Gettin’ Steamed over SME
Open Letter to Supervisors Wolf, Carbajal and Farr:
Regarding your recent decision to heavily restrict emissions at the Santa Maria Energy project, you appointed your own planning commissioners, who spent four years and county taxpayer money to hire many experts and assign staff to research this project. They returned with the advice to approve the project. The county taxpayers deserve to know how much money was spent researching this project. You received the best knowledge from all the sources that worked on this project, using large amounts of county taxpayer money. You call your decision a rational, balanced decision.
You must realize how incompetent this looks. President Truman said the buck stops here. What do you really think this looks like? If you are unable to make a clear decision, then you should resign. Your employers, the taxpayers of the county, came to you with an overwhelming and tremendous outcry to approve this project and to go along with your own Planning Commission’s decision.
As history will reflect, this will be the decision that is the turning point for finally separating Santa Barbara into two counties. The time has come for those in the government to begin to listen to the people or get out of government.
The three of you do not represent the residents of the North County. Your main concern was obviously to maintain your reputation as “the birthplace of the ecology movement.” You certainly have maintained your reputations as a totally oblivious group of South County bullies. You had your minds set to cripple this project with the hope that it would just go away. The residents need this project and Santa Maria Energy. We do not need three totally self-indulgent, misinformed politicians.