Although local representatives sought little to no community
or county input regarding the recent naming of Highway 154, the valley
community is making its voice heard, all the same.
Following the mid-September Senate adoption of Assembly
Concurrent Resolution (ACR) 75, which named Highway 154 the Chumash Highway,
people are expressing their sentiments in inventive and innovative ways, from
speaking on local public radio shows to posting anonymous signs alongside the
Chumash Highway.
Brooks Firestone, 3rd District supervisor, appeared on KPMS
Sept. 23 and voiced his opinion about the naming.
“I was scheduled to be on the radio and there were calls
coming in about the issue,” Firestone said. “If I have one message now, it’s
that the community and county population be aware of what was done and how it
was done. Perhaps by the community knowing this and expressing its concerns, it
would be less likely to happen again in the same way.”
Other community responses included a gray wooden sign
erected on the Chumash Highway, which read “R.I.P. Community Voice, September
2007, killed on the ‘Chumash Buy-Way’ by Government, recklessly driving under
the influence of power and money.”
“I thought that the sign was very appropriate, given the
process of how the highway was named,” said Kathryn Bowen, spokesperson for
Preservation of Santa Ynez.
“I think that the representatives should have gone the extra
mile to inform the county and or the community,” she said. “I don’t think
enough research and thought went into this process, and that’s what we have a
problem with.”
SantaBarbaraBlog.com has posted responses from community
members, ranging from outrage and neutrality to support for renaming the Santa
Ynez Valley the “Chumash Valley.”
Bowen, who criticizes the naming, says her opposition is not
rooted in the actual name change, but in the way it was done.
“I find it really, really strange that not even the county
knew about this,” she said.
“Someone in the county should have been consulted. It’s not
the name of the highway, it’s the fact that the county was not consulted and
nobody knew about it. That’s the real issue here,” she said.
The naming of Highway 154 has been compared to the 1997
naming of Route 46 in San Luis Obispo County. Route 46 was named the Jack
O’Connell Highway, after former Sen. Jack O’Connell, who played a large role in
making improvements to Route 46 that decreased accident rates considerably.
Though the Jack O’Connell Highway only took 15 days to clear both the Assembly
and the Senate – six days less than the
Chumash Highway naming – the lack of community input is what concerns the
community.
“I contrasted [the naming of Highway 154] with the Jack
O’Connell Highway,” Firestone said. “It’s a road that had a very high number of
accidents and I admired the work he did on it; he worked to widen portions of
it and put some extra enforcements on the road, and accidents went way down, so
the local people there wanted to name the highway the Jack O’Connell Highway.
“It was a bottom-up inspiration, and I co-wrote the bill.
That’s the way things are supposed to be done,” he said, “and the way things
are not suppose to be done is the way the Chumash Highway was named.”
“The deed is done, there’s no governor’s review of this,”
Firestone added. “I don’t know of any way to change this from being done.
“But the process by which it was done demonstrated an
arrogance from the Legislature and lack of sensitivity to the process,” he
said. “It frightens me, because it shows that the establishment in Sacramento
doesn’t care about the local community.”
For more information about proposed or recently passed
legislative bills, visit www.legislature.ca.gov.