Community

Many of the people routinely incarcerated in Santa Barbara County's jails are there because of mental illness or substance abuse problems.

A new $6 million, three-year long grant announced last week will attempt to fix that problem.

A new enviromental plan from Washington has some attorneys general speaking out strongly, saying the Affordable Clean Energy Rule will be harmful to the environment in the long run.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra says the plan is "ill-advised."

As the city of Santa Barbara heads into festival season, authorities are cautioning against throwing confetti, glitter and sequins on the ground, an action they will consider littering.

Confetti is often used at parades and festivals as cascarones, or confetti eggs, which are especially popular during the Old Spanish Days festival.

Santa Barbara City College and Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria will split $116,000 toward feeding students on their campus that need some extra food.

The grant from state agency CalRecycle will go to the Community Environmental Council, which has partnered with the two colleges to save already-prepared food from businesses that would otherwise throw it out.

The Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department says two people were found dead in a vehicle Thursday afternoon.

The vehicle was in a parking lot on the 6800 block of Cortona Drive in Goleta.

Impacts from the cannabis industry in Santa Barbara County will be addressed by the city of Carpinteria on Monday.

That comes as a result of a controversial article in the LA Times that says more cannabis is grown in Carpinteria than is needed by the entire state, and that the world's largest pot farms are near the small town.

Thousands of people had been displaced over the course of numerous recent disasters in the region.

Taking that into consideration, officials say that a possible future long-term emergency could challenge the area food supply.

A man working on a car is recovering after receiving multiple burns in a fire Thursday night.

The mechanic was at Mastercraft Motors Autobody Shop in Santa Barbara.

The Santa Barbara City Council has put the brakes on a plan that could have included paid on-street parking in the popular Funk Zone area of the waterfront and lower State Street.

The passing weather system came in with a very jarring thunderstorm Sunday, just before midnight.

Many residents were awoken suddenly as the thunder cracked with a sound that was so loud one person thought it was a plane crash.