2021 was a terrible, no-good year — but let’s celebrate these 10 SLO County highlights

There’s a common complaint about the news business: All we talk about is the bad stuff.

Unfortunately, there was more than enough of that to go around in 2021: COVID, climate change, political insurrection, inflation, supply chain shortages, mass shootings, wildfires, drought, flooding, and for a grand finale, the fast-spreading omicron variant had us rethinking whether we should even venture out of our houses to celebrate the new year.

Is it any wonder that this relentless stream of bad news overshadowed the good stuff that was going on ... to the point where it’s hard to remember the high points?

We say it’s time to shake if off and end the year on an optimistic note, with a look back at 10 good things that happened in San Luis Obispo County in 2021.

Here, in no particular owner, is our list of 10 SLO County highlights of 2021:

It rained!

Following one of the warmest Novembers on record, the skies finally opened up this month and brought us some real rain. We closed out the year with a series of significant storms; some areas of the county got more than an inch on Christmas Day.

What’s more, we’re on track to beat the dismal rain record for 2020-21 (rain years run from July 1 through June 30), which was one of driest on record. But the drought is far from over, so keep up the conservation.

A majority of SLO County residents got vaxxed

We tend to dwell on the number of people who aren’t yet vaccinated, but this time we’re switching it up and taking the glass-half-full approach.

As of Dec. 13, 64.2% of residents 5 and older were fully vaccinated and 72% were partially vaccinated, leaving 29% unvaccinated. So yes, we still have a ways to go, but we can take some comfort in knowing that the pool of the unvaccinated is shrinking.

Fewer empty store fronts

Commercial districts throughout the county were hard hit in 2020, but none more so than downtown SLO.

In the early stages of the pandemic, it was looking more like a ghost town than a thriving commercial center, but over the past year, spaces have been filling up — some with new tenants and others with businesses that changed location.

A few examples:

Anthropologie, a trendy women’s clothing/home decor chain, opened in the space vacated by Express.

Lokum, a Turkish-style dessert and coffee shop, opened at 715 Higuera St. in the space last occupied by Len Collective, which moved across the street to 760 Higuera.

A Templeton High grad opened Blue Harvest Apparel, featuring women’s clothing and home decor items, at the corner of Higuera and Chorro Streets — a space formerly occupied by Fanny Wrappers.

And Fanny Wrappers, a lingerie shop, moved just a short distance away to 856 Higuera St.

We don’t have space here to include all the new shops and restaurants that opened in 2021, but if you haven’t checked out downtown SLO lately, it’s worth a trip.

Students graduated! In person!

After a year without the usual milestone events — big weddings, proms, family reunions, anniversary parties — things slowly got somewhat back to normal in 2021.

At no time was that more apparent than in May and June, when graduations were in full swing. Instead of drive-through ceremonies, students were treated to all the graduation pomp and circumstance in full view of family and friends.

Grads fist bumped, cracked jokes and tossed their caps in the air, just like in pre-pandemic days. It was sweet.

We ended up with a qualified county clerk

County Clerk/Recorder Tommy Gong resigned before the end of his term, after being besieged by “Stop the Steal” conservatives who questioned his competence, asked whether he belonged to the “Chinese Communist Party” and demanded election “reforms,” such as hand-counting ballots.

The far-right majority on the Board of Supervisors seriously considered applications from a variety of unqualified candidates as replacements for Gong.

Supervisor Lynn Compton emerged as hero-for-the-day by ultimately voting with the liberal minority to limit the field of finalists who would be interviewed. That paved the way for the appointment of Elaina Cano, who had held supervisory positions in county clerk offices in both Santa Barbara and SLO County, and had served as city clerk in San Luis Obispo and Pismo Beach.

Big sigh of relief.

We witnessed the start of an honest-to-goodness boom in housing construction

Yes, home prices continued to rise, but we also saw the stock of housing increase.

All told, nearly 5,000 units were under construction or in the pipeline in SLO County in 2019, according to Pacific Coast Business Times.

Finally, projects that had been on the drawing board for years actually started taking shape in 2021.

One of the most visible is San Luis Ranch, located just off the freeway in San Luis Obispo. Ultimately, that project will include 577 homes, though fewer than 100 had been built as of November, with prices expected to range from the high $300,000s or low $400,000s for the smallest units to the $900,000s for the largest homes.

And this isn’t just happening in SLO; in practically every community in the county, new housing is under construction. Sure, that means more traffic, loss of open space, more demand on public facilities and services, but there’s no getting around the fact that people need places to live — and SLO County is under a state mandate to plan for an additional 11,810 homes between 2020 and 2028.

High school students spoke out against hate

When a Pride flag was stripped from the wall of a Paso High classroom and defiled — students posted a video of the flag being stuffed down a toilet and defecated on — the school district responded, not with a forceful show of support for LGBTQ students, but by limiting the size of rainbow flags that could be displayed in the future.

Students would have none of it. They plastered the campus with handmade signs of support, and student leaders organized a Coming Out Against Hate forum.

Their activism paid off. After the forum, the Paso school district issued a set of eight goals aimed at making its campuses more welcoming for LGBTQ students.

Offshore wind took off (sort of)

For a while there, it appeared the U.S. Navy would sink any proposal to install wind turbines off the SLO County coast.

But times have changed. In November, the federal government designated 376 square miles off the North Coast as the Morro Bay wind energy area. There are still more steps — including environmental review — but we’re further along in the process.

Oso Flaco was saved

State Parks introduced a Public Works Plan to revamp the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation. It included turning Oso Flaco Lake — a tranquil spot popular with birders, nature lovers and hikers — into a tourist attraction complete with campsites, cabins and other visitor-serving facilities.

Not even off-roaders were enthused about it; the Off-Highway Vehicle Commission wrote that it would “not provide any new benefits to OHV users.”

In the end, the California Coastal Commission voted to phase out OHV recreation altogether — a decision that’s being challenged in court — and it told State Parks that its Public Works Plan could not be approved under the Coastal Act.

The monarchs returned!

In 2020, only 200 butterflies were spotted at the Pismo Beach Monarch Butterfly Grove, where tens of thousands used to winter in the eucalyptus trees. It seemed like another sure sign that that species was nearing extinction. But monarchs made a remarkable comeback in 2021; more than 22,000 were counted in November — an increase of 3,500%.

Biologists were thrilled — but still cautiously optimistic.

That’s not a bad way to end the old year, and to welcome the new one.

Happy 2022.