SUPERVISORS SPLURGE 2 MILLION ON 'MANAGERS' FOR SANTA MARIA LOONY BIN

The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, in their infinite wisdom and boundless generosity with your cash, just voted to drop nearly two million dollars on alleged 'construction management services' for a new 'Crisis Residential Treatment Facilities Project' in Santa Maria. This comes courtesy of the General Services Department, which, in typical bureaucratic fashion, needs a whole separate contract just to manage the folks who are supposed to be managing the folks who are building the thing. One might wonder if they're building a mental health facility or a gold-plated tax siphon.

Specifically, a firm called Vanir Construction Management, Inc. will be pocketing a cool $1,959,205.67 to 'manage' the selection of the design-build entity, guide the design, pre-construction, and, well, pretty much everything else except actually laying bricks. And just in case that wasn't enough financial gymnastics, the Director of General Services can tack on another 10% – nearly $200,000 – in 'supplemental service orders' just because. We're sure every cent will be closely monitored, just like all those other county projects that inevitably run over budget.

But wait, there's more! The Supervisors proudly declared this bureaucratic boondoggle is *not* a 'project' under California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) guidelines because it's merely an 'organizational or administrative activity.' Apparently, paying consultants millions to plan a building that will occupy physical space and require physical construction isn't a 'physical change in the environment' when you're a government agency. It's just a magical administrative thought that somehow materializes into concrete and steel, avoiding all those pesky environmental reviews.

This latest move from the Supervisors, masquerading as a benevolent act for mental health, looks suspiciously like another handout to well-connected consultants and a textbook example of government bloat. The average taxpayer is left scratching their head, wondering if we're funding mental health treatment or a robust retirement plan for construction management consultants. At least the county isn't calling it a 'crisis' when they're spending this freely; they're creating one for our wallets.