Kristen Sneddon Appears at City Council!

by Bonnie Donovan

Kristen Sneddon Appears at City Council!

Did you watch the five-hour-forty-nine-minute Santa Barbara City Council meeting held on Tuesday January 28?

If you didn’t, you should know that Council Person Kristen Sneddon showed up.

So, we pay City Council members $91,873.31 per year (as of the Transparent California report of 2023) to show up to the meetings...

Reports are that her other job at SBCC took her away (for several meetings). Was it for a different paying job and will she still get paid for Council? Is that equitable to all other city staff?

Just curious.

On the Eastside:

BCycle driving their van around to change bike batteries. Photo DYK Photographer

On to The Meeting

The State Street Master Plan draft was presented.

Item 12: “Staff maintains a Short-Term Action Plan for the State Street Promenade (Promenade) that details pilot projects and proposals intended to improve the look, feel, and experience of the Promenade. This report details progress toward implementation of Action Plan pilot projects.”

What we want to know that wasn’t brought up: how much rent has the city received from parklet spaces to date?

Read the following, please.

Look at the money and some already set to come out of Measure C: $60,000, $453,000, $162,000, $250,000…

They mentioned they didn’t have a cost yet on all their wants.

Item #11 on the agenda.

11. Subject: City Council Prioritization of Revenue Generated by Measure I Transaction and Use Tax to Maintain Essential Local Services (270.06)

Recommendation: That Council provide direction to staff regarding the expenditure of revenue from the Santa Barbara Essential Local Services Measure I, approved by voters in November 2024.

They’re going to comment on where to spend the money (they haven’t received yet) from Measure I.

You claimed you didn’t have the money to keep neighborhood fire stations opened during your campaign. No money for that? It should be laid out and not just listed as Emergency Services.

More Housing?

If you build more housing, you need more Police and Fire to respond to calls. How about getting that in order before we get into the same situation we were in without measure I!

But after all the people with their hands out (public comment) saying you promised 30 - 35% for housing… Mike Jordan spoke up saying he never promised…. So, who promised? Watch the meeting and you will be able to figure out the five that could have.

Santa Barbara City Finance Director Keith DeMartini showed a graph with estimated revenue and expenditures for budget year 2026.

Are they listening to him?

Someone is Listening to Us

The most important thing said at the meeting was said by the last to speak, Mayor Randy Rowse.

Here it is, word for word:

“Stickler… about trying to do all these things to accommodate all these larger outdoor dining facilities… without taking any consideration to the Uniform Building Code (UBC) and the fixture count and the reason that I say that is because other businesses around town have to comply with that.

“We missed an opportunity to do something else with Macy’s because they didn’t have adequate restrooms and there’s no way the building where… the larger parklets are… have the adequate restroom fixture count for the amount of customer seating; that’s something… but we make everyone else do it. So, we have to be fair about this, that’s number one.

“Number two, I appreciate the idea of the flexible pedlets and whatnot, but if we’re going to do an experiment on the 1200 block and the idea is that without the bushes there’s going to be adequate outdoor dining space and that was the idea when we designed that way back when before we filled it in with planters and fountains and all the things we did…

“We finally took the fountains out in front of the old Hotel Santa Barbara. We’ve done a few things back and forth. Lord knows how many benches we’ve removed. Let's go back to simple and programmable open spaces and let the restaurants have adequate outdoor dining… I love outdoor dining… and be robust outdoor dining… but appropriate to the size of the place. You can’t tell me that the larger parklets have the bathrooms to fit what that parklet is. And so, and a matter of fact I think the fire department had to use the hook and ladder to get over a large parklet to put out a fire. That's another thing, but that’s not my main point…

“My last main point is Public Safety. All over town, we’ve done things, a bike lane, and a chicane, or whether, it’s closing down a street or doing another thing, we compromise somebody's egress route and boy has that become ever clearer? Point… what we just went through down in LA.

“I backed and I championed both the Cliff Drive re-striping and the Milpas Street reduction on lanes but that was only paint and that was the point. The paint was there but you can still use it for emergencies for access road capacity. I’m still passionate about that; I think the people in this community are really passionate about it right now.

“So Public Safety is compromised by closing off State Street. I’m sorry it just is!

“We don’t get to roll a black-and-white down the 500 block; we’re there but you don’t really see us. When the fire department has to respond they still have to take the time to figure out how to get through the flowerpots…

“I think, all those things… you know you guys have moved along with experimentation, I think that’s great. But I think that there is major considerations that aren’t happening.

“First of all is equity among all the businesses. We’re giving away public right of way at an unbelievably cheap price; okay fine with that. But we’re also violating our own building code while we are enforcing it elsewhere, that just isn’t the way it is supposed to be.

“So, let’s make a decision about what we are going to be doing before we go out and spend ‘X’ amount of extra money doing it. I’m just begging you for that because that’s been something that’s been irritating me all along. Let’s make it fair for every other business in town that has ever had to apply for a license or go through this onerous process to get open. And yet, they look at what we’re doing on State Street and because we want to do this, we want something else to happen. We’re allowing something to happen we don’t let.

“So, I’d like to get back to where we are doing it the same way for everyone all the time and I’d like to maximize on Public Safety.

“Capacity to move people in or out of any area as quickly as possible and that means all roads should be as open and free as they possibly can be.

“So that’s all I got to say and with that I think we’ll close this item.”