••• “The City of Santa Barbara plans to move forward with the purchase of ‘modular sidewalk extensions,’ known as ‘pedlets,’ as part of a short-term State Street Action Plan. The prefabricated pedlets, which would temporarily widen the sidewalks along the 500 block of State Street, are expected to cost more than $528,000” and “allow for ‘expanded outdoor dining adjacent to storefronts’ and the removal of temporary outdoor business facilities from the street.” —Independent (photo of some other place courtesy Modstreet)
••• “Alice Keck Park Memorial Garden Undergoing Overhaul with Partial Closures Through May. […] The city’s Parks and Recreation Department has closed parts of the picturesque grounds for repairs to trails and to make the park more accessible for people with disabilities.” —Noozhawk
••• “A coalition of environmental groups has sued the Office of the State Fire Marshal over state waivers granted to restart the pipeline that ruptured and caused the 2015 Refugio oil spill. Sable Offshore Corp. and ExxonMobil subsidiary Pacific Pipeline Co. plan to restart Santa Ynez Unit oil production, and are pursuing approvals from multiple agencies. Several local environmental groups are opposing the effort and have filed lawsuits challenging the waivers and other approvals.” —Noozhawk
••• “Med Center, the first urgent care facility to open in Santa Barbara, is set to close April 30. […] Doctors William Meller and Richard Huffard opened the Med Center in 1983.” It’s at 2954 State Street. —Noozhawk
••• “It appears as if there is a series of checks being intercepted at the U.S. Post Office in Montecito,” reports the Montecito Journal in its police blotter, and I know of people to whom this has happened. Think twice before mailing a personal check.
••• Santa Barbara is looking at making changes to its parking fees, reports Noozhawk. They include: 1) allowing drivers just one free 75-minute period per day, although it could be divided up at different lots (and how they’d enforce that, given the sporadic functionality of license plate readers, is an open question); 2) making “the zero blocks on both sides of State Street between Sola and Montecito streets free to park for only 15 minutes,” even though you can rarely even get a coffee in that amount of time, and “from Anacapa Street to Santa Barbara Street and from Chapala to De la Vina streets would expand to 75 minutes free, and beyond those blocks the free time would be 90 minutes”; 3) testing “a pilot program in the Helena lot in the Funk Zone, where people would pay at a kiosk they walk to, much like the waterfront lots” (which I don’t understand—is the idea that you could pay to stay longer than the allotted free time, or that you’d have to pay to use the lot at all?); and 4) “making it easier for downtown residents to park in the lots overnight. At the Ortega Lot, for example, the proposal is to reduce a monthly parking permit for the lots from $250 to $125 for downtown residents. For commuters, the lot permit for a month during the day would go from $145 to $70 a month.”
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Santa Barbara has lost its mind. Gifting some random private businesses public funds and resources is beyond acceptable. The entire city government needs to be reworked and rethought. The City is over $1billion in the hole, has more than employees than any comparable municipality while its tax rolls and income are decreasing and its expenditures and liabilities increasing. This is the recipe for bankruptcy and ultimately, austerity. Who is going to pay for all these social programs, public housing and business giveaways let alone fund the pensions and health care already committed while sales taxes decreased and costs skyrocket?
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The City keeps putting more and more low income people downtown, removing more and more parcels from tax rolls all while revenue is stagnant and prices are increasing for everything, for everyone. So who is going to pay for all of this? Broke college kids? Immigrants working min wage? Tourists from the Inland Empire spending $400 a night for a Motel 6? A 15% sales tax? Who? How?
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It’s beyond fixing at this point. The most likely scenario is a major earthquake, then bankruptcy, austerity and billions in federal and state dollars over decades to help the city rebuild. We’re literally being led by morons, grifters and coddled whiners. Crazy times.
100% spot on. The city is so complacent doing nothing to protect citizens allowing lawlessness everywhere that endanger its citizens, public safety hazards everywhere. 2
Teenagers already dead from getting hit by cars around Milpas and the street is more congested, more dangerous, delivery trucks blocking every intersection and the middle of the road cars cannot get by students everywhere on E bikes it’s just a bad scenario, one of 20.
But my favorite is the green city, the tree city, Santa Barbara, having an annual festival that explodes millions of pieces of confetti trash all along the beach. This is the mindset in a nutshell.
It’s amazing that these people either have no work ethic and integrity, or they do and they’re just not allowed to do anything. What a broken system.
It’s an absolutely terribly run city. Go literally anywhere else and walk the downtown, the parks, open spaces, see the more obvious police presence, and you will agree with me. Talk to any elected city official about the most obviously broken thing that would have been fixed by now in much poorer cities and hear their complacency.
Please join me in voting them all out as soon as possible. Can someone please run who is competent? We don’t need friendly or funny. We need good decisions and action.
It’s only going to get worse until people vote differently and face the fact that voting in California is likely heavily “modified”. Control your government or it will control you. Glad we got out of SB a few years ago.
Great reporting always! Medcenter is the worst service on the planet, some of the rudest and most complacent people work there. They need to close. We called for some bloodwork results and the girl just went off on us. It was crazy. It’s frightening when absolute horrible people are running the front desks and medical offices.
OH goodness! The reasons for parking increases are insane. If someone wants to watch the clock and move the car it’s on them. Why on earth are local residents paying more than commuters for parking permits? Shortening the amount of time for free parking will limit the amount of time window shop and spend money. A night out on the town is expensive when you pay $9 for parking on top of dinner and entertainment. Downtown Team Manager Sarah Clark is pushing people away not drawing them in to visit downtown. I read or saw her talking about this. The logic is head scratching. Besides how can parking lots cost the city $13 million a year?
The struggle to satiate the Markel Winfrey crowd is real.