News of theWeek
CONT’D
Monarch Mystery PAU L WELLM AN F I LE PHOTO
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BY LY Z H O F F M A N
he low number of monarch butterflies to land in Goleta’s Ellwood groves this year isn’t really the story, said biologist Dan Meade. “The story is that it was an unusual weather year.” According to Meade and other officials who study the insect, the drought could be a key contributor to the small figures. With the butterfly season now behind us, data provided by Meade, who is working with the City of Goleta on its plan to keep the butterfly habitat healthy, show that the highest number to flock to Ellwood this season was just over 10,000, and only 3,800 in the popular main BYE-BYE, BUTTERFLY: Is this year’s dry weather grove. Although similarly low counts to blame for the low number of monarchs in the were recorded for the main grove as Ellwood groves? recently as 2007 and 2009, the numbers Erica Fleishman, a research affiliate for were as high as 50,000 and 20,000 in 2011 and UCSB, said that with monarchs losing their 2012, respectively. Although he cautioned that the counts can habitat around the world — a report from the vary year to year, Meade said that the lack of World Wildlife Foundation recently found that rain means a lack of milkweed, which butter- Mexico-hibernating monarchs have reached flies lay their eggs on and on which caterpillars their lowest point in more than 20 years — rely for food. The mild weather is also a likely “their ability to take a weather-related hit is culprit for the minimal Ellwood Main num- decreasing over time.” (The butterflies that bers, Meade said, because without storms to travel to Mexico come from east of the Rockencourage the butterflies to seek the best shel- ies, Meade said, while California’s fly from west ter — the “dense groves and tall canopies” of the of the Rockies.) Meade added that much of eucalyptus trees — they aren’t forced to hiber- the concern over monarchs is also at the state nate there. At the Goleta City Council meet- level, as counts for bees have also been decreasing on Tuesday night, city staff spoke about ing, and butterfly counts have seen “a dramatic the city’s docent program, one of only four in reduction” since the 1980s and 1990s. In the California, and noted that Ellwood Main, one meantime, preserving the migration sites is of the largest aggregation sites in the state, is crucial, Meade said. “These are all concerns usually the monarch’s preferred grove, but that in making sure the phenomena continues,” he ■ said. this year the butterflies branched out.
FALSTAFF by giuseppe verdi
FRIDAY
MAR
7
7:30PM THE GRANADA
SUNDAY
MAR
9
2:30PM tickets
i n f o r m at i o n : 8 9 9 – 2 2 2 2 / o p e r a s b. o r g photo: Kevin Steele / location: carr winery
Road Maintenance DOA?
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BY LY Z H O F F M A N upervisor Peter Adam’s ballot initiative to prioritize funding for the upkeep of county-owned roads, buildings, and parks took a wallop this week from County Auditor-Controller Bob Geis, whose fiscal impact statement on the measure said it could spell doom for county finances — and possibly be infeasible. The extra $18 million-$21 million annually that Public Works has said would be needed to preserve the condition of the aforementioned facilities would — without new revenue —“result in a major reallocation of county resources away from services they currently support,” including public safety and health and human services. Further, Geis wrote, funding for such programs is prescribed by law, meaning that “it may not be possible for the Board of Supervisors to fund the requirements of the ordinance.” To be put before voters on June 3, Adam’s maintenance ordinance — which happened to draw the title of Measure M from the elections office, which Adam called “divinely fortuitous nomenclature”— would require the supervisors to hold the facilities to their existing levels or better, so as not to add the costs to the county’s $300 million-and-growing deferred maintenance backlog. Debt couldn’t be used to foot the bill, unless voters give their okay.
Geis’s statement, submitted to the elections office on February 28, said how the supervisors deal with the ordinance, if passed, would depend on how they decide to measure the standards, how they can balance the required funding against other needs, and “the extent to which the ordinance is valid under state law.” (County counsel will submit an impartial legal analysis for the ballot on March 10.) Finding other sources of revenue would be the key to minimizing the ordinance’s effects on money for other services. Voter-approved parcel taxes, general-obligation bonds, and infrastructure improvement bonds could work, Geis wrote. Increasing the county’s hotel bed tax — the supervisors recently re-floated the idea to increase its 10 percent tax to 12, to match other area cities’ rates — could also work, Geis said, but to restrict the tax to infrastructure would require a two-thirds approval by the public. “The board is still going to be in charge of where the money comes from,” Adam said. “What the initiative can do is tell them to do something. What the initiative can’t do is tell them how to do it.” With Supervisor Doreen Farr, Supervisor Salud Carbajal, who has called the measure the “anti-public safety net initiative,” will be authoring an argument against the measure for the ballot. ■ march 6, 2014
THE INDEPENDENt
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