Local Official Participated in the January 6 Mob

••• The Independent and others have posted that the Ritz-Carlton Bacara resort (above) changed hands for $530 million. The news here isn’t the transaction—in May, the Pacific Coast Business Times reported that the hotel was “among 25 hotels in a portfolio being sold by Watermark Lodging Trust [for $3.8 billion] to private real estate funds managed by Brookfield Asset Management”—but the amount. I’m no accountant, but it seems to me that the seller and/or buyer may have various reasons to assign higher or lower values to certain properties. When the property last sold in 2017, it went for $243,854,000.

••• “There are still about 55,000 ballots that need to be counted in Santa Barbara County, and updated results won’t be released until next Tuesday,” reports Noozhawk. The results so far are here, and there were no surprises, says the Independent. As it stands now, Measure T in Carpinteria—which would have prevented the Surfliner Inn from being built—is down by eight votes.

••• “A Santa Barbara–based ‘sedition hunter,’ a member of an online group of amateur sleuths who help the FBI identify members of the pro-Trump mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, has collected video evidence of a North County elected official and her husband trespassing into the Capitol building during the riot. The footage, which was forwarded in recent days to the FBI as well as the Santa Barbara Independent, first shows Karen Jones ​— ​a two-time candidate for county supervisor who currently serves as president of the Santa Ynez Valley Community Services District ​— ​and her husband, Robert, attending the rally.”

••• “During a special closed-door hearing, the Santa Barbara City Council voted to terminate long-time City Attorney Ariel Calonne, who’d been placed on paid administrative leave this past July after what had been described as an exceptionally heated exchange with another attorney who worked in his office.” —Independent

••• Cottage Health’s urgent-care facility on Coast Village Road opens this week. —KEYT

••• “The Santa Barbara News-Press slimmed down its operation again, […] dropping the Sunday edition and instead folding the content into the Saturday paper.” —Independent

••• Television producer Marcy Carsey “spent $7 million on a 1.25-acre estate consisting of two contiguous parcels [in the Hedgerow]: one vacant and the other with a midcentury ranch house and gardens. Both parcels sit directly next door to a half-acre estate that Carsey has owned since 2001, meaning that her Montecito compound now consists of three separate parcels totaling nearly two flat acres.” —Dirt

••• “Organizers of the Ojai Valley Lavender Festival, which began in 2004 at Libbey Park in downtown, plan to uproot the event and take it to Santa Barbara in 2023. Festival owners decided to relocate when the Ojai City Council voted last month to reduce the number of vendors to 75 for all events in the city including the festival.” —VC Star (via Edible Santa Barbara)

••• Beach Baby Kids Boutique has opened in Goleta: “The store, according to a news release, sells shoes, hats, baby things, gifts and toys, water/swimming supplies, jewelry and more.” —Noozhawk

••• The folks trying to build “an 18-lane bowling alley, arcade, restaurant/bar, meeting rooms and office space in a 45,633-square-foot, two-story building” in Buellton finally gave up—and put the property up for sale—because the county red tape and associated costs were just too much. Whether it’s the city or the county, pretty much everyone trying to do anything around here can tell a similar story. The question is, how can any of it ever be reformed? —Noozhawk

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