County Board of Supervisors Santa Barbara Hearing Room Completes Upgrades, Santa Maria Hearing Room Now Under Construction to Receive its Upgrades

County of Santa Barbara Seal (Edhat)

The Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors Hearing Room and Planning Commission Hearing Room have both completed energy-efficient, accessibility, and audio/visual upgrades.

The upgrades include new energy-efficient LED lighting, which has provided the County with an opportunity for cost savings.  As well as several accessibility upgrades including the public comment podium, which has been replaced with a motorized ADA-compliant podium, new assisted listening devices including a radio frequency system for those without hearing aids or those that wish to hear Spanish interpretation of the live meetings, in addition to the optimized hearing loop for T-Coil system previous in place.

Audio and visual upgrades to the room include upgraded microphones, new large 4K monitors with open caption displays and closed captioning available now on CSBTV Ch. 20, in addition to YouTube in both English and Spanish.

Attendees will also notice the new VoteCast system which automates every part of the meeting process and visually shows in real-time the vote of each Supervisor.

Now that the Santa Barbara Hearing Room upgrades are completed the Santa Maria Hearing Room, located in the Joseph Centeno Administration Building at 511 Lakeside Parkway, Santa Maria will be closed for similar upgrades through mid-March 2024. Community members are encouraged to check schedules for other organizations’ meetings that regularly take place in the Santa Maria Hearing Room, to see where their alternate location will be during the closure.

The Santa Maria Hearing Room will not be available for remote testimony during the closure. Instead, community members are encouraged to participate in person at the Santa Barbara Hearing Room, located on the fourth floor at 105 East Anapamu Street, Santa Barbara, or virtually by registering for the meeting in advance by visiting the Board of Supervisors Methods of Participation.

Residents may also continue to watch the live stream of the Board meetings in the following ways:

Please contact the Clerk of the Board’s Office at (805) 568-2240 for general questions related to these changes and assistance with the following:

  • Participating in the meeting telephonically or electronically
  • A disability-related modification or accommodation
  • Any issues attempting to access the hearing telephonically or electronically

Visit the 2024 Board of Supervisors Schedule for all meeting dates and locations for 2024.

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6 Comments

    • They made upgrades to their A/V equipment so as to provide better public information. They installed lighting to cut on energy costs.

      In no place in this article did it talk about “spending less.” In fact, if you read it (and understand that new gear costs money) you’ll see they SPENT money to improve efficiency and access to public information.

      Of course though, any expenditure of our tax dollars should be disputed and ranted against, right?

      Life in a constant state of complaining and hate must be tiring. I don’t know how some people do it.

  1. Thank you! Can you be more specific? I’m trying to take first place here and not split the award with anyone. So, what was my top childish comment? Also, I hereby award myself the top prize for triggering Snowflakes and Cryhards. Looking forward to an even better 2024!

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