Thank you Denice for this timely reminder. When Santa Barbara is now paying $281,000 per year for a librarian, you know spending is out of control. Every tax and/or fee hike is strictly used for enhanced pay and benefits for city/county workers, regardless of how it is presented and where it is supposedly targeted. Refuse every request for more, and insist on paring expenses first, then maybe we can begin to balance things out, though it does seem as we've gone too far to ever reach that goal.
When they need to fund their own promised employee benefit short falls, make them put that on the ballot.
What they do not tell us.......Please pass this tax so we can keep paying more city staff even more money, paying them more benefits for more days they do not even work, and now funding their pensions we underfunded in the first place when we promised them 20 years ago. ........
They need to admit they over-promised and under-funded city employee benefits, and now demand we make good on their own long history of political expediency. And your taxes will now need to be increased every single year. Big OOOPS on our part, but whatcha gonna do now?
Term limits lets any current city council avoid fixing this problem. - -NO ONE now is responsible for irresponsible promises made in the past, yet those past promises now have due and payable demands made on us today.
Had past city councils offered defined-contribution pensions instead of the irresponsible defined-benefit pensions, much of this current problem would have gone away.
What, me worry? They say, as they themselves now waltz out of their own term-limited office.
Number one action plan is to not re-elect Democrat party operative Laura Capps, to the board of supervisors for the 2nd supervisor district.
Number two is to find viable options for Supervisor Roy Lee in county district one, who has proven himself to be just one more SEIU and teacher union acolyte and does not even begin to represent his entire district as promised.
Elected officials simply cannot take sides with any government employee union. They must stay arms length and bargain with them fairly and neutrally, always within the primary interests of local taxpayers.
Action plan:
1. Do not re-elect Roy Lee
2. Do not re-elect Laura Capps
3. Reject all candidates taking support from SEIU and the teachers unions.
Denice, Well done and well said! By every objective metric the city is racing to the bottom and there are certain council members who are gleefully adding fuel to the fire—baffling. There is no financial discipline or even an understanding of their fiduciary responsibility. For the second year in a row we are digging into emergency and general fund reserves with no end in sight. TOT is flat and sales tax revenue is $2M off budget/less than last year—together these represent 25% of our revenue. Property taxes are next to be threatened with a legal Demand Letter recently sent to the city threatening litigation based on diminished economic value—not really a good look when a city is sued by business and property owners that pay the lions share of revenues. And you are spot on—the city expenses have literally doubled while its population has decreased—where are the cuts?Who are these people performing for? Do they even understand financial statements or structural budget deficits? That said, you are correct: While many complain far too few will actively engage in the process. Thank you for caring (and writing)!
Do we really still need something like the city's Department of Sustainability and Resilience, whose only task now is to keep putting meat on the broken bones of the thoroughly discredited "green agenda".
“Property taxes are next to be threatened with a legal Demand Letter recently sent to the city threatening litigation based on diminished economic value—not really a good look when a city is sued by business and property owners that pay the lions share of revenues. And you are spot on—the city expenses have literally doubled while its population has decreased—where are the cuts?” Your articulated the source of my nightmares. Thank you Jeff.
While I can't speak for Santa Barbara as I live in Santa Maria,I can object to the county government. I moved here in 1995 from San Bernardino county. At that time my home loan had property taxes included in the house payment. Every year the loan company over estimated taxes in the impound account. So we got a refund. After moving to Santa Barbara county,every year we've had to pay more over and above the estimate for property taxes. This county doesn't know how to manage its income. The marijuana tax is a good example of not researching the industry and not supporting law enforcement for illegal farms. There's too much regulations on everything,oil,wine industry,tourism,and then you have nimbys. Democrats don't care,and the wealthy don't either. I personally would welcome bankruptcy and the calpers retirement is broke and always will be. You get what you vote for.
Elce, if it makes you feel any better I went to SB Republican Headquarters picked up a NO 50 sign and a stack of flyers. I put the sign on my balcony, seen as you drive around the corner and can’t be stolen! Then I put the flyers in mailboxes throughout my neighborhood. And mailed my vote last week.
PS Dolores, this is exactly the time of grass roots efforts we all need. Thank you for your own volunteer efforts.
However, a note of warning - no campaign material may be placed in USPS mail boxes. Only at a door step or other places where it will be seen and be picked up.
But not USPS mail boxes. We don't need the taint of violating federal regulations .
Thank you for this information. Once I went thru the neighborhood I vaguely recalled only receiving flyers at my old house at the doorstep and thought I might have made a mistake.
Denise, thank you for making the excellent case everyone in the region needs to stay engaged with the wider community concerns, even though due to the perversities of the California Voting Rights Act they are now outside of our own, narrowly-drawn voting districts.
Thank you state representatives Das Williams, Hannah-Beth Jackson, Monique Limon and Gregg Hart for thrusting this new and dysfunctional political structure upon us.
The real crime having been forced now into these very narrow "district elections" becomes even more obvious. Divide and conquer made us vulnerable to the full takeover by unelected outside forces who do share a common purpose. Those unelected outside forces are the community-wide SEIU and teachers union members, aka the Democrat party, who are highly organized against any calls for reform of their ruinous tax and spend governance model.
After this recent mandatory switch to district elections, we quickly became a dysfunctional, balkanized operational structure, now fully taken over by these outside special interest who do have a wider agenda that is never on the ballot - higher local taxes to pay for higher wages, benefits and pensions for themselves. And now even pushing for erosion of prior tax increases promised to repair and maintain our local infrastructure.
Desiring to invade our very limited and-debt obligated city resources to support those here illegally, with a straight face out newest and SEIU-backed city council member Wendy Santa Maria claimed "people are infrastructure too" when she proposed diverting these promised infrastructure tax revenues to be handed over instead to benefit persons here illegally.
That is why we must be constantly vigilant and follow those we are now no longer allowed to vote for ourselves, but who very much intend to do great damage to our city over all. Power grabs by SEIU and the teachers unions, aka the Democrat party, never rest.
Our community duty is to expose them and stop them where ever they turn up.
Denice, you have written to the readers, a call for action, not pontification. You are correct that many of us who live outside the city are significantly affected by some of its actions.
We all need to think about what to do and how to do it in response to her challenge. We need a list of counteractions to push both the city council and the employed administration into an affordable and effective method of management of this city. At present, at both levels, spending is out of control and their objectives, reflected in their spending and demands for more taxes are at extreme odds with those who have to pay for them in both direct and direct taxes.
It seems to me that at least, a charge misfeasance or malfeasance in spending taxpayers' money, against both the city council and the administration should be considered.
As I have been advised by another reader, that the city administration has undergone two professional efficiencies of operations analyses, both of which concluded that the city was significantly overstaffed and over-paid for the tasks to be accomplished. In both cases the city's response was to do nothing. Perhaps that is a place to start as a pressure point with an organized Government Improvement task force.
The biggest damage was "the state" foisting the California Voting Rights Act on our local communities.
Change who represents us at the state level - that means no more Monique Limon and Gregg Hart re-elections. And make amends for having elected and re-electing Hannah-Beth Jackson and Das Williams so often in the past.
Beware of any candidate running now with a (D) by their names. We know what we will get, if we keep re-electing them.
How do we stop this? We have known this for years and I would think that most people agree that this has to change. How go we get the mayor out and elect people who are educated enough to know how to run a city and get rid of all the waste. I still own property in Montecito and I watch as this continues to get worse.
Denice, thank you for reporting the details/specifics you've included. I'm more progressive-leaning than most on this board, but our completely lopsided council is running amok. I'd love to get a person or two with some fiscal/number background to draw some lines to operate in. Our town needs some balance.
I am more than willing to help legal residents truly in need. But overtime, the concepts of self-reliance and personal responsibility have been extinguished from our public debates. Too, too many of our citizens have become immature adolescents living in their parents’ (the government’s) basement. It is long past time for the adults to leave the basement. Berney
Every election time the same arguments .... there is an answer put on the ballot an item that says "no confidence." NC option for any elected office. Within this item it states if "no confidence" wins the seat, it is left vacant and the remaining Council may NOT appoint a fill in. No Confidence would be listed on the election outcomes as a candidate.
Think about it..... the people would have the right to express their option and how would it look if "no confidence" came in a close second even though it did not win?
No confidence loses by a whopping 45%.... Laugh, it would make the point there are a whole bunch who don't want the alternative.
Where is the back bone of the Democrat Left when faced with RHNA, 7-8 Story buildings; to face up to Sacramento, say NO MORE! If you have not figured it out this area is out of potable water supplies. High density stupidity will concrete over every last green space. Remember the last crop of farmers is concrete.
It is time to start cutting back on staff when you are faced with deficits. That does not mean we'll part time you. Last hired first fired.
Tired of dangerous e-bikes? Tired of illegals doing business without a license? Tired of seeing taxable land and special district taxes disappearing because the government now owns that housing and land?
Tired of seeing efficient and safe streets become barricaded nightmares? Tired of the pursuit of vision-less transportation that has failed for minimum of a quarter of a century?
Tired of the excuses for their failures being "we just need more time and taxpayer money"...?
Excellent, Scott. Now we just need to find the winning candidates to take this critical message to our current elected bodies. And support them with heart, mind body and soul.
SB appears to be a strong Mayor/Council form of government. Would a city manager form of government serve our residents in a better way? This city (and county) has an enormous amount of successful leadership talent in our residents. Let’s tap that talent with a volunteer citizens council. We clearly need to be on a better track for the future. Denise, thank you for this column! You inspire.
Mayor Harriet Miller and her city administrator Sandra Tripp-Jones were the last strong city administrator- driven city councils. She took a blue pencil to all fiscally unsustainable demands on the city budget.
Which unfortunately then led to the city union take-overs of the future city elections starting with Mayor Marty Blum. We were warned by the Editor of the SB News/Press at time - Travis Armstrong, but Democrat forces quickly ran him out of town. And eventually collapsed the NewsPress, so there was no effective opposition voice in town from that time forward.
___________
From former Harriet Miller's obituary tribute in the SB Independent:
"As mayor, Miller enjoyed an exceedingly close working relationship with former city administrator Sandra Tripp-Jones, and they controlled what issues made it onto the agenda to a degree unheard of today.
While obvious friction—both political and personal—existed on the council, debate and disagreement was kept to a minimum. So too was grandstanding, speechifying, and initiative by individual council members.
There was a legal demand letter sent to the City Clerk (making it “public”) on Sept 14–based on similar allegations as was contained in the Ventura lawsuit where Main Street businesses alleged loss of economic value based on main street’s closure.
Thanks for the excellent reporting Denice on the current sorry fiscal state of our City. Also really glad to know that Sneddon and Harmon are terming out, hopefully enough intelligent voters turn out to elect someone with basic knowledge of economics and math to take their place. I was quite alarmed however of your mention of a possible "spare bedroom mandate" by the City?
Thank you Denice for this timely reminder. When Santa Barbara is now paying $281,000 per year for a librarian, you know spending is out of control. Every tax and/or fee hike is strictly used for enhanced pay and benefits for city/county workers, regardless of how it is presented and where it is supposedly targeted. Refuse every request for more, and insist on paring expenses first, then maybe we can begin to balance things out, though it does seem as we've gone too far to ever reach that goal.
Fiscal responsibility is forbidden by the woke elected officials among us!! A tragic state of being for Santa Barbara!
When they need to fund their own promised employee benefit short falls, make them put that on the ballot.
What they do not tell us.......Please pass this tax so we can keep paying more city staff even more money, paying them more benefits for more days they do not even work, and now funding their pensions we underfunded in the first place when we promised them 20 years ago. ........
They need to admit they over-promised and under-funded city employee benefits, and now demand we make good on their own long history of political expediency. And your taxes will now need to be increased every single year. Big OOOPS on our part, but whatcha gonna do now?
Term limits lets any current city council avoid fixing this problem. - -NO ONE now is responsible for irresponsible promises made in the past, yet those past promises now have due and payable demands made on us today.
Had past city councils offered defined-contribution pensions instead of the irresponsible defined-benefit pensions, much of this current problem would have gone away.
What, me worry? They say, as they themselves now waltz out of their own term-limited office.
Number one action plan is to not re-elect Democrat party operative Laura Capps, to the board of supervisors for the 2nd supervisor district.
Number two is to find viable options for Supervisor Roy Lee in county district one, who has proven himself to be just one more SEIU and teacher union acolyte and does not even begin to represent his entire district as promised.
Elected officials simply cannot take sides with any government employee union. They must stay arms length and bargain with them fairly and neutrally, always within the primary interests of local taxpayers.
Action plan:
1. Do not re-elect Roy Lee
2. Do not re-elect Laura Capps
3. Reject all candidates taking support from SEIU and the teachers unions.
Excellent article. Our city council is useless.
Democrat election "reform" in the past few years guaranteed this to be the case.
Denice, Well done and well said! By every objective metric the city is racing to the bottom and there are certain council members who are gleefully adding fuel to the fire—baffling. There is no financial discipline or even an understanding of their fiduciary responsibility. For the second year in a row we are digging into emergency and general fund reserves with no end in sight. TOT is flat and sales tax revenue is $2M off budget/less than last year—together these represent 25% of our revenue. Property taxes are next to be threatened with a legal Demand Letter recently sent to the city threatening litigation based on diminished economic value—not really a good look when a city is sued by business and property owners that pay the lions share of revenues. And you are spot on—the city expenses have literally doubled while its population has decreased—where are the cuts?Who are these people performing for? Do they even understand financial statements or structural budget deficits? That said, you are correct: While many complain far too few will actively engage in the process. Thank you for caring (and writing)!
Do we really still need something like the city's Department of Sustainability and Resilience, whose only task now is to keep putting meat on the broken bones of the thoroughly discredited "green agenda".
In case you wondered who in the city was in charge of taking away our gas stoves. https://sustainability.santabarbaraca.gov
Alelia A Parenteau Sustainability Resilience Director (2024)
---Regular pay: $198,873.00
---Overtime pay: $0.00
---Other pay: $29,830.00
---Total pay: $228,703.00
---Benefits: $46,557.00
---Pension debt: $51,247.39
Total pay & benefits: $326,507.39
(Source: Transparent California)
Someone needs to ask what this other pay is for!!!!!!!!!!
Was a legal demand letter sent to the city threatening litigation based on diminished economic value, or are you suggesting such a letter be sent?
“Property taxes are next to be threatened with a legal Demand Letter recently sent to the city threatening litigation based on diminished economic value—not really a good look when a city is sued by business and property owners that pay the lions share of revenues. And you are spot on—the city expenses have literally doubled while its population has decreased—where are the cuts?” Your articulated the source of my nightmares. Thank you Jeff.
While I can't speak for Santa Barbara as I live in Santa Maria,I can object to the county government. I moved here in 1995 from San Bernardino county. At that time my home loan had property taxes included in the house payment. Every year the loan company over estimated taxes in the impound account. So we got a refund. After moving to Santa Barbara county,every year we've had to pay more over and above the estimate for property taxes. This county doesn't know how to manage its income. The marijuana tax is a good example of not researching the industry and not supporting law enforcement for illegal farms. There's too much regulations on everything,oil,wine industry,tourism,and then you have nimbys. Democrats don't care,and the wealthy don't either. I personally would welcome bankruptcy and the calpers retirement is broke and always will be. You get what you vote for.
BP: How many bond issues were also on your San Bernardino property tax bills, compared to your Santa Barbara county ones?
Take a look around your community and see how many Yes on Prop 50 signs you see.
Those are the smug voices of SEIU and the teachers union supporters, residing amongst us and ready to keep doing us continued harm.
Elce, if it makes you feel any better I went to SB Republican Headquarters picked up a NO 50 sign and a stack of flyers. I put the sign on my balcony, seen as you drive around the corner and can’t be stolen! Then I put the flyers in mailboxes throughout my neighborhood. And mailed my vote last week.
I appreciate your comments on this thread.
PS Dolores, this is exactly the time of grass roots efforts we all need. Thank you for your own volunteer efforts.
However, a note of warning - no campaign material may be placed in USPS mail boxes. Only at a door step or other places where it will be seen and be picked up.
But not USPS mail boxes. We don't need the taint of violating federal regulations .
Thank you for this information. Once I went thru the neighborhood I vaguely recalled only receiving flyers at my old house at the doorstep and thought I might have made a mistake.
Denise, thank you for making the excellent case everyone in the region needs to stay engaged with the wider community concerns, even though due to the perversities of the California Voting Rights Act they are now outside of our own, narrowly-drawn voting districts.
Thank you state representatives Das Williams, Hannah-Beth Jackson, Monique Limon and Gregg Hart for thrusting this new and dysfunctional political structure upon us.
The real crime having been forced now into these very narrow "district elections" becomes even more obvious. Divide and conquer made us vulnerable to the full takeover by unelected outside forces who do share a common purpose. Those unelected outside forces are the community-wide SEIU and teachers union members, aka the Democrat party, who are highly organized against any calls for reform of their ruinous tax and spend governance model.
After this recent mandatory switch to district elections, we quickly became a dysfunctional, balkanized operational structure, now fully taken over by these outside special interest who do have a wider agenda that is never on the ballot - higher local taxes to pay for higher wages, benefits and pensions for themselves. And now even pushing for erosion of prior tax increases promised to repair and maintain our local infrastructure.
Desiring to invade our very limited and-debt obligated city resources to support those here illegally, with a straight face out newest and SEIU-backed city council member Wendy Santa Maria claimed "people are infrastructure too" when she proposed diverting these promised infrastructure tax revenues to be handed over instead to benefit persons here illegally.
That is why we must be constantly vigilant and follow those we are now no longer allowed to vote for ourselves, but who very much intend to do great damage to our city over all. Power grabs by SEIU and the teachers unions, aka the Democrat party, never rest.
Our community duty is to expose them and stop them where ever they turn up.
Denice, you have written to the readers, a call for action, not pontification. You are correct that many of us who live outside the city are significantly affected by some of its actions.
We all need to think about what to do and how to do it in response to her challenge. We need a list of counteractions to push both the city council and the employed administration into an affordable and effective method of management of this city. At present, at both levels, spending is out of control and their objectives, reflected in their spending and demands for more taxes are at extreme odds with those who have to pay for them in both direct and direct taxes.
It seems to me that at least, a charge misfeasance or malfeasance in spending taxpayers' money, against both the city council and the administration should be considered.
As I have been advised by another reader, that the city administration has undergone two professional efficiencies of operations analyses, both of which concluded that the city was significantly overstaffed and over-paid for the tasks to be accomplished. In both cases the city's response was to do nothing. Perhaps that is a place to start as a pressure point with an organized Government Improvement task force.
The biggest damage was "the state" foisting the California Voting Rights Act on our local communities.
Change who represents us at the state level - that means no more Monique Limon and Gregg Hart re-elections. And make amends for having elected and re-electing Hannah-Beth Jackson and Das Williams so often in the past.
Beware of any candidate running now with a (D) by their names. We know what we will get, if we keep re-electing them.
How do we stop this? We have known this for years and I would think that most people agree that this has to change. How go we get the mayor out and elect people who are educated enough to know how to run a city and get rid of all the waste. I still own property in Montecito and I watch as this continues to get worse.
Denice, thank you for reporting the details/specifics you've included. I'm more progressive-leaning than most on this board, but our completely lopsided council is running amok. I'd love to get a person or two with some fiscal/number background to draw some lines to operate in. Our town needs some balance.
Wow
I am more than willing to help legal residents truly in need. But overtime, the concepts of self-reliance and personal responsibility have been extinguished from our public debates. Too, too many of our citizens have become immature adolescents living in their parents’ (the government’s) basement. It is long past time for the adults to leave the basement. Berney
Every election time the same arguments .... there is an answer put on the ballot an item that says "no confidence." NC option for any elected office. Within this item it states if "no confidence" wins the seat, it is left vacant and the remaining Council may NOT appoint a fill in. No Confidence would be listed on the election outcomes as a candidate.
Think about it..... the people would have the right to express their option and how would it look if "no confidence" came in a close second even though it did not win?
No confidence loses by a whopping 45%.... Laugh, it would make the point there are a whole bunch who don't want the alternative.
Where is the back bone of the Democrat Left when faced with RHNA, 7-8 Story buildings; to face up to Sacramento, say NO MORE! If you have not figured it out this area is out of potable water supplies. High density stupidity will concrete over every last green space. Remember the last crop of farmers is concrete.
It is time to start cutting back on staff when you are faced with deficits. That does not mean we'll part time you. Last hired first fired.
Tired of dangerous e-bikes? Tired of illegals doing business without a license? Tired of seeing taxable land and special district taxes disappearing because the government now owns that housing and land?
Tired of seeing efficient and safe streets become barricaded nightmares? Tired of the pursuit of vision-less transportation that has failed for minimum of a quarter of a century?
Tired of the excuses for their failures being "we just need more time and taxpayer money"...?
Something to think about....
Thanks Denice
Excellent, Scott. Now we just need to find the winning candidates to take this critical message to our current elected bodies. And support them with heart, mind body and soul.
SB appears to be a strong Mayor/Council form of government. Would a city manager form of government serve our residents in a better way? This city (and county) has an enormous amount of successful leadership talent in our residents. Let’s tap that talent with a volunteer citizens council. We clearly need to be on a better track for the future. Denise, thank you for this column! You inspire.
Mayor Harriet Miller and her city administrator Sandra Tripp-Jones were the last strong city administrator- driven city councils. She took a blue pencil to all fiscally unsustainable demands on the city budget.
Which unfortunately then led to the city union take-overs of the future city elections starting with Mayor Marty Blum. We were warned by the Editor of the SB News/Press at time - Travis Armstrong, but Democrat forces quickly ran him out of town. And eventually collapsed the NewsPress, so there was no effective opposition voice in town from that time forward.
___________
From former Harriet Miller's obituary tribute in the SB Independent:
"As mayor, Miller enjoyed an exceedingly close working relationship with former city administrator Sandra Tripp-Jones, and they controlled what issues made it onto the agenda to a degree unheard of today.
While obvious friction—both political and personal—existed on the council, debate and disagreement was kept to a minimum. So too was grandstanding, speechifying, and initiative by individual council members.
There was a legal demand letter sent to the City Clerk (making it “public”) on Sept 14–based on similar allegations as was contained in the Ventura lawsuit where Main Street businesses alleged loss of economic value based on main street’s closure.
Thanks for the excellent reporting Denice on the current sorry fiscal state of our City. Also really glad to know that Sneddon and Harmon are terming out, hopefully enough intelligent voters turn out to elect someone with basic knowledge of economics and math to take their place. I was quite alarmed however of your mention of a possible "spare bedroom mandate" by the City?