This Year’s Santa Barbara County Fair Has Been Canceled

••• “Sensorio announced the reopening of the Field of Light on June 12 in Paso Robles.” —KEYT (and my take on it is here)

••• As expected, this year’s Santa Barbara County Fair has been canceled, “but exhibitors will be able to sell their animals at a virtual auction. […] The fair generates more than $14 million in direct economic impact in the community, [CEO Richard] Persons told Noozhawk. Additionally, the fair hires some 450 part-time employees with several hundred more hired by the carnival, food concessions, commercial exhibitors, and other companies providing services during the event.”

••• I don’t include most crimes in these roundups, but this seemed out of the norm: “Armed robbery at Whole Foods on State Street. The weapon was a knife, the robber took a basket full of food.” —Edhat

••• Contrary to the note placed by the SBPD on windshields around town, street sweeping—and related parking enforcement—will start up again on June 15. And I guess the one I saw on Cota today was getting a head start…. —Edhat

••• “The Scorpion Fire on Santa Cruz Island is now 90 percent contained with over 1,395 acres estimated to have burned.” That’s 2.25% of the island. —Edhat

••• “Santa Barbara’s Community Development Department is broken and suffers from a lack of leadership and poor morale, according to two recent reports and members of the City Council.” Read the whole article for a look at the problems in city management these days, and the challenges in fixing it. —Noozhawk

••• From KEYT: “Santa Barbara County will be releasing more information about Covid-19 cases and tracking under an improved metrics system. […] The information on cases, and regional break downs will provide a deeper dive’ into the county’s data.” And this is from the press release:

Highlights of the dashboard include the following:
• A hospital stabilization metric to demonstrate whether the County meets the 7-day average of less than 5% daily percent change.
• A testing results metric that demonstrate that the testing positivity over the past 7 days is less than 8%.
• A testing capacity metric demonstrating a minimum daily testing of 1.5 per 1000 residents.
• A hospital capacity metric demonstrating a local capacity to accommodate a minimum surge of 35%.
• Personal Protective Gear Metric that shows the availability of disinfectant supplies and protective gear for Stage One Essential Workers.
• Separate case rate details for the Federal Corrections Institution in Lompoc

Data metrics coming soon include:
• A containment capacity metric demonstrating at least 15 contact tracers per 100,000 residents and availability of temporary housing units to shelter at least 15% of county residents experiencing homelessness in case of an outbreak amount the population.
• Vulnerable populations metrics with coordination criteria and that demonstrates that skilled nursing facilities have more than 14-day supply of PPE on hand for staff.

The dashboard provides recent data and is recalculated daily.  It is not meant to track the progress of the virus over the course of the pandemic but rather provide a snapshot of the most recent data.