Keep the trees please! There's nothing worse than a concrete jungle without some form of nature (trees, plants,etc). The trees are mature and beautiful, there's no reason for them to be taken down, they're not diseased. The developers need to work around them.
The Milpas trees are beautiful, and I do find it odd that the plan must involve removing the trees?? I guess I assumed that engineers and designers know how to work with / around trees?
The owner specifically said he didn’t charge for employee insurance, but he failed to explain what his extra fee on the check is for. I heard him explain to a customer in Via Maestra that he charges the fee for credit cards and did so instead of increasing menu prices. However, if you look on Yelp menu images, he clearly increased menu prices as well.
If anyone walks a few blocks on Milpas you will quickly realize that the ficus trees have made pedestrian access extremely poor and ADA access near impossible. They were good for a time but things change. Certainly not native and if you view historic SB photos they did not exist. Lets make a key corridor of our town properly accessible.
Please don’t remove those very old, very amazing ficus trees. Carillo has similar ones, and they work around the roots and whatever else is causing problems. Those are some of the things that make our history. They make the street beautiful.
The Milpas Ficus trees are old growth.
They're part of Santa Barbara & Milpas is gloriously beautiful because of them.
Clear cutting would be criminal and they deserve to be protected.
Those trees should be removed. I don't like them and there are better options.The trees don't let in light and attract too many crows. Milpas needs safer bike lanes and sidewalks that are wider. Adults and Kids can't safely ride bikes around town. Overall they needs a major overhaul.
My opinion is that let people to vote if remove those trees or not they are get them used to them not the city . The city should consider the vote not just to decide . Peoples vote is a right.
Santa Barbara should loose their “Tree City USA” award. They are removing tree left and right all around town.
Those trees give Milpas a magic that I would work hard to preserve. Their beauty and shade adds a lot of value to the neighborhood that needs to be balanced against the need for sidewalks and bike lanes to conform to newer standards.
Don't remove those beautiful trees!
you seem to entirely miss the point that they want to upgrade the area- "the poor area". Putting in new trees sounds awesome- some day children will stare at those new to you/old to them trees in wide eyed wonder.....
Ugh. I hate the idea of removal of trees of this scale.
It's always the poor neighborhoods where trees are taken down first.
They need to rethink.
It doesn’t have to be all or nothing with the Milpas trees. Planners start with the easy thing which is to do away with all shade and greenery. They just have to be encouraged to think more creatively, to think of shade as one of the assets in the mix. Planting new trees is part of it, but it will be decades before new trees provide meaningful shade and the beauty of mature greenery. Affluent neighborhoods get to keep their trees when improvements are made. Less affluent neighborhoods have to speak up to get that same consideration.
There certainly may be trees that have to go. But we are paying a lot of tax money for this design so it’s right that the community should push the city and developers to optimize all aspects. It’s just lazy design to wipe out all the shade because it’s more convenient.
We should not let ourselves get lured into an all or nothing framework on the trees. That just serves the developers’ interest. We can push them to better serve our interest. That’s what the Modoc neighbors were able to do, and a better solution came out of that.
We should speak up for an optimal design starting Tuesday Oct. 18th from 5:30-7p at the Franklin Neighborhood Center.
Personally in favor of tree removal on Milpas. They're stellar trees - don't get me wrong. But the street needs to modernize. They compromise the sidewalk. They compromise multi-story development. Milpas should be a High Street for the neighborhood with shops and business bordering the street and a wide sidewalk. Tree removal should help facilitate that.
Karen, unfortunately this is something AI would not be very good at. Crowdsourcing the data is by far the most effective and accurate way to gather this information.
The disparity between your 1,864 figure and Ms. DeBusk's comes from whether or not the project takes advantage of the AUD program. I'm not sure why the total wasn't included in her presentation, though.
So many people have moved to Santa Barbara because of its relatively small size, uniqueness and laidback life style only to slowly turn it into what they hoped to escape. I guess it is progress.
Any mandatory charges will have to be included in the posted menu price instead. So $10 burger becomes a $11.50 burger if there's a mandatory 15% "employee services" charge.
What is that fee that comes on your final bill ?? I don’t recall what you call it but it’s definitely there. I’ve eaten at both the chase and via maestra and both places have that addition service charge that goes towards paying higher of wages.
You saying They are not including this charge doesn’t make it true.
FYI the owner of Via Maestra commented on a different post that the restaurant does not impose such a charge.
What are the owners of the chase and via maestra going to do now that they will need to disclose that additional service charge or they will need to not charge it any longer.
I came across this posting and I happy to say that it contains false information. Via maestra DOES NOT have a 4% fee for employee insurance. This is completely false.
We have a large and loyal costumers base that would attest to this.
I know you have commenters interested in this but SB 478 banning “junk fees” was just signed j to law. As of July 1 2024, no more mandatory “service charges”, “employee wellness charges”, “resort fees” on top of advertised prices - the advertised price is the price you’ll pay (sales tax excluded).
