Former SLO County Supervisor Shirley Bianchi dies at 91, leaving behind huge legacy
No matter which side of the political fence voters were on during Shirley Bianchi’s long involvement in San Luis Obispo County’s political, environmental and agricultural issues, everybody agreed she was a force to reckon with.
As some of her fellow county supervisors knew well and remarked often, “If Shirley’s not happy, nobody’s happy.”
She not only took the comment in stride, she took it as an accolade and quoted it frequently, always with a laugh, twinkling eyes and a nod.
Bianchi, 91, died Friday, Feb. 26, at French Hospital Medical Center in San Luis Obispo.
She’d been planning to return that day to her San Simeon Creek Road home in Cambria, after long battles with heart and other issues.
Doctors had implanted a pacemaker Jan. 16 to help regulate her heart, and Bianchi had been in and out of the hospital ever since.
As the news of Bianchi’s death spread Friday, friends and colleagues mourned her loss and shared memories.
Gloria Fiscalini, daughter of one of Bianchi’s dearest friends, the late ranch matriarch Betty Fiscalini, was in tears after hearing the news.
“It’s a changing of the guard,” she said. “Shirley cared about agriculture. She cared about people. She had honor and had an enormous influence on all of us. It was her life’s blood to help people. She had a huge impact on the entire county, but especially on the North Coast she loved so much and defended so fiercely.”
District 4 Supervisor and Board Chair Lynn Compton said Bianchi “leaves behind an incredible legacy, not just as a supervisor but also through her community advocacy and leadership in other roles. She was a true public servant, and we are grateful for her service.”
District Attorney Dan Dow said he and his wife were saddened to learn of Bianchi’s death.
“Supervisor Bianchi was passionate about serving our community in a manner that reflected the values of her constituents and she was always known for her tireless work ethic and her frank conversations,” Dow said in a news release. “San Luis Obispo County lost a great community leader and patriot who put her hard work behind everything she stood for.”
Bianchi is survived by her husband of 57 years, soils physicist Bill Bianchi, as well as three of their daughters, Catherine, Mary and Ann Bianchi, who were at her side as her health deteriorated, and a fourth, Jan Mills, who was unable to travel from her home in Germany due to COVID-19. She was preceded in death by her son, John Bianchi.
Arrangements for services are pending.
Bianchi was a strong San Luis Obispo County influence
Shirley Bianchi was an active, influential participant in North Coast and county government for decades. She was known as much for her independence, persistence, candor and occasional brashness tempered with humor as for her many accomplishments and ability to achieve consensus across party lines.
As she often said with her trademark laugh, “My favorite technique is to bring all the sides together in the same room, close the door, serve a lot of coffee and not let anybody leave until some agreement was reached.”
She served two terms as District 2 supervisor through 2006, and prior to that, two terms on the county Planning Commission.
Her concerns were as widespread as preparing her community for wildfire, flood and climate change, to children’s health and making sure North Coast residents and visitors had the best possible ambulance service.
In 1984, Bianchi was a co-founder of the Land Conservancy of San Luis Obispo County. More recently, she co-founded the Cambria Fire Focus Group and served as a trustee on the Cambria Community Healthcare District.
As a candidate, planning commissioner, county supervisor and a woman, she fought for what she believed in, and rarely got a bland response from anybody. Bianchi sparked strong opinions, partly because she had plenty of them herself and was never afraid of speaking her mind.
In a series of interviews over the decades, she described herself.
“If someone knows me personally,” Bianchi said, “they would probably describe me in positive terms. But if they have only heard from others what I am like, they might describe me negatively. There doesn’t seem to be anybody in the middle.”
That probably was because, she said, “I try to treat every issue on its own merits. Therefore, I’m not predictable. I don’t go with the flow. I’m willing to buck the popular trends to do what I think is right.”
She said years ago with a grin, “I’m only prickly to people who prickle me first.”
Of those who didn’t like her philosophy of being consistent, prepared, forthright and playing her political hand with all the cards face-up on the table, she would quote Popeye, saying “I yam what I yam.”
In fact, she often wore her feistiness up front, on sweatshirts proclaiming her positions.
For years, she and other members of a casual women’s political-friendship group wore matching shirts that read, “Well-behaved women seldom make history.”
And at the Women’s March after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, the legend on Bianchi’s shirt said, “And you thought I was a nasty woman before? Buckle up, Buttercup!”
A fellow political activist once said of Bianchi, “If you were a man, all your qualities would be so obvious that everybody would want you to be elected immediately.”
Bianchi’s family history
Shirley Bianchi was born in Glendale in 1929, into a family with long ties to the North Coast.
Bill Bianchi’s grandfather Celestino “Charles” Bianchi came to Cambria’s Santa Rosa Creek from Switzerland in 1878.
In 1926, Shirley Bianchi’s grandfather Lloyd William Gregg bought what is now the Stepladder Ranch on San Simeon Creek Road.
Various members of both families have been on the North Coast and in San Luis Obispo County ever since. Bill and Shirley Bianchi lived on part of Gregg’s original land purchase since 1979.
Her emotional ties to the area have been lifelong. Bianchi spent childhood summers at her grandfather’s Cambria ranch, and she said that, when it came time to go back home to Southern California, “I cried all the way to Ventura.”
At some point in her childhood, she moved to Cambria and graduated from Coast Union High School, before going on earn a bachelor’s degree in English at San Jose State and her teaching credential from UC Davis.
She moved around for much of her adult life, depending on her husband’s work, before the couple returned to the North Coast in 1979.
Her elections, losses and lessons learned
Within a few years of arriving back in Cambria, Bianchi launched what would become a 40-year career in local politics and community service.
She lost her first two runs at the District 2 county supervisor job in 1986 and 1990. After the second loss, she convinced the man who subsequently held that post, Bud Laurent, to appoint her to the county Planning Commission.
Was she discouraged by her political losses? No. “Three thousand people had voted for me,” she said of her first defeat. “That was more people than had ever agreed with me in my life. I was thrilled.”
Her work on the Planning Commission served as a springboard, and North Coast voters elected Bianchi to represent the them as supervisor in 1998 and 2002.
In that job, she regularly took politically risky positions by refusing to compromise her standards, most notably by endorsing and working toward approval of the Los Osos sewer plant and fighting hard for permanent restriction of development on the Hearst Ranch.
Bianchi considered the protracted sewer battle to be “my biggest failure,” and the final $95 million Hearst Ranch conservation deal to be her greatest achievement.
That agreement on the mega-ranch eventually included a Hearst donation to State Parks of 1,500 acres of oceanfront land west of Highway 1 between San Simeon and Ragged Point.
As a fierce advocate for protecting other open lands and keeping ranch and farm land in active agriculture, Bianchi also helped to craft rules guiding or restricting other development in various areas of the North Coast and the county.
She frequently walked the tricky political tightrope of fighting for conservation of open lands while also defending private property rights, or what she called “property responsibilities. We should never use the land in such a way that we would damage our neighbors.”
Bianchi often defended and fought for regular people.
“I listen to all my constituents,” she said, “but I tend to listen more to the ones with chalk on their hands from writing on a school blackboard, with ashes on their hands from being a firefighter, with dirt on their hands from being a farmer. I listen to them more than I do the ones in silk suits and gold cufflinks, because I think the workers need my voice more.”
She added, “Over the years, I’ve tried to be a voice for people who are basically voiceless, who are afraid or unable to speak out. I’m not anti-business in the least, but I don’t believe people are here to serve the economy. I think the economy is here to serve the people.”
While “I had no intention of ending up doing what I’m doing,” Bianchi once reflected, “it became my life, my vocation. Someone inferred to me that this is my hobby,” but they were wrong. “Music is my hobby,” she said, having played various instruments for years, especially at Santa Rosa Catholic Church.
Who Bianchi was, according to others
Bianchi’s relationship with Hearst heir and vice president Steve Hearst started out with fire and brimstone.
After the Coastal Commission dealt a fatal blow to the Hearst Corp. mega-complex development plans for the 82,000-acre ranch (including homes, hundreds of motel rooms and a golf course), Bianchi, Hearst and others met at the historic home of Sen. George Hearst about what could and should be done about the ranch’s future.
Hearst recalled Feb. 25 that Bianchi arrived to that meeting with a legal pad full of demands, chips on both shoulders and a defiant attitude.
In later years, the two previous opponents agreed that the thaw in their frosty relationship began after they broke away from that testy meeting for a one-on-one, get-to-know walking tour of the nearby Hearst horse ranch facilities.
“We talked. We didn’t fight,” she said.
As Bianchi’s health declined and the end was near, Hearst said sadly of the woman he’d come to respect and like that he’d remember her as being “one of a kind, a remarkable woman and a fierce competitor and ally. I will miss her.”
Kara Woodruff, a former program director for The Nature Conservancy, remembered Bianchi for the “incredible life she led.”
“Shirley was a trailblazer. She spoke her mind and took control long before the world was used to such driven and passionate women,” Woodruff said. “One of the joys of my lifetime was working with Shirley on the conservation of the Hearst Ranch, and it’s hard to imagine it would have been successful but for Shirley’s early advocacy and persistence. She was fun and funny, sweet but direct, and someone to be admired, if not feared. The Central Coast was shaped in significant part by Shirley, and she will be truly missed.”
In his tribute to Bianchi, Dow noted her wealth of accomplishments, especially highlighting her role as a co-founder of Martha’s Place Children’s Assessment Center. Named after Bianchi’s great-granddaughter, the center provides assessment of infants and young children who exhibit extreme behavioral concerns, developmental delays, and prenatal substance exposure.
Current North Coast Supervisor Bruce Gibson said her Hearst Ranch efforts helped to convince him to enter the race to replace her on the board. Her efforts to bring the various sides together, especially given the vitriol around the proposal, was “a courageous thing to do. It showed me that dedicated public officials really can make a difference. But she also asked me if I wanted to run.”
He added, “Shirley was an inspiration to many in SLO County and especially those of us on the North Coast. Over her many years of public service, she contributed so much, from the establishment of crucial services for children at Martha’s Place to bringing the community together around the successful Hearst Ranch conservation project.”
Many who disagreed with her politically also respected her, and some of them became friends, such as former supervisor and California Coastal Commissioner Katcho Achadjian, who died last year.
At Bianchi’s farewell ceremony in the supervisors’ board chambers, she was feted with the pealing of bells, a prolonged standing ovation and praise from Achadjian, who called her “a real lady with a big heart” and “a legend.”
This story was originally published February 26, 2021 at 12:46 PM.
