period to no more than 15 minutes. “You just allowed your meeting to get hijacked,” he complained. After the meeting, Supervisor Salud Carbajal took exception to Caldwell’s exception. “We didn’t get hijacked,” he said. “We were moved by what the people said. And we responded.” Though major changes are imminent for both mental health and the jail, Carbajal remained troubled that not all options were getting due consideration. “There’s a lot of activity right now, but I’m frustrated,” he said. “I don’t think we’re seeing what the gaps are and how we can best fill them. Maybe we can’t afford it, but we should at least know what we should be striving for. I’m just not seeing it.” ■ april 3, 2014
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