City Hall Surrenders to The State
by Bonnie Donovan
After watching the 3/4/2024 meeting of the Architectural Board of Review on Macy’s Housing (aka La Cumbre), the City Council meeting of 3/5/2024 on Paseo Nuevo Housing, and the Planning Commission ADU 2-story project, I learned that We are Definitely Screwed!
After contemplating those three meetings, it has become clear to me that State Law takes precedence over our City Charter. And, unfortunately, it seems that the architects, planners, and developers, who attended did not consider – and are not considering – either the well-being of our community or the beauty of our town.
Thanks to persistent questioning by Leslie Wiscomb on the Planning Commission, there is now in-depth research taking place within our city attorney's office regarding "the new State Law" on housing and how it works with the two-story ADU project.
The Paseo Nuevo project "will be" seven stories tall, and Macy’s project "will be" six (74 feet). Our voices have been silenced and we are expected to accept these developments without complaint. "The New State Law"
Although the Paseo Nuevo project is situated on city-owned land, it is not directly operated by the city.
The current tenant will be responsible for building the housing units once their lease is modified, as the current agreement only permits retail use, not housing.
There is a small group that has initiated a petition on charge.org, demanding the inclusion of the Santa Barbara Housing Authority (SBHA) in the Paseo Nuevo project to construct up to 200 low-cost housing units.
It is crucial to consider the implications of this, as the units built by SBHA will not contribute to property tax revenue, affecting funding for essential services such as schools, streets, sewer, fire, and police etc...
Budget Hearing will be starting soon and listen to how many times we hear there is no money… you need to cut your department...
Four Years and Still No Diploma
This takes us to Monday's 3/18/2024 State Street Advisory Committee (SSAC) meeting.
With half the money paid to MIG of the $800,000 contract, where are we?
Installed signs stating to walk your bike.
Removed walk your bike signs.
Painted green bike lane down State Street
Paid to remove the green bike lane.
Paid to again paint in bike lanes.
Don't forget our Public Records Act Request (PRAR), at that time they had spent 3 million dollars on the Promenade.
It started out called a Pedestrian Promenade.
Then they removed the word Pedestrian.
During Monday's meeting they announced finally we will have a trolley back on State Street Friday, Saturday, and Sunday every 30 minutes from 10 am until 6 pm only!
Don't have the money but a grant they have will cover these hours, for a few months.
So, if you have mobility issues (aka ADA) note you are allowed between those hours.
We Are No Further Than We Were Years Ago
Since the adoption of the bicycle master plan in 2016 and with State Street being in the plan – do we need to go back and change it to get bikes off the promenade?
Will there be bikes?
Will there be cars?
Recall 160 Architects donated their time to redesign State Street, “Charrette”
Then we contracted MIG for $800,000.
Then Architect Cassandra Ensberg presented drawings to put outdoor dining back on the sidewalks by returning the sidewalks to the width they were before someone came in and enlarged the planter areas. Her drawings open State Street back up
Courtesy: Cassandra Ensberg FAIA. On Monday, a new group of architects presented their drawings with a fountain in the middle of State Street…
Explain to me how the fire truck or any emergency vehicle gets to the people in need. How many seconds or minutes are being added to all the emergency calls around town with all the road closures or blockages?
Police “Misconduct” down from Eight Incidents a year to… Eight Incidents a year
About four years ago, most of the existing city council members, including the then mayor, caved-in to the threats of two Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists who accused the Santa Barbara Police Department of unreported, disrespectful, and violent behavior towards private citizens. And they accused the city administration of poor to non-existent oversight of police activities.
While no proof was provided, the council accepted these claims, despite all the evidence to the contrary provided by the respected interim Police Chief Bernard Melekian.
In fact, Chief Melekian provided data showing there had been only eight substantiated incidents of misbehavior by a police officer out of thousands of police-public interactions.
In meetings with the Black Lives Matter zealots, it seemed that not one city councilor defended the police department. They were all cowed into submission by the fear of street demonstrations and violence orchestrated by out-of-town BLM agitators called in by the local members of that organization, as had occurred in other cities.
Under the specifications required by the BLM leaders and their supporters, the city council agreed to set up a task force consisting of people not associated with the police department.
There was no regular city council involvement to monitor the direction the task force was taking.
After many months of work, the task force presented a complicated proposal that would have dominated the management and operations of the police department, together with a large increase to the city's budget.
That shocked city council members.
In fact, it was pointed out that contrary to BLM claims, there were already in place several avenues for any member of the public to file complaints about the behavior of police officers and have the complaints investigated.
It is important to re-state the report made by Interim Police Chief Melekian during the early stages of the unfounded criticisms by the BLM activists, that the record of police misbehavior incidents had fallen considerably from prior years and had now been reduced to only eight substantiated incidents of misbehavior a year among thousands of interactions by police officers with the public and each had been dealt with appropriately.
During the City Council meeting on 3/12/2024, years later we have a self-congratulatory report by the new people in the police Oversight Board that with their help, the Santa Barbara Police Department has had only eight substantiated incidents of police misbehavior in the past year.
Oh, by the way, the city cut the police department's budget last year, despite our new police chief's urgent and eloquent pleas against the cuts.
So, we have gone from a score of eight substantiated incidents a year… to a score of… eight substantiated incidents a year, with a lot more bureaucracy disruption and cost. All because the city council was intimidated by BLM.
But at what cost in increased salaries and benefits; and what lost on-the-beat time among police officers filling out paperwork; and what have citizens lost in safety from crime? What is the current state of morale among serving officers? What is the retention rate of serving officers? How effective is the hiring rate for new serving officers?
Stop the madness and give us back our city!
*******
LTG Mike Flynn, US Army (Retired), is coming to Santa Barbara on April 19th for the Southern California premiere of the FLYNN movie. For more information and to get your tickets visit flynnmovie.com.
Thank you for the summary.
It is obvious to any reasonable person our City wastes money, actually they put money into their buddies pockets. Perhaps not our Mayors buddies directly, but the Democratic Party line buddies.
Thee are plenty of examples, but a blatant one was with SBUSD when they hired “Coffee with a Black Guy” at $1,800/hour with no competing bids.
The gentleman hired had zero counseling experience or qualifications.
His qualifications were a personal relationship with a then sitting board member.
That board member now sits on the BOS.
Our local government is and has been corrupt.
For decades they’ve been driving businesses away, putting up road blocks to new businesses.
They fought development, fought turning Paseo and other empty commercial spaces into mixed use (residential up top, businesses on street level)
They’ve been “fighting the State” about new housing, denying, prolonging, making it extremely expensive for private landowners from building single family residences as well as putting off local developers want g to build units, like Capitol Hardware on Milpas and Cantwells on State.
Now they bend over for the State. Show me the bribes.
Guess it’s better than our government burning down SB like they did to Lahaina.
There’s money being handed out and our local government puppets are following orders.
Talk to your Democratic voting spouses friends, neighbors, kids. Ask them about what’s going on. Chances are their heads are buried and they have no idea.
good job city council
you wrote the book on how to destroy a once beautiful city
bravo