What
Do You Think?
This time Mike Brown, the CEO for Santa Barbara County, has
gone too far.
For those who are not familiar with the structure of the
Santa Barbara County Government, we have a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) by the
name of Mike Brown. He was appointed by the Board of Supervisors a few years
ago, and for all intents and purposes, he runs the county. The Board has given
him an enormous amount of power and control over every segment of the county
government. In fact all the county department heads
now report directly to him and not, as they once did, to the Board – and
therein lies a problem.
The CEO’s latest outrage was a memo he drafted to the Board
dated 8/30/07 regarding the Santa Ynez Baseline
Study, which was suppose to study the direct effects of the Las Vegas Style
Casino and the associated gambling industry that has been in Santa Ynez for several years now. In this report, he venomously
changes the focus from the Casino to the thoroughbred horse breeders in the
Santa Ynez Valley, making them the bad guys in town.
Here is a quote from page 5 of that memo sent to the Board of Supervisors:
“Appendix 1 includes some Web pages indicative of the
thoroughbred industry in the Santa Ynez Valley. The
thoroughbred horses are glorious animals and one of the great pleasures of
living in the santa Ynez
Valley is to be able to see them run and chase each other in large pastures.
This notwithstanding, they are not bred for this ambiance. They are bred to
participate in a huge legal and inadvertently in some
cases the illegal gambling industry. Moreover, about 800 race horses die each
year from fatal injuries suffered on U.S. race tracks. An additional 3,566
sustain injuries so severe that they cannot finish their races. If gambling is
a social evil, does it make any difference if the food money, mortgage money,
children’s clothing money and ultimately the family stability are lost at the
Blackjack table or the track?”
His report goes on to attack the thoroughbred horse industry
with page after page of endless statistics on the horse racing industry – Brown
was suppose to study the Casino in the Santa Ynez
Valley, not Race Tracks across the Country.
I think the CEO has gone over the line in this memo. He has
launched his own personal vendetta against the Santa Ynez
Horse Community while turning a blind eye to the original intent of this study,
which is the impact of the casino gambling industry in our Valley. I also think that I am not the only one who
has noticed the increased crime rate, clogged traffic on Route 246, our over
taxed emergency room and the strain on the our infrastructure. I also think Brown should do what he was
directed to do by the Board of Supervisors without his personal bias and
self-serving motives.
What
do you think?