••• The county will continue requiring face masks indoors until December 5 or until certain criteria get met. (From the press release on Edhat: “As of October 23, 2021, the County has a case rate of 10 per 100,000 and a test positivity of 2.8%. […] In order for local health officials to consider rescinding the indoor mask mandate, the county case rate should be 6.0 cases per 100,000 people or lower for two consecutive weeks.”) It is patently absurd that you can sit maskless in a restaurant for 90 minutes but you can’t be maskless in a store for five minutes. Why can’t we go to the L.A./San Francisco/New York City model, where showing proof of vaccination gains you access?
••• KEYT has officially called the election: Randy Rowse will be the new mayor of Santa Barbara, while the three city-council incumbents—Sneddon, Friedman, and Harmon—were all reelected. Rowse, whom Newsmakers interviewed after it was clear he would win, got just 39% of the vote. Which is why…
••• …the Independent makes the case for election changes: “Rowse wins with just 40 percent for the only citywide seat at the table? Murillo won it four years ago with just 27 percent? The punch line of the joke here is that Santa Barbara needs to either hold a run-off election or adopt ranked-choice voting.” Couldn’t agree more.
••• Charlie Munger defended the near-windowless dorm he helped fund and design for UCSB: “‘I think the building will be a huge success,’ Munger told MarketWatch. ‘If this building fails, it will be the first Munger building that fails.’ […] Munger shrugged off charges that billionaires are too influential. ‘You’ve got to get used to the fact that billionaires aren’t the most popular people in our society [….] I’d rather be a billionaire and not be loved by everybody than not have any money.’ As for the architectural critiques, Munger said those are par for the course on any building project. ‘It’s hard to get any two architects to ever agree about anything,’ he said. ‘Architecture is a game of trade-offs.'” Meanwhile, UCSB insists it’s moving forward, even as the dreadful dorm has become international news.
••• “The Santa Barbara County Planning Commission’s majority formally rejected ExxonMobil’s proposal to truck oil on an interim basis from the Gaviota Coast to Santa Maria Valley and Kern County. […] ExxonMobil’s oil trucking plan is expected to end up before the Board of Supervisors in early 2022.” —Noozhawk
••• “Three out-of-area firms have acquired the now-vacant building formerly occupied by Nordstrom in downtown Santa Barbara, the companies announced Nov. 4. Shopoff Realty Investments and Praelium Commercial Real Estate, both based in Orange County, bought the property in partnership with an affiliate of New York City-based Dune Real Estate Partners. […] ‘In this case, we believe there is a better use of this space than big-box retail, which has been highly impacted by e-commerce,’ [William] Shopoff said. ‘Our plan might include a smaller amount of retail, or no retail, and other uses including creative office.'” —Pacific Coast Business Times
················
Sign up for the Siteline email newsletter and you’ll never miss a post.
Comment: