Letters to the Editor

Compiled and Edited by Jim Buckley

Have We Seen the Last State Street Parade?

Finally, we get some sort of vote. This isn’t an “I think” or “I feel” debate. It’s just math. If the City Council actually carries out its Portland-style car-free street calming initiative, we will never have a parade on State Street again. The physical infrastructure and insurance liabilities will make it impossible.

People forget how our creative local economy actually works. Historically, most downtown brick-and-mortar shops would run on tight margins or take a loss during slow months. But they would be made whole by their share of the $27 million cash infusion those parades would bring to their front doors.

It’s a very simple equation: no cars = no parades. No parades = no $27 million economic infusion. We are permanently starving our own local businesses to build a bike park.

On top of that, a little over half of downtown revenue historically came from Los Angeles tourists in cars. This is Retail 101: tourists need to feel safe. They want to drive through, check out the scene, and then park close by so they can spend money and feed our local small businesses.

The alternative, according to the city’s own master plan, is to continue bleeding out the rest of our small business owners for the next 20 years before they even break ground on hollowing out the heart of our city with some sort of New York-style Central Park bike path. A population of just 87,000 people doesn’t keep the doors open to 550 restaurants. We cater to L.A. tourists. Our hotel occupancy has never been higher. They are here, but only downtown is designed to feed our local economy.

Let’s just open State Street to cars.

Please.

Craig Saling

Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara’s Proposed $2 Million-a-Year Housing Bureaucracy

Santa Barbara already has statewide rent caps under California law. So why are we about to spend another $2 million every year creating more bureaucracy instead of more housing?

This proposal means more government tracking, fees, hearings, petitions, and more enforcement.

But no more of what we actually need: housing.

At a time when people are increasingly concerned about digital privacy and protecting vulnerable communities, Santa Barbara should be very careful about expanding government data collection tied to where people live.

This proposal creates a large rental registry system collecting detailed housing and tenancy information across the city. Even if some information is considered confidential, many residents are reasonably asking: Who will have access to this information? How will it be protected? And what happens if that data is leaked, hacked, or misused?

Even the City’s own report acknowledges that rental registries require balancing enforcement with privacy concerns.

Santa Barbara has spent nearly a decade debating rent control, holding hearings, hiring consultants, and expanding regulations. Yet the core problem remains unchanged: we do not have enough housing.

This is fundamentally a supply issue, and the City continues to attack the symptom instead of the cause.

None of this lowers construction costs, insurance, utility bills, permit delays, labor shortages, or the endless barriers that make housing so expensive to build and maintain in Santa Barbara.

And here’s what worries me most: Santa Barbara is being told by an outside consulting firm, not people who actually live with the realities of this city every day, that more regulation will solve the housing crisis.

It won’t.

You cannot regulate your way out of a housing shortage.

If Santa Barbara keeps making housing harder and more expensive to operate, fewer people will invest in maintaining housing, fewer people will build housing, and the next generation will continue getting pushed out.

Young families leave. Workers leave. Local businesses struggle to hire. And the people who grew up here increasingly wonder if there is still a future for them in the city they call home.

More paperwork is not more housing.

More regulation is not more affordability.

Santa Barbara is becoming a city the next generation can no longer afford to live in.

Anabella Lehne

Santa Barbara

(Editor’s note: Your plaint is warranted, but be careful what you wish for. More housing means more housing. More housing means more people. How many “houses” will be “enough?” More housing means more people with more money to push prices even higher. I don’t believe there is a way to strike a balance in a free society, other than creating a “Locals” fund to support the purchase of homes. And, has it ever occurred to you that builders, planners, architects, council members, and ordinary citizens, have conspired to keep Santa Barbara small? Been to La Jolla lately? Just saying… – J.B.)

Dear Code Compliance Team,

I can remember when a coffee shop would have a “No ICE” sign because the freezer went out — not as a political statement on city property.

Two “ICE OUT/NOT WELCOME HERE” posters are currently taped to the inside of the glass entrance door at Dart Coffee in the harbor next to the Maritime Museum’s orange diving bell. They are clearly visible to the public.

This violates Santa Barbara Municipal Code Chapter 22.70.030.D.1 (no non-public-agency signs on city-owned or leased public property) and related window sign rules.

Photo attached.

I’d appreciate your help in having these removed to keep our public harbor spaces non-partisan (as well as welcoming to all) and in compliance to code.

Thank you,

James Fenkner, CFA

Santa Barbara Resident

He/Him/She/Her/They… Whatever

I’ve noticed a change in the use of pronouns in many media, even in right-of-center publications.

Instead of using “his/her”, I noticed a substantial uptick in using “their” instead...

...Even when the gender of the person is known.

Example: As noted in the New York Post recently: “(Cole) Allen allegedly shot a Secret Service officer in their [my emphasis] bullet-proof vest during his mad dash, according to officials.”

Before the Trump era, I recall a conversation with a left-wing stickler in a bar. He kept referring to a person that both of us knew was from South Korea as “Asian.” When I continued referring to him as Korean, he called me a “racist.” I said we both know that this guy in from Seoul. He said it doesn’t matter; for a white American to refer to him as a Korean is a slur.

Asking for “clarification” from this nincompoop, I asked him whether I can refer to a Mexican (someone to whom I knew was born in Mexico and was not a U.S. citizen) as a “Mexican.” He said absolutely not. A white American calling a Mexican “a Mexican” is the worst kind of ethnic slur meant to demean him in our very description of him in the course of conversation. Truth be damned. Everything is processed through racial ideology.

Getting back to the New York Post characterization above, despite the fact that everybody knows that the Secret Service agent assaulted by Cole Allen was a man, we must still refer to him/her/it/ as a “their” because – what – it’s a slur to pin masculinity on a person in a public report for fear that there’s a small possibility that the person thus described as a man was really – what – not really a man in his/her/its own self-identity? Or that truly gender dysfunctionals among us will be offended to read of a reporter naturally assuming that a man who looks like a man is a man - and that this casts microaggressions on all men who look like men but who aren’t men?

If this comes even close to what’s going on at the New York Post – a half-conservative, half-neoconservative publication – situated somewhere on the (disconnect) Right spectrum, we can conclude that the Left’s assault on the culture has left a giant imprint of itself on right-wing culture and practices. Language is one of the most important components of real communication. To fall victim to one of the Left’s most subversive nostrums in our default position of presenting and explaining the world to our readers, goes far in explaining who’s really winning these days.

David Samuel McCalmont

Santa Barbara

California Wind Energy Project

Petroleum Derangement Syndrome predates Trump. Environmentalists have had the petroleum industry in their crosshairs for a long time. In December, 2022 Golden State Wind won the rights to a lease area off the coast of Morro Bay where they planned to install wind turbines. Fortunately, Golden State Wind has recently agreed to release that contract and instead invest those funds into U.S. based oil and gas projects.

From a common sense point of view, wind energy has many disadvantages: sea life, including whales who pass by offshore are drastically affected by the vibrations and substructure. Birds are killed by the turbines. The turbines and batteries which must store the energy (which is only produced when the wind blows), are 70% produced in China. And when the mechanical parts finally reach the end of their functional lives, they become hazardous waste.

The best solution to take advantage of our state’s natural petroleum resources is also harvesting our offshore oil using properly constructed and maintained pipelines which run along the ocean floor. Sea life can move above them, whereas using ships, burns more fuel and increases traffic in our sea lanes. Especially when California, of all places, imports oil from other parts of the world.

The U.S. knows how to remove petroleum from underground sources and process it with the most environmentally efficient methods. The best idea might be if there were no subsidies for any businesses. Only then could we know the true costs of our way of life.

Gretchen Kieding

Solvang

(Editor’s note: Professors from Berkeley and Stanford have recently published what can only be called a “Call to Action,” noting scientific evidence proves that by not harvesting the oil that seeps up naturally and continuously in the Santa Barbara Channel we are creating our own environmental disaster. Much of the air pollution, for example, in the Santa Barbara area comes from those seeps bubbling up around the Coal Oil Point Seep Field. There will be much more about this in the coming months, but the evidence seems clear that collecting that oil into a pipeline (As Sable Offshore is attempting to do] is significantly more environmentally sound than simply allowing that oil to continue to defile our natural habitat. – J.B.)

Crushing Old Town Santa Barbara – Half a Decade Later

They don’t care....They are willing to tear it all down.

The Santa Barbara City Council, 28 April 2026 session:

For the past 5+ years Cars Are Basic, (CAB) has contacted the City of Santa Barbara on the Transportation Grid and economic return of Old Town State St. We have reached out to the City before Covid and since and have never received an answer.

CAB is the only true Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) that refuses taxpayer money to exist. The “Tear it Down” faction hides behind 501.c.3 status to masks their Political Action Committees sucking on tax money. Their narrowed view confirms they don’t care.

The “opportunity” the Santa Barbara council has missed is stark.

A Baseball Analogy:

The Public calls “Batter Up.” It is the top of the ninth, down one run, and the bases are loaded. The lead-off batter is at the plate.

The pitcher puts the first pitch down the middle and the batter (the City Council) whiffs. Strike 1.

The next pitch, a replica of the first batter’s dream. Whiff. Strike 2, no balls (a metaphor?).

Remember it is 2 strikes, no balls, and the pitcher is throwing Home Run Dreams. The Home Team can snatch victory from defeat.

Here it comes..... the last pitch! It floats right down the middle, waist high, with Home Run printed all over it!!!

Whiff. Strike 3, the batter strikes out.

The disgusted fans are the vast majority of residents who want State Street to open. The batter? The City Council of Santa Barbara.

The pitcher? The feckless pay-for-play type consultant the Council hired to replace their $800,000 MIG Design & Planning fiasco.

The “consultant” is nothing more than a weak replica of the fired MIG. MIG and Dave Davis is a 40-year failure. The “We don’t want truth” Council projection is to excuse their prejudiced anti-car rubber stamp. The Council, pretended its “New and Improved” version is the answer. Opportunity to rectify failure was lost, nothing strong here.

Staff stated bike use is down. It is clear tourists and local walkers have not appeared to revive Old Town. Locals avoid driving downtown.

The touted coordinated rail for workers and tourists is another whiff dream, down the drain.

The four failed legs of “alternative travel” are Rail, MTD, bikes and walking. It is a radical ambition of an out-of-control Council. Their bankrupt spending is astounding. These are the losers of society who have found cover with government workers, and the money they confiscate with taxes.

The “Shut It Down, To Heck with Reality” political bullies have seized control of Santa Barbara.

Their intent to use lawfare and emergency ordinances for dictatorial control has worked. In the process, they’ve ignored the majority of the voters, and businesses who want Historic Santa Barbara to thrive.

They are willing to ignore serious emergency concerns and vehicle access. The cowards puffed and snorted knowing they had the council majority, while their miscues failed and deficits grew.

How much more deficit spending, delusional advice, and destruction of the Jewel of the California Coast are you willing to suffer?

Scott Wenz,

President CAB

(Editor’s note: Perhaps you could form a “No Dictators” movement directed at mayors and city councils? – J.B.)

The Day of Pentecost: The Day the Holy Spirit Arrives

Acts Chapter two is the first mention in the Bible of the day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit descends upon the disciples, enabling them to speak in tongues. Then Peter preaches to the crowd, which leads to the salvation of 3,000 people. It was like the church woke up and discovered its purpose. There were miracles in the previous four gospels, performed mainly through Jesus, but now the body of Christ itself arose and started acting on it.

The Holy Spirit came in suddenly as a mighty rushing wind in Acts 2:1-3. He brought in a fresh new way of praying to God. The disciples had tongues of fire descend on their heads and began talking to God in languages they had never spoken before. And that they themselves did not understand. 1 Corinthians 14:14 says “If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful.” Your tongues are a secret prayer language between you and the Lord. All this started on the day of Pentecost.

Jesus prophesied this in the first chapter of Acts: “But you shall receive power, after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and you shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.”

The Day of Pentecost was a turning point in Christianity. Miracles, signs ,and wonders, abounded. But His disciples took them to the next level in the second chapter of Acts. Thousands were saved, many miraculously healed and filled with the spirit, and demons cast out. Jesus says He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, so why can’t we see that happen now? In some places, not just overseas, these revivals, tent meetings, and encounters with God are on the move. These meetings activate what Jesus was talking about, the power of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues.

These tongues that began on the day of Pentecost (which, this year, is celebrated on Sunday, May 14) is the key that opens the door to this power.

“When the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” Acts 2: 1-4

If you are a born-again believer, you can have this kind of power as well. You just have to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to give it to you. It is a free gift from heaven.

(Please join us to Pray, Worship, Gather each Sunday at 6pm at 1469 East Valley Rd, Montecito, Ca)

Mary Hudson

Montecito

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