A Tale of Two Counties

If you were a first-time visitor to Santa Maria, a working-class city in central California, you might not think that a sign announcing its 2005 population (90,204) was unusual. But if you had been keeping tabs for the past five years, you would know that its population has grown by nearly 15,000 people since 2000, making 2005 the first year Santa Maria has ever been more populous than its better known neighbor city to the south, Santa Barbara. Quaint Spanish architecture, tree-lined streets, and fabulous beaches have always attracted a horde of tourists and A-list celebrities to Santa Barbara, where the median home price is just under a million dollars. (The price is less than half that in Santa Maria.) But in Santa Maria, high-end shops and day spas are moving in. This summer, a gourmet restaurant, the 3rd Coast Café, opened up downtown.

Perhaps because of this shift in momentum, or perhaps because, as one local politician, Brooks Firestone, put it, northern residents were tired of “being dissed” by their southern neighbors, a grassroots group called Citizens for County Organization decided that Santa Barbara County should split in two.

Santa Barbara County has long been dominated by powers in the south. Until recently, three of the county’s five supervisors came from the Santa Barbara metropolitan area, which is also home to UC Santa Barbara. Developable land in the south is limited by both the coastline and the mountains, and citizens and business groups feel protective of their scenic natural resources.

In Santa Maria, 80 miles north and a bit inland from Santa Barbara, land is more plentiful. The city’s economy has long been based on agriculture, mainly cattle ranching and wine production. In the 150 years since the county was formed, Santa Maria residents have, at various points, grown resentful of the southern government. (The first attempt to split the county was in 1978.) The south’s goals are frequently “counterproductive” to the north’s interests, says Jim Diani, a local construction company owner. “Our farmers are getting pretty badly beat up.” So in 2001, Diani, along with around thirty others, decided to take action. The group included Robert Hatch, head of the Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce, Roger Wheeler, pastor of the Foursquare Church, and Don Lopez, owner of a Mexican restaurant called Connie’s. They collected the approximately 22,000 signatures needed to prompt a feasibility study for a county split (though when Diani first submitted the signatures, he refused to reveal names).

The results were not encouraging. The new county, to be named Mission County, would start out with an operating deficit of $30 million, no jail, and minimal social services. Santa Maria agencies rely on a county consortium for federal funding, which would be jeopardized by a county split. Mission County might be able to capitalize on at least one intriguing revenue source: off-shore oil rigs, which dot the coastline off Santa Barbara County. But many county residents still remember an oil platform blowout in 1969 that spread oil on miles of shoreline and galvanized the local environmental movement.

“We felt the timing was good,” Diani explains. The balance of power in the county seemed to be shifting to the north. “We felt for the south county to maintain their quality of life, it was a good time for them to consider this option.”

In June, not many residents were convinced. Eighty-two percent of voters opposed the measure, in part because, while Santa Barbara has only 89,548 residents in the city proper, there are nearly 200,000 in the metropolitan area. Many north county residents were skeptical too. “It is against our own self-interest to have a weak, small county government that is bankrupt, with less income than expenses, and this in turn paints a dismal economic outlook for North County,” Ken McCalip, a former school principal and north county native, told the Santa Maria Sun.

While north county activists may have failed to orchestrate a secession, they seem to have gained an ally in Brooks Firestone. Heir to the tire company fortune, Firestone (a ranch owner from a geographic middle zone in the county) won a crucial county supervisor’s seat in 2004, and has shown himself to be more amenable to development than his south county predecessor. He supported efforts to weaken a contentious ordinance that protects oak trees growing on privately-owned land. He hopes the new county board will smooth out the rocky relationship with northerners, first by holding more of its meetings in Santa Maria. (In the past, three of four board meetings were held in Santa Barbara.) This seems not only diplomatic, but wise. Large portions of the Santa Barbara metropolitan area are unincorporated and now fall under the jurisdiction of the Santa Maria-controlled board.

“We need each other,” says Firestone, who is in favor of a unified county. “There are values on the south and values in the north that are very important to the successful progression of our county and our country… it is a symbolic thing.”