June 10, 2010 Information & Action Alert

Santa Barbara County Action Network
INFORMATION & ACTION ALERT
June 10, 2010

Greetings SB CAN members and friends! Please take a few moments to review our news. And feel free to forward to your friends and others who are interested in creating sustainable communities through sound planning that integrates housing, open space and transportation—our HOT principles.

News in brief:

1. SB CAN Workshop “Beyond Recyling,” June 16, Lompoc
2. Annual Membership Meeting “Home on Sterling Ranch,” June 27
3. Renewing your membership is easy!
4. Read all about it! Spring Newsletter on website!
5. “Lompoc Livable Communities” Grant Awarded
6. SB CAN Editorial: “Green Waste Program Long Overdue in Santa Maria”

Now the Details:

1. SB CAN Workshop – “Beyond Recycling - Are We Doing Enough?”

Part of SB CAN’s Continuing Series on Best Practices in Sustainability

Wednesday, June 16, 7:00 - 9:00 P.M.
Lompoc Library, 501 East North Ave.
Presenters: City of Lompoc & County of Santa Barbara

Now that recycling has become mainstream, what more can we do locally to divert waste from our landfills and manage our resources more wisely?
Learn what the City of Lompoc and County of Santa Barbara are doing, and how we can help.
For more information, contact Joyce at 805-563-0463 / joyce@sbcan.org

2. SB CAN Annual Membership Meeting, June 27

What: Annual Meeting – “Home on Sterling Ranch”
Where: 1851 Santa Rita Road, Lompoc
When: Sunday, June 27, 3-5 PM

SB CAN members are cordially invited to attend our annual membership meeting. You can renew your membership at the meeting or online at http://www.sbcan.org/civicrm/contribute/transact

Each year our annual meeting rotates between South County and North/Central County.

This year one of our newest board members, John Sterling, will be hosting our meeting at his family ranch in Lompoc. John is former Santa Maria Police Chief and 4th District Supervisor candidate. He will talk about North County HOT issues and why he joined the SB CAN board of directors.

Please join us for this special occasion, which will feature local wines and appetizers.

Members will also have the opportunity to vote on this year's slate of candidates for the Board of Directors.

RSVP's are required. Please call Joyce at 805-563-0463
for more information about the location.

If you would like to carpool from Santa Barbara or Santa Maria,
call Deborah at 805-722-5094.

PLEASE NOTE: The location of the meeting is on SANTA RITA ROAD, NOT SANTA ROSA, as misprinted in our newsletter. Joyce can give you directions to the meeting when you call for reservations.

3. Renewing Your Membership is Easy!

Now more than ever— with the downturn in the economy, loss of homes to foreclosures, rising food prices, destructive oil drilling and global warming— we need to make sure that local governments are supporting sustainable communities that provide for the needs of people living in Santa Barbara County, now and for future generations.

SB CAN is the only organization that works county-wide advocating for sound public policy and comprehensive planning that simultaneously fosters affordable housing so that a diverse variety of people can live and work here, protects our environmental and agricultural resources, and encourages alternative transportation systems to reduce dependence on private cars.

With your generous support, we do this through:

• Our HOT Committee meetings and Government Watchdog program, where we meet monthly to discuss and take action on critical issues affecting local governments along the South Coast, and in the Santa Ynez, Lompoc, and Santa Maria Valleys.
• Our educational forums and trainings most recently a series of workshops on Creating Sustainable Communities in Santa Maria, with a similar series slated for this fall in Lompoc.
• Our progressive columns in the Santa Maria Times and Lompoc Record, promoting progressive ideals and programs while countering misinformation in areas that are traditional conservative strongholds
• Our participation in coalitions doing important work across the county, including the Environmental Coalition in Santa Barbara, the Ag Futures Alliance in Santa Ynez, and the Santa Maria Community Coalition.

Will you help us continue our work? During lean economic times when many foundations are limiting funding to advocacy organizations, we will be counting on our members’ support more than ever.

Please renew at the highest level you can afford. With an annual donation of $250 or more, you will be listed as a member of our “Founders Circle” in our fall newsletter.

Renewing your membership is easy:

1. ONLINE: Pay online by going to www.sbcan.org and clicking on the Join/Donate link that will take you to a secure Paypal page. You can select the payment schedule that fits your budget. Options include annual and monthly payments.

2. MAIL: Mail your check to SB CAN at P.O. Box 23453, Santa Barbara, CA 93121

3. PHONE: You can also make a credit card payment over the phone by calling Deborah at 805-722-5094.

4. SB CAN’s Spring 2010 Newsletter is now available online

You should have received our Spring Newsletter by now, but if you missed it, you can now read it online at www.sbcan.org or by clicking the following link:

http://www.sbcan.org/files/2010%20spring%20web%20SBCANNewslettersm3.pdf

This issue features pictures from Selma Rubin’s Birthday Celebration, and information about our newest board members, workshops, programs and activities.

Check it out!

5. Grant funding received for SB CAN’s “Lompoc Livable Communities & Civic Engagement Program”

Many thanks to The Fund for Santa Barbara, which has awarded SB CAN $8000 in grant funding for our Lompoc Livable Community and Civic Engagement program.
The program will help city residents become more involved in community planning and promoting social change through a series of community-building town hall meetings, educational forums, visioning workshops, and advocacy trainings.

The program will be launched this fall. For more information, contact Joyce Howerton, SB CAN Advocacy Director, at joyce@sbcan.org 0r 805-563-0463.

6. SB CAN Column – “Green Waste Program Long Overdue in Santa Maria”

Every second and fourth Friday, an SB CAN column appears in the Looking Forward column in the Santa Maria Times. Our columns also appear in the Lompoc Record and at Noozhawk.com. You can read recent columns posted on our website www.sbcan.org under "SB CAN Editorials."

Green Waste Program Long Overdue in Santa Maria

By Deborah Brasket, SB CAN Executive Director

Last year Santa Maria conducted a six-month pilot Green Waste Program, in which participating residents disposed of yard waste (leaves, grass and hedge clippings, etc.) in special containers for curbside pick-up. The organic materials were then delivered to a facility where they were ground into mulch for use in gardens and landscaping. The purpose of the program was to determine the amount of yard materials that would be diverted from the Santa Maria Regional Landfill for recycling and to evaluate the potential for a City-wide implementation

According to Santa Maria Public Utilities Director Rick Sweet, the pilot program was a huge success. By providing curbside service every other week for 800 household in three test areas, a total of 346,180 lbs of yard materials were diverted from the landfill in the six-month period. As much as 37 pounds of recycled green waste were collected per resident per collection day. Based on the pilot program, a staff report claims that “over $500,000 of landfill air space can be saved annually by recycling the yard materials collected from a City-wide green waste program.”

In the report to the City Council last week, Sweet showed how implementing a Green Waste Program in 2011 could help extend the operation of the City’s current landfill by three years, thus delaying the $2.5 million dollar construction cost of the new site at Las Flores Ranch. This could save the city (and taxpayers) millions of dollars over time.

While we wholeheartedly support implementing a green waste program as soon as possible, we wonder why the City hadn’t started a program long ago. The County started its green waste program in 1997. That means for the past 13 years the residents of Orcutt and Santa Ynez, and even tiny Casmalia and Ballard, have been recycling yard waste and extending the use of their landfills. Lompoc implemented its green waste program in 2001. Solvang and Buellton also have green waste pick-up.

If starting a green waste program in 2011 is expected to help extend the current landfill use by an additional three years, think for how many years use the current site could have been extended if this program had been implemented thirteen years ago when the County began its green waste program! Another ten years? Twenty years? According to staff estimates, if the program had been started in 1997, as much as $6,500,000 of landfill air space could have been saved.

While there’s nothing we can do now to turn back the clock, we can make sure that we give the City our full support in implementing the program as early as possible in 2011.

Since the implementation of a curbside city-wide program will require a rate increase, a process for increasing property-related fees established by Proposition 218 will be needed, including notifications, public workshops, and public hearings. If a majority approves, the City will then be able to purchase the equipment and hire the drivers needed to start the program.

Participants in the pilot program were asked in a survey if they would be willing to pay the additional $3.17 per month needed to operate the program. Fifty-nine percent of the respondents replied that they would be willing. However, if customers downsized their refuse container from a 90-gallon container to a 60-gallon container (diverting their green waste)they would realize no increase in costs per month while benefiting from the green waste service.

According to city staff, “Implementation of recycling programs within the community provides residents with an opportunity to enhance the environment, while realizing the economic benefits of deferring capital costs for the future solid waste disposal.”

Sounds like a win-win to me. I only wish the City had started the program years ago.

Deborah Brasket
SB CAN Executive Director
805-722-5094 / deborah@sbcan.org
www.sbcan.org