22nd Annual Dinner April 27, 2013 at the Chumash Casino

January 2013
22nd Annual Dinner April 27, 2013
at the Chumash Casino Resort!
Back by POPULAR Demand
VOL.22 ISSUE 1
Ralph Harris & Tammy Pescatelli
PLUS
Dinner, Open Bar, and Dancing!
$115 per person
Best Seats: $1150 per table of Ten
Reserve online at www.colabsbc.org
Or by Mail at:
COLAB
PO Box 7523
Santa Maria, CA 93456
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COLAB
D
Chicken Little and the Pot of Black Gold
ecision makers in Santa Barbara County
and the rest of the State would do well to
pay attention to a court case developing
in San Luis Obispo County. Excelaron,
an oil company, is suing the county for $6 billion!
That dollar figure corresponds to the potential estimated value of the oil in the field that the county refused to allow the company to develop.
The basis of the lawsuit has to do with the fact
that the county determined that oil production would
be incompatible with the character of the valley
where the oil field lies. This despite the fact that the
project is located in a State-designated oil field, is
allowable under the county general and specific
plans, and drilling has taken place there before! The
county gave the oil company no path by which they
could get their project approved. Therefore, the
company has a complaint for inverse condemnation
and damages.
Many people today do not understand that mineral rights are just as important and legally protected
as surface rights. When a government takes away all
the value associated with a right, they are required by
law to compensate the owners accordingly for their
loss.
What we are witnessing in SLO County could be
a preview of coming attractions in our county. That
is because environmental activists are clamoring to
shut down the on-shore oil industry, even though this
industry has a tremendous safety record lasting well
over 100 years.
To be clear, even though fracking has been safely
used for decades in the industry, we are not discussing projects that would use this method to extract oil.
Therefore, the projects being proposed should not
raise any level of undue concern in the community.
Projects in conformity to our county zoning laws
which utilize engineering techniques approved by the
State Division of Oil and Gas pose no threat to any
resource and are a boon to our local economy.
We would all do well to pay attention as various
oil projects work their way through the county process and insist that our decision makers balance concerns for surface impacts, mineral rights, economic
prosperity, and our energy needs. Balance in the decision making process means decision makers must-
n’t pander to radical environmentalists who risk
bankrupting the county in two ways. First, foregoing
the revenues, energy and jobs that accrue from this
historic and vital industry and second, risking losing
a court judgement over an unconstitutional taking of
mineral rights.
Producing energy from multiple sources is necessary and vital to our quality of life, our economy and
our national security. Nonetheless, we have all witnessed environmentalists oppose solar projects, wind
projects, wave energy projects, hydroelectric, nuclear, off-shore and on-shore oil, liquefied natural
gas, and coal not to mention the means by which energy is produced and delivered including refineries,
tankers, pipelines and transmission lines.
If we do not strike a balance, the chicken little
activists will soon have us all sitting in the darkcold, vulnerable and broke!
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
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COLAB
T
Whistling at Whales
here is legitimate controversy in this
world about the moral justification and
necessity of confining and displaying
animals in circuses, marine mammal
parks, and zoos. Some would argue that these
types of venues give most of mankind the only
chance they will ever have to see these animals up
close. Others argue that keeping animals in captivity for the enjoyment and amusement of the populace is just downright cruel and inhumane. But,
what about scientists or naturalists who bring people out into the wild to see animals in their natural
environment? Is that an acceptable compromise?
Consider the plight of marine biologist Nancy
Black, who also is a captain of a whale-watching
ship in Monterey Bay. If she, or a crew member,
whistled at a humpback whale, to catch its attention, would you consider that harassment of an animal? As part of an investigation, the Feds demanded a tape of just such an incident. The tape
led the prosecutors to conclude that the whistling
did not rise to the level of harassment. End of
story? Not exactly. Black only sent them the
video of the whistling incident, even though nothing else out of the ordinary occurred that day. The
prosecutors, nonetheless, indicted her because she
failed to send an unedited tape of the entire trip!
Things only went downhill from there. To
make a long and painful story short, while on another outing studying and filming killer whale
feeding habits, she was subsequently accused of
“interfering” with the feeding in order to get a better underwater video of their feeding habits.
Here we have a scientist, with bona fide credentials, working in the field to help people appreciate
wildlife and to help further the cause of research,
yet, she might be going to prison! Why? Because
some federal regulators and over-zealous prosecutors believe they alone have guardianship of
whales in the ocean.
I believe that people who deliberately neglect or
mistreat animals should be punished to the fullest
extent of the law. But, how is it possible to study
animals without interacting with them?
Locally, out of concern for impacts to
“resources”, we routinely witness conflicts in our
community over the ability of scientists, farmers,
ranchers, industrialists and builders to serve humanity and protect nature. Is it possible for a
farmer to grow food in a field without disturbing in
some way the ground, the water resources, and the
wildlife? Can a manufacturer produce goods without using some type of natural resources? Can we
produce energy without any impacts whatsoever?
Why do we only count the cost and not the value of
production?
Our justice system once recognized criminal
intent as an important consideration before initiating prosecution. Today, a citizen’s intent to accomplish something necessary, vital and good for
animals and mankind is no longer a mitigating factor before deciding to charge somebody with
wrongdoing. What ever happened to common
sense and respect for human rights?
People who claim to not produce
impacts, do not produce anything.
They are simply consumers living in
denial.
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press.
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COLAB
T
The Farmer’s Last Stand
he Central Coast was once home to vast
ranchos, consisting of tens of thousands of
acres. Eventually subdivided for inheritance purposes, or sold outright and divided
among investors, only a handful of these very large
ranches remain today. Many other changes took
place over time, so much so you would have scarcely
recognized this place we call home.
Today, a farmer’s biggest challenge comes from
neighbors and activists who insist on sabotaging vertical integration claiming this is industrialization of
farmland. But, neither a fresh head of lettuce, a wine
grape, or a bouquet of flowers can make it to the market on its own! The farmers’ ability to become part
of the supply chain is the only thing standing between them and their own estate sale! To reap the
benefit of value-added services, depending on the
commodity, farmers must be able to package, refrigerate, bottle, and process their goods, and ship their
product too.
A century ago, there were vibrant rural communities,
ocean ports, and company towns throughout the region that are now but faint memories. Industry clusters too, have come and gone. Oil derricks covered
the beaches and shallow waters off the coast of Summerland. Dairies (today, there is not a single dairy
left in Santa Barbara County) and cattle grazing were
the primary agriculture endeavor in the North
County, perfectly coexisting alongside thousands of
oil wells. The most worthless land in the county?
The beachfront!
The unwillingness of neighbors to respect property
rights as it affects one’s ability to make a living off
the land is a serious threat to our farmers. People
who built estates in the middle of farm ground do not
have the moral high ground to oppose vital agricultural development because it is incompatible with
their residential lifestyle!
When the cattle industry and the dairy business
started to lose profitability and modern technology
began to make farming more viable, the subsequently
divided ranchos were divided further still.
Vertical integration is essential because farmers have
always been price-takers, not price-makers. The
price they get for raw product is pennies on the dollar
compared to the price at the grocery store! Yet it is
the farmers who have to absorb the risk associated
with the cost of land, labor, fuel, fertilizer, taxes and
regulatory costs which continually skyrocket, not to
mention the weather.
It was during the last fifty years that we saw the most
dramatic changes especially in the communities of
Carpinteria, Goleta and Santa Ynez. These once predominately agricultural communities became desirable for hobby farmers, industry, urban uses, and luxury estates. Farming and ranching began to disappear
because it could no longer afford to compete for the
use of the land against these high value endeavors,
that is, unless the operation could switch to high
value crops and become vertically integrated.
To preserve our rural countryside, we must continue
to permit farmers to adapt to change and vertically
integrate or they risk losing their farms; something no
community can afford.
(Continued on page 5)
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COLAB
The Gripes of Wrath
Contextually, the economy of the Santa Ynez Valley is based upon tourism: art galleries, golf
courses, Solvang, the Chumash Casino Resort, and
Lake Cachuma, to name just a few of the attractions. The fact that the wine industry is also tourist
-based is a natural fit. But realize, the wine industry is more than just growing grapes! Like all other
agricultural commodities, grape growers must be
vertically integrated in order to be profitable. You
can’t make a living off simply growing and selling
grapes for bulk; it won’t pay the bills. You must
have your own label. And to have a successful label, you must be able to market your wine and attract a dedicated clientele. To accomplish this, you
must be able to attract wine country tourists. This
is why the industry’s ability to create and host
events, parties, weddings, and the like is essential
to successfully put their vineyard, tasting room and
label on the map.
(Continued from page 4)
Ranchette vigilantes are property owners in the rural areas of the county who don’t need to make a
living off the land and who do their best to ensure
their neighbors can’t! The worst of the bunch of
these busy-body neighbors reside in the Santa Ynez
Valley. The vigilantes moved to the countryside to
enjoy the bucolic views, along with the proverbial
peace and quiet, and they don’t want anybody or
anything to disturb the ambience. They live to
complain about everything!
In the meantime, because they purchased their
property for estate purposes, versus the typically
meager return on investment one would expect
from ranching or farming, they drove the price of
land values through the roof! This makes it even
more difficult for a farmer to buy or lease the land
for agricultural production. It is a vicious cycle
affecting our rural economy and agricultural heritage that continues to get worse.
Due to pressure from the ranchette owners and
county bureaucrats, wineries in our county are being hassled for such things as serving food with
wine. They are also being restricted on the number
of people and events they can have in a given year
as well as the size of their tasting rooms.
We need to make it easier for our growers and wineries to stay ahead of the competition. Proposed
revisions to the County winery ordinance suggest
things will only get more difficult. It makes no
sense.
The Santa Ynez Valley is truly a unique and beautiful place and it deserves to be preserved, in a manner of speaking. However, when a Ranchette Vigilante talks about preserving agriculture, they are
referring to a form of preservation more along the
lines of putting it in a jar of formaldehyde! That
way, they can look at it but don’t have to deal with
it! They oppose the need of agriculture to grow,
evolve, and adapt to ever-changing market conditions and the forces of nature.
After all, if agriculture and tourism
are two of the most important sectors of our economy, wouldn’t wine
tourism be their perfectly beautiful
love child?
When I use the word preserve in the same sentence
as agriculture, I am referring to a process by which
we do our best to ensure its continued viability to
withstand the controllable onslaught of taxes, regulations, labor shortages, and competition that would
otherwise spell doom to this dynamic, but volatile
sector of our economy. These are things we can do
something about! Adding to the volatility of agriculture, farmers must also contend with factors beyond their control including weather, invasive pests
and plant diseases, market prices and the like. It is
not easy being a farmer.
First published in the Santa Barbara News Press
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5
COLAB
The California State Fee-fdom
A
fter the passage of Prop. 13, the State of
California started taking away tax proceeds from local government in order to
pay some of its own obligations. In effect, the State of California robbed local municipalities blind by shifting revenue streams back to the
state while burdening local government with unfunded mandates and program costs previously borne
by the state. Local government has since burdened
local citizens and the business community to pay for
this malfeasance. The primary means being the implementation of fees for services and impacts.
more than in Orcutt. Construction costs don’t vary
that much between the North and South County!
If these fees could be justified they would be proportional based upon some objective criteria, but they
are not. And, during this recession, when bids for
construction contracts are coming in lower than they
have in decades, why does the county keep raising
the fees as if construction costs and impacts are rising?
What taxpayers, consumers and business owners
need to do is press the state legislature as to whether
they will rescind the authority to charge these fees if
they plan on introducing a ballot measure to roll back
Prop. 13 property tax protections on business. There
is virtually no business that could withstand paying
ever-increasing property taxes on top of these fees.
Some of the most egregious fees are associated with
construction and the subsequent traffic impacts generated by new development. The theory is that each
new business generates so much traffic that they have
to pay their fair share for traffic impacts. But in reality, new businesses do not necessarily generate new
and additional traffic. For instance, having an additional grocery store in a town does not mean people
make twice as many trips to buy groceries. Notwithstanding the fact that the logic and rationale behind
these fees make no sense, local government nonetheless relies upon them as a proverbial cash cow.
Of course, consumers eventually end up paying for
these costs in the end if the market will bear it. That
means you!
Count the cost the next time you fill up, go to the
bank, or get a slurpee!
In the Goleta Community plan area, if you were to
build a 2,000 square foot, 24-hour convenience store,
the county will charge you $680,850 in traffic fees .
A 4,000 square foot bank with a drive-thru must pay
$2,263,144. A 10-pump service station would pay
$960,263. This is just one reason the cost of living is
higher in the South County!
First Published in the Santa Barbara News Press
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93456
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For comparison, in Orcutt, the county only charges a
fraction for the impacts associated with these same
types of businesses. The same 24-hour convenience
store is charged $172,212. The same size bank
would pay $150,728. The same size service station
would pay $263,530.
Not only are these fees outrageous, they are disproportional. For example, the 24-hour convenience
store in Goleta pays four times more than in Orcutt.
But the banker would pay in Goleta fifteen times
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COLAB
In
Deliver Us From Evil
the last 23-years, there have been
seven mass murders on school campuses in America. Before that, only
two were recorded in the previous
seventy years.
Combine these school massacres with similar such
acts of violence as the Colorado theater shooting
and the pattern is pretty much the same. The one
thing these crimes have in common is the perpetrators were all male, many of them were diagnosed
as mentally ill and all of them, by definition, were
psychopaths. Truth be told, if we added the number of deaths associated with criminal acts, the influence of drugs, gang-banging, mental illness,
and domestic violence, we should be brought to
our knees.
What changed America? Many things. The sixties generation has left its mark on America in the
form of their children and grandchildren. The doit-if-it-feels-good generation that valued such
things as free love, challenging authority, hedonism, narcissism, drug abuse, and the quest for selfesteem, over and above all things that related to
the previous social construct of America, has
changed us from the inside out. Deviancy is tolerated at the expense of a healthy social order. Licentiousness trumps self-control. Gratification
takes precedence over responsibility. The individual is now more important than family.
We no longer force treatment or confinement to
the mentally ill until after they have committed a
crime. Nobody wants to go back to the days of the
mis-diagnoses, lobotomies and forced confinement
of those that were no threat to themselves or society, however, we now allow ticking time bombs to
roam our streets and wonder what happened when
they finally explode.
traceable roots.
Divorce rates in America have skyrocketed, leaving the family unit and the foundational sense of
well-being that arises from the same in shambles.
Illicit drug use exploded as did the prescription of
medicines for children who are diagnosed as suffering from some disorder that would have been
dealt with in another fashion in previous times.
Many young men today are neither mentored, disciplined, or molded in such a way so as to value
responsibility, self-control and respect for others.
Young men need full-time fathers who nowadays,
as often as not, do not live in the same home. Finally, what passes as science in the form of mental
health practice and prognosis has in fact helped to
skewer the sense of right and wrong, good and evil
in our society. Clearly, our society has replaced
the concepts of morality, virtue and common decency with subjective relativism that fails to make
any such distinctions in character, because it is
taboo to judge others.
All this gives meaning to the words pronounced by
Nietzsche which came into vogue in the 1960’s,
namely, God is dead. One author, Gabriel Vahanian, translated this to mean that modern secular
culture had lost all sense of the sacred, lacking any
sacramental meaning, no transcendental purpose
or sense of providence.
Dare we rely on any so-called human experts for
the answers to our fatal dilemma? Or, in this season, should we come to terms with the words of
the One who taught us to pray “deliver us from
evil”?
First published in the Santa Barbara News Press
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I dare say it, values matter. Evil is something we
must contend with in the nature of man. Society
can’t ignore that we are producing anti-social misfits like never before. All of this dysfunction has
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The COLAB Newsletter is published by the Coalition of Labor, Agriculture and Business of Santa Barbara County.
For information pertaining to this newsletter or COLAB, visit www.colabsbc.org or please call 805-929-3148.
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P.O Box 7523
Santa Maria, CA 93456
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