NEWS of the WEEK
AUG. 22-29, 2019
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by TYLER HAYDEN @TylerHayden1, NICK WELSH, DELANEY SMITH, and JEAN YAMAMURA, with INDEPENDENT STAFF
POLITICS
NEWS BRIEFS IMMIGRATION “Interfaith was looking for a way to respond to these national horror stories of children in cages,” said Maureen Claffey of the Unitarian Society, host to a fundraising concert on 9/7 to help refugees and immigrants seeking asylum understand their civil rights and obtain food and clothing. Singing for Asylum benefits S.B. Immigrant Legal Defense Center and the Asylum Project and features singer/songwriters Kate Wallace and Doug Clegg, 7-9 p.m. The cover charge is a suggested $10 minimum, and donations can be made by calling the Unitarian Society at 965-4583.
GOLETA/COUNTY To broaden the appeal of City Council meetings to constituents and to address a voting rights act settlement in 2017 with the District Elections Committee, the City of Goleta will change its meeting times starting October 1. The council has held afternoon and evening sessions during its decade and a half, and they now move to 4 p.m. for closed sessions and 5:30 p.m. for open meetings on the first and third Tuesday of the month. The new hours equal the roughly 6.5 hours of a normal council session.
OUT THE GATE: Laura Capps held a kick-off rally for her supervisorial bid surrounded by many supporters including her mother, former congressmember Lois Capps (behind her left shoulder); and publisher-philanthropist Sarah Miller McCune, just in front. Incumbent Supervisor Das Williams (left) says he lookvs forward to knocking on doors.
It’s Official: Capps Challenges Williams Santa Barbara County’s 1st District Supervisor Race Starts Off with Roses
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by Nick Welsh
t was perhaps the most excruciatingly beautiful political throwdown in Santa Barbara history: Santa Barbara school boardmember Laura Capps announced Tuesday she was running for the 1st District supervisorial seat against incumbent Das Williams at a press conference orchestrated at the Rose Garden by the Santa Barbara Mission — under sunny August sky-blue skies — where Capps disclosed she once rolled down the hill as a young girl. Surrounded by an army of friends, family, and enthusiastic, sign-
wielding well-wishers, Capps — the daughter of husband-and-wife former congressmembers Walter and Lois Capps — vowed repeatedly to listen to her constituents, and not just special interests, and conduct herself with integrity. She spoke frequently of the “bond of trust” that must exist between elected officials and their community and of being a “caretaker” for the community. Reverend Anne Howard, who spoke before Capps, hit similar themes but more pointedly. There could be “no under the table contributions and no backroom deals.” When asked if she was suggesting Williams didn’t listen or that CONT’D ON PAGE 12
HEALTH
Chasing Holy Grail of Psych Services for Kids
TRANSPORTATION None of the seven people on board were hurt when a C-130 cargo plane skidded to a stop at Santa Barbara Municipal Airport late Sunday night, but about 4,000 passengers found their flights canceled for most of Monday. The big fourengine aircraft was headed to Mesa, Arizona, from Santa Maria when catastrophic hydraulic problems caused an emergency landing without flaps to slow it down. Firefighters put out a fire that erupted, and investigators looked into the crash when daylight dawned. It was towed away that night after a crane raised the craft and its landing gear was lowered.
DEATHS
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by Nick Welsh
f the “Holy Grail” is more psychiatric beds and a “more robust continuum of care,” for those under 18 years of age, as County Supervisor Das Williams put it Tuesday, then the supervisors clearly have a lot more chasing to do. That was the upshot of the supervisors’ response to a recent Grand Jury report lamenting the acute lack of acute-care facilities in Santa Barbara County for children and youth in psychological distress. The county has no inpatient psychiatric hospital to treat teen patients who pose an imminent threat to themselves or to others, nor are there any less-restrictive step-down beds where minors can receive short-term or extended residential treatment. Alice Gleghorn, director for county Behavioral Wellness, stated no plans for a hospital existed either because the demand is too small to
The county has no inpatient psychiatric facility to treat teen patients in psychological distress. justify the substantial expense. Since 2014, she noted, 320 minors were ordered to threeday involuntary holds, 54 in the last year. But before the patients were hospitalized, 20 per-
cent of the orders were rescinded. The rest, she said, went to seven out-of-county psychiatric hospitals, Ventura’s Vista del Mar being the most well-known. A hospital operation could not be sustained on 40 patients a day, Gleghorn argued. In its report, titled “Weathering the Storms of Mental Disorders and Emotional Disturbances,” the Grand Jury objected that shipping such patients out of the county was “restrictive, expensive and stressful for children, parents, and families and mental health care providers.” The Grand Jury pushed for Crisis Stabilization Units (CSUs) where minors in serious distress could seek relief before involuntary hospitalization became necessary. The county now has eight CSU bed spaces, but none are open to minors. Gleghorn argued CSUs were the wrong tool for the job, because they are only available
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Response to Grand Jury Report Refines Psychiatric Facility Needs
Santa Barbara’s culinary world woke up to sad news Saturday morning, learning that Chef James Sly (pictured above) had died from complications after a stroke. Before his Carpinteria restaurant Sly’s, which he operated with his wife, Annie, from 2008 to 2018, he was founding chef at Lucky’s in Montecito and before that chef at El Encanto. Sly was more than just a talented chef — he was a friend and teacher. He was also a fine writer and a lover of language, with a less-known side career as an automotive journalist. n
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For the latest news and longer versions of many of these stories, visit independent.com/news. INDEPENDENT.COM
AUGUST 29, 2019
THE INDEPENDENT
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