At the 15 October 2013 Santa Barbara County Supervisors board meeting, the Santa Barbara County Public works Department, Resource Recovery and Waste Management Division (RRWMD) requested Supervisors to receive and endorse the draft Single-Use Plastic Bag Ban Ordinance for the unincorporated area of Santa Barbara County and to direct staff to initiate review of the Ordinance pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).  In addition, Supervisors were requested to designate the County Public Works Department, Resource Recovery and Waste Management Division as the Lead Agency under the CEQA.  Supervisors approved the request by a vote of 3 to 2.

Public Works staff made a short viewgraph presentation to County Supervisors titled “Regional Implementation of Single Use Plastic Bag Ban”.  The viewgraph presentation, consisting of 26 slides, was later modified to support the 21 November 2013 Notice of Preparation (NOP) Scoping Meeting in preparation of the draft EIR.

A considerable amount of misinformation surrounding the subject of plastic bag bans crept into the both presentations and a total of 9 out of 26 slides or 34.6% had questionable content.  The following article addresses the erroneous and misleading information in order to set the record straight, click on the following link to view/save the article:   Santa Barbara County Supervisors Not Well Served

The public expects city and county officials to make the very best decisions they can regarding issues that come before them.  They expect decision makers to make “informed” decisions based upon the facts and the very best information available.  Because of the amount of misinformation included in the presentation our contention is that Santa Barbara County Supervisors were not well served by county staff.