Nick Welsh

The numbers of use-of-force incidents and citizen complaints are down.

Dragging God into the Middle East.

Santa Barbara congressmember joins with 85 other members of Congress to urge President Biden to put Prime Minister Netanyahu on notice.

Tens of thousands of county residents ride their bikes “because it’s joyous” and fits their transportation needs, supervisors told on Tuesday.

A similar effort was withdrawn in 2020 because of bitter opposition by some of the region’s smaller vineyards.

Two weeks after opening, DignityMoves’ La Posada transitional housing project is already roughly half full.

Santa Barbara County's Northern Branch Jail | Credit: Daniel Dreifuss File The Santa Barbara County supervisors got another earful about the shortcomings of the mental-health care provided in the county jail and the extent to which the jail's privately contracted health-care provider, Wellpath, has been allowed to violate the terms of its contract without consequence. Mental health advocates with the League of Women Voters exhorted the supervisors — and jail administrators — on Tuesday to keep Wellpath's noncompliance front-and-center when negotiating a one-year contract extension. For Wellpath, this would be the second contract extension. For the supervisors, it's a tricky problem. Wellpath is pretty much the only contractor out there when it comes to mental- and medical-health treatment for people behind bars. Privately, most county administrators acknowledge a severe paucity of choices. But it remains unclear to what extent the county's Public Health Department might be a viable contender for the contract. About 20 years ago, Public Health had the contract. High-ranking spokespeople for the Sheriff's Office told the supervisors they've held 50 negotiating sessions with Wellpath already with no end in immediate sight given the complexity of the contract. A recent management audit and a recent Grand Jury report revealed that Wellpath failed to meet minimum staffing levels on numerous occasions during COVID and that the Sheriff's Office, charged with overseeing contract compliance, failed to levy any of the penalties called for in the contract. While there is considerable unrest at the fourth floor of the county administration building with the level of oversight by the sheriff, the jail remains very much under the sheriff's domain politically and legally. The current deadline for arriving at a new extension is June 30.

Supervisor Williams Reflects on Indonesian Roots for AAPI Heritage Month County Supervisors Declare May Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Prompting ‘Remembrance' of Grandfather Who Served in WWII Das Williams | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom Supervisor Das Williams, who is famously descended from Indonesian pirates, took a stroll down memory lane this Tuesday as the board of supervisors declared May Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. “Remembrance is so important,” Williams said. Without it, he elaborated, it's all but impossible to see how much progress has been made. Williams cited the case of his maternal grandfather, who during World War II served in the Royal Dutch Navy against the Japanese. As an Indonesian serving in an intensely segregated navy, Williams's grandfather and other Indonesians practically starved so that Dutch seamen could eat their fill, Williams said. “‘I was not a White boy,'” Williams said, quoting his grandfather. “‘I was a colored boy. So that's the way it was.'” The segregation-induced starvation rationing was so bad, Williams said, that his grandfather joked, “Needless to say, the food got better when we got put in the prisoner of war camp.” His grandfather, Williams said, was a prisoner of war for four years. The story, Williams said, highlighted how much things have changed over the span of three generations. That same spirit of remembrance, he added, was necessary now in response to “the rising tide that is dragging us back to another dark age.”

Brett E. Lovett met and befriended two of his elderly victims at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses congregation in Carpinteria. | Credit: S.B. County Sheriff's Office/Google Maps Brett Lovett — a recently convicted flimflam man who targeted elderly members of Carpinteria's Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses, where he functioned as a “ministerial servant” — is now looking at a sentence of up to 24 years and eight months behind bars. That's the term recommended by county probation officer Lindsay Whitmeyer, who prepared the sentencing report for Judge Pauline Maxwell. Judge Maxwell is scheduled to rule on June 7. Although Whitmeyer concluded that the ex-insurance agent had no prior record, posed a low risk of recidivism, and was willing to comply with the terms of probation, she recommended a lengthy prison sentence instead of probation. In her sentencing report, Whitmeyer used words like “egregious,” “reprehensible,” and “unconscionable” to describe Lovett's conduct. In all, Lovett bilked nine victims — some mentally and physically infirm, some members of his church, but not all from Santa Barbara County — of $1.1 million. It was not so much the amount of money taken, but the abuse of a trust so carefully insinuated, she argued, and the devastating impact of the loss. “Several of the victims were left homeless and destitute as a result of the defendant's crimes as they entrusted him with their life savings,” Whitmeyer wrote. “This is particularly reprehensible because some of the victims were elderly, and the defendant deliberately took the money they had saved to live upon while in retirement.” He did this, she added, by deliberately engendering relationships of trust. One victim, R. Bush — a 77-year-old man who belonged to Kingdom Hall — described Lovett as being “a replacement son” at a time when Bush was not getting along with one of his own sons. Bush was swindled out of $133,000. Another victim, M. Riskewic — now in her late eighties — deposited $176,000 in proceeds from the sale of her house with Lovett, most of which she never would see again. That was in 2014. When she kept demanding her money, Lovett tried three times to have Riskewic — also a member of the Kingdom Hall — committed to a psychiatric hospital. She ultimately became so physically ill from the stress that she had to be hospitalized for months. In 2015, Riskewic flew to Scotland after her brother, who lived there, died. She moved into her brother's public housing there but was quickly evicted because Lovett failed to send along the documents attesting to her income stream. When she returned to the United States, she was homeless, living in a motel for a month and then couch surfing briefly at Lovett's home. When Riskewic raised a stink at Kingdom Hall about Lovett — who reportedly harbored ambitions of becoming a church elder one day — Lovett asked Bush if he “could borrow his credit rating” to secure the funds necessary to pay Riskewic. (At some point, Lovett was “disfellowshipped” from Kingdom Hall.) Bush would later discover that Lovett used Bush's credit card to pay $4,400 for massages, among other things. Among Lovett's other victims was a “mentally disabled” man from Yuba City whose mother had passed away, leaving him the beneficiary of four life insurance policies. Lovett also worked as a paralegal at a Pasadena law firm and represented himself as a mediator as well as a financial advisor and insurance broker. An Orange County woman on state assistance with severe physical and mental challenges sought Lovett's assistance when her grandmother died and left her an Orange County home and trust worth $300,000. By the time Lovett was through helping, court records contend, the woman and her daughter were left “homeless and destitute.” A Santa Barbara jury found Lovett guilty on multiple counts of fraud on March 26 for a case that dates back more than 10 years. Although Lovett had never been criminally charged before, the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission had ordered him in 2007 to make restitution of $635,000, most of which was earmarked for four members of his church for fraudulent investments. Lovett declined to provide a statement of his own for the probation report, but he did state he would be “150 percent” successful if placed on probation instead of behind bars. “I am a man who wants to be accountable,” he stated. “I need to make restitution … I need to be responsible.” He added, “To say I feel remorse is a sad understatement.” It wasn't clear to Deputy Probation Officer Whitmeyer how Lovett — who explained he had hired a marketing team for his business a few months ago while behind bars — could make the $550,000 in restitution to his victims. According to prosecutor Casey Nelson and the probation report, Lovett had used the proceeds to pay for hair transplants for himself and breast implants for his girlfriend, for mediation classes at Loyola and Pepperdine, for a beach house rental, airline tickets, food, clothing, car rentals, and other general expenses. All the victims interviewed for the probation report felt strongly that Lovett should serve time behind bars and that probation was not enough. “I lost everything but the clothes I was in,” said Riskewic. “I lost my family, my friends, two congregations. He told so many lies. … It ruined my life and I'll never be back to what I was.” Another victim stated, “I'm an old woman now without a means. He destroyed me.”

BEAUTIFUL AND TERRIBLE: Walking out of the very packed Granada Theatre last Thursday evening — where I'd just attended the 41st annual UCSB Economic Forecast Project 's annual group gripe on the state of Santa Barbara's local economy — I heard myself mutter, “ I don't think we're in Kansas anymore .” I know that's not precisely what Dorothy said in The Wizard of Oz, but still, close enough. I'd just spent a couple of hours listening to practitioners of “ the dismal science ” cheerfully explain how we can't get there from here — when it comes to affordable housing. To the extent we tried, they told us, we only made things worse The Wizard of Oz has been very much on my mind of late, or more precisely its signature song, “Over the Rainbow.” Full disclosure: I think this song should become our new national anthem . If it doesn't make you cry, chances are you're a zombie. Would you rather sing, “Someday I'll wish upon a star,” where dreams actually do come true, or more of the same old “Bombs bursting in air” noise? Here's the other thing: It's an immigrant song. The music was written by Harold Arlen with lyrics by Yip Harburg , both sons of Jewish refugees who fled violence in Europe — a demographic very much reviled by polite Anglo-Saxon society at the time. No wonder their “happy little bluebirds” needed to fly so far “beyond the rainbow.” A digression, I know, but a meaningful one. These economic forecast summits are pleasant, high-octane affairs held for, of, by, and about Santa Barbara's high-octane real estate interests and the financial institutions that keep them going. The reigning Wizard of Oz at these events is Peter Rupert , a smart, funny, breezy, likable guy despite the fact that he happens to be an economist. But like me, Rupert is showing signs of brittleness Rent control, he proclaimed, inflicts more damage on a city than all the bombs Hitler dropped on London. A dramatic line, no doubt, but one we've heard too many times . Minimum-wage laws should be abolished, he said, because they create unemployment. That barista you like to say hi to, he predicted, will be replaced by a robot if the minimum wage keeps going up. Really? Lastly, the audience was told that inclusionary housing requirements — making landlords provide a few token units of below-market housing in exchange for incentives that allow them to build far more units than present zoning would otherwise allow — just don't work. They make things worse. Instead, the answer to the housing crisis is for local government to just get out of the way , accelerate the design review process, provide even more incentives, and shut up when all the new housing produced is grossly unaffordable For every economist who agrees with Rupert, there are others who argue just the opposite and have statistics to back it up Admittedly, I am unfair about economists. They three-card monte us with charts and graphs not even they can understand and act as if this makes them scientists . In reality, they're mystics and crackpots who worship at the God of the Invisible Hand while preaching the gospel of Supply and Demand The answers you get depend on the questions you ask. I know because I'm in the question-asking business. Have any of these economists studied why rents keep going up and up and up in Santa Barbara even though we've experienced the biggest building boom of new rental housing ever in the past 12 years — thanks to the density incentives City Hall threw at developers' feet? What happened to supply and demand ? How much high-end housing must be built before rents start to soften because of another mystical theory known as “Supply Side Economics”? A fat cat banker once explained that to me as “ feeding the horses to feed the sparrows .” Are you a horse or a sparrow? And if so, what are you eating? Have they ever studied why State Street rents never seem to come down either even though more than 15 percent of State Street frontages are now vacant? (And that doesn't include the pop-up businesses where you can pet cats.) Have any of these economists explored what would happen if the Santa Barbara Foundation — which sits on zillions of dollars (not a precise number) of inherited wealth — extended below-market construction and rehab loans to landlords and developers in exchange for price breaks sufficiently meaningful to have an impact on rents? To the extent money is lost, could such losses be claimed by the donor-investors as tax breaks I bring up the Foundation because six months ago, it held a bells-and-whistles press conference to announce it would be attacking the housing crisis headfirst and feet-first Yes, the cost of capital has doubled in the past few years; that's a reality that can't be simply wished away . Same with the cost of materials and costs of construction. State building codes are similarly stubborn. But since this is the UCSB Economic Forecast Project, maybe some creative problem solving would be in order . Maybe the vast investment pools of the UC system can be diverted to capital-A affordable housing development. Instead, we get more nothing-can-be-done handwringing that leaves everyone but the already affluent out in the cold Will we ever get back to Kansas? If we click our heels together three times, will we be able to get back home? Is there a rainbow somewhere we can get over? No wonder that song makes me weep ‘Over the Rainbow' songwriters Yip Harburg (left) and Harold Arlen | Credit: Wikimedia Commons