All of us obediently hump-bump over the speed-reducing obstacles placed in residential streets, and wend our way on the major cross-town streets now narrowed for non-existant bicycle traffic ... except the manic children on the electric motorcycle bikes.... and watching out for corner bulb-outs and trees unaccountably planted in streets taking up random parking spaces, and streets blocked with dead-end "bike only" barricades. ... On-street parking insufficient for high density "Builders' Remedy" projects and downtown workers driving in circles looking for a free place to stash their car all day.... CUI BONO? in English "to whom is it a benefit?", is a Latin phrase about identifying crime suspects.
The inmates are running the asylum. Until there is significant public accountability for these forced failed policies and programs it will get worse. What the City has allowed...actually encouraged...with high density housing, etc., is beyond immoral.
One need only to look at SB's zoning very reasonable ordinances in the 70's and 80's where open space, off street parking, setbacks, height limitation, shadow factors etc., were a basis for a well planned community. Today that has all been trashed...not just figuratively, but literally.
The claim that the State of California has "mandated" this debacle is weak cheese. If the CA State legislature told our local so-called "leaders" to burn the City to the ground would they (or have they)? Taking instructions from the most incompetent, bankrupt and corrupt legislature on the planet is indefensible.
Good practice to always insert the names our own elected representatives, Gregg Hart and Monique Limon, whenever referring to "the state". Gregg Hart and Monique Limon are doing this to us.
How else will we ever see change when we keep electing the same old, same old who have been doing this to us now for decades. Time to replace these quislings.
Hear hear. I'm an advocate of identifying the players... good, bad, ugly or indifferent....they should be called out. The inherent problem is that the list is so long, neither time nor space permits.
I would like to see a weekly or at least monthly chart or graph of how our elected officials have voted on a variety of significant issues. For example, if one views the collective voting record of someone like Salud Carbajal, it would be very difficult to conclude he has the back of the American people. Go down the line on a local level also...similar results. At the end of the day, these people have been voted into office and we must respect the process...including the fact that unions such as public employees or teachers unions have enormous influence in the outcome in these elections. Which explains in no small part why someone like Carbajal opposes parental choice when it comes to educating their own child.
Also, hotbed institutions of far-left ideology funded at taxpayer expense...such as UCSB and SBCC...vote monolithically at a 95%+. Which explains in no small part why someone like Carbajal, et. al., oppose parental choice regarding education or free tuition for illegal aliens, etc. Again...it's a long list.
Yet on the list, you have to have a column for those who sat on their hands, called in sick, or were absent. This is a thing they all do. When they don't want you to see a vote by them on something we oppose (or is BAD for SB). They know they have the vote for it to pass so they sit out.
Yes almost all busses have just a very few riders that I have noticed. Why does MTD use the huge busses? What a waste! Adjust to ridership numbers and use the small bus/vans.
I don’t wanna sound like a broken record, but again this comes down to our school system turning out a bunch of mind numb robots that have brand programmed to agree with this nonsense.
In the name of “we are from the government, and we are here to help you” this demonstrates the folly of delegating problems to government bureaucrats. Once in place, with fat checks and pensions lined up, they feed at a public trough which they continue to fill and expand. The train to nowhere in Central California is a classic example of the result of central planning and misguided ideology. This article brings the folly of central planning down to our own area. Seeing cranes all over, and high buildings filling in ever empty lot or replacing a demolished older building is truly sad. These planners are turning our once beautiful city into just another Oxnard, or whatever ugly place you might think of. And yet the local voters keep re electing these folks, once again demonstrating Einstein’s definition of insanity.
Santa Barbara continues to lose 25-45 year olds at an alarming rate, and the decline continues. Those in their working prime are heading for the exits, why? It’s the local economy, duh! Young people (my kids included) find it more important to have a good job elsewhere than to continue to live in la-la land, while many in this age group continue living at home with Mom and Dad. This is not how things are supposed to work. Past generations establish their careers, get married, have kids and buy a home, all of which has been canceled, courtesy of the liberal, lefty machine. Simply put, if you don’t work for the local, Democrat controlled governmental cabal, you don’t work!
Those that will remain from this failure in public policy will be illegals and senior citizens, left to pick up the tab. The other remaining workers will be highly compensated public employees, living in taxpayer subsidized high rise apartments, and yes, will get around by bicycle. This is all by design, folks! In the meantime, BOS Capps continues to look for County owned land to earmark for employee housing.
Those retirees also planning another protest against Billionaires on Labor day. Seems like the government workers make a pretty hefty salary plus Pension and benefits. Yet no one complains about them who make up the majority of our workers in this community.
No insinuation. Just responding to your line ..."no one complains about government employee compensation packages". I again extend a welcome to this forum. We track this issue often, and let others make up their own minds how our tax dollars get allocated by our elected officials: personnel costs with automatic expense escalators requiring increased taxes vs. city infrastructure and improvements.
Double check my post. Putting something in quotes that I don't post is misleading.
You quotes me as this ."no one complains about government employee compensation packages"
And what I wrote in my post was "Seems like the government workers make a pretty hefty salary plus Pension and benefits. Yet no one complains about them who make up the majority of our workers in this community."
Makes me wish we had gone with the Lime Scooters after all. They just littered the landscape and were annoying; but not motorized lethal weapons of destruction.
I just read that article. Can you imagine that after investing all this money and time on students and the many local colleges we have , they can't even afford to live and stay in this community.
Who is buying up all the housing?Blackrock,Vanguard or the Chinese?
Leave it to Democrats to run a surplus into a deficit.
We literally have a dying community and economy. There are more homeless than tourists on State Street a once thriving center for the community.
The schools enrollment for one is also declining that should be obvious to the leaders that families are not moving in either.
The leaders need to open their eyes in SB and beyond as it is turning into a Retirement Community vs a thriving and growing economy.
How many students expect and/or demand to stay in the same location where they went to college? The jobs/housing reality check for this area needs to be included in all student information packets.
My contrarian view, HC like any business is built on supply and demand. To be sustained on high demand, it must allow the entrepreneurs to be rewarded for taking the risk and making the innovations. Otherwise, you are left with the UK PHS.
When I first came to SB in the 1970's in my own early 30's, this 25-45 age group did not exist in significant numbers, outside of the new tracts in Goleta - Santa Barbara itself was mainly a retirement and tourism community which was reflected in the city general plans at that point: pensioners and tourism.
So this demographic "loss" is not alarming. It was alarming to see it even grow to its present, and unsustainable point in the first place. This is simply not a community where one builds a career or raises a family. It is a community best suited to its original iteration: a great place to enjoy one's retirement, or to have some sun-filled days while in college or on a short vacation stay.
In other words, turn the clock back to its original organic evolution and stop trying to be artificially all things to all people. Just think how different our planning decisions would be if we stopped chasing this "unlimited affordable workforce housing for families" chimera.
I didn't complain after arriving here and finding a dearth of my own demographics. Instead I concluded each year I continued to reside here would put me closer to the retirement set, who enjoyed and supported so many of the riches this town had to offer.
You shouldn't put something in quotes that's inaccurate and wasn't said originally. Please refrain from that.Thats misinformation and misrepresentation
Respectfully, I have to disagree. I came back here some 20 years after graduating high school. Raised a family, bought a home and retired after many years of a successful career. I know many people (mostly health care professionals) that did the same thing, so it can be done. My kids, unfortunately had to leave and have no desire to return.
Santa Barbara doesn’t have to be “newly wed and nearly dead,” we need young professionals and entrepreneurs.
"Health care" professionals is the key to surviving in this area, particularly when they are locally funded by generous government employee health care insurance benefits. That is a unique niche.
Our locally sustainable industries are government employment and government employment benefit supported auxiliary industries: aka health care. Along with government pension driven lifestyles.
All of which are tax-dollar supported. That should be a starting point when projecting long range planning for this area. That is what I mean about being pragmatic; and not idealistic - who in fact are we; not what we "should be". Even the growth of Goleta came from tax dollar supported defense industry contract research and development funding.
Unfortunately, even health care is going to potentially have some hard times. In SB County, the “payer mix” is less private carriers and now overwhelmingly, Medicare and Cencal. Hospitals need private insurers to thrive, coupled with reductions by the Big Beautiful Bill, spells major cut backs. SB reimbursement rates have historically been lower because we are considered “rural” by CMS! Imagine that, being lumped in with Taft, Maricopa and Bakersfield!
This is exactly the pragmatic information our city planners need when they concoct their utopian be all things to all people versions of Santa Barbara. Thank you. Indeed, there is no middle class between Medicare and CenCal. But that is the reality check driver we need to understand about our city's future.
The sad truth? The average “Boomer” has ZERO clue about healthcare delivery. While they’re protesting on Hope, millions of healthcare resources are being spent on illegals and the homeless, which means less care for them. It is not unusual for illegals to ring up a million dollar hospital bill on one patient or their neonatal kid who is in the Pediatric ICU for months.
I read this article titled "Population Down; Deficit Spending Up"
by Scott Wenz and of course I have a new title
"Complete Failure of Local & State Government"
I quote from Mr. Wenz below>
"The Demographic Projections of the 1960s are proving out. There is and will be a continuing population decline from the Greatest Generation, bringing it more aligned to the percentages of pre-WWII."
The Greatest Generation are all gone and it is better they all are not here to see the utter failure
of the WOKE-LIBERAL-DESTRUCTIVE-GOVERNMENT at work undermining the Great Generation
accomplishments since WWII. It is all a distant Memory as CRAZINESS REIGNS IN CALI
and in all of the other Destructive Local and State Governments. Any doubts look carefully here>
While I personally think the Jeff Shelton 101 underpass was a very welcome change and got rid of the open air public urinal ambiance of the prior configuration, my recent walk through it from the beach into the upper State Street "promenade" was a creepy disappointment.
This now inviting pedestrian underpass dumps one into the tawdry looking State Street bar zone, with filthy sidewalks still littered with clotted Fiesta confetti. If a lively bar scene is one's thing fine, but there was nothing to entice one to keep going further up State Street. From the beach to the bar zone, that was sole the message of the improved underpass..
However, a visitor can only conclude why bother to traverse the rest of State Street into its upper more appealing reaches 10 blocks away, in the Historic Arts District, after that rude and crude invitation immediately awaits the upper side of this newly enlivened 101 underpass. How many SF visitors chose to traverse the Tenderloin to get to Union Square and Nob Hill?
$11 million was a crazy price tag, but who knows what state representatives Gregg Hart and Monique Limon demanded when major restructuring was required under Highway 101. It is always good to report the final breakdown on any public construction project - how much for soft costs and administrative overhead; and how much for actual bricks and mortar capital improvements.
Best current solution- make the bar zone a closed off street promenade, if one must. But open the entire rest of State Street to car traffic, and put Humpty Dumpty back together again. 10 blocks of closed down State Street is simply not working, except as a free for all e-bke terrorist zone.
If that funding increase incorporates a 24/7 audio of Neil Young recordings, I would fully support it. Can't think of a better way to keep the homeless and other sundry bozos from assembling and/or loitering while being subjected to Mr. Young on a continuous loop.
So the genie rubbed the magic OPM money machine and out came endless new gold coins? Public contracts, overseen by know-nothing council persons, have a tendency to do that.
Yes, the Santa Barbara City population has declined by about 10,000 people . It is too expensive to live there. Santa Maria population has increased. Why?
Don't knock a good thing. SB City budget requires lots of sales of high ticket properties which in turn increase annual property tax hauls. They only pretend they care about "affordable housing" for political cover.
But too much "affordable housing" will certainly decimate the city budget promises and projections for themselves, since the limited tax base is at a precarious tipping point as those who are actually paying the necessary taxes become fewer and fewer. Is Randy Rowse the only city council person who gets this?
All of us obediently hump-bump over the speed-reducing obstacles placed in residential streets, and wend our way on the major cross-town streets now narrowed for non-existant bicycle traffic ... except the manic children on the electric motorcycle bikes.... and watching out for corner bulb-outs and trees unaccountably planted in streets taking up random parking spaces, and streets blocked with dead-end "bike only" barricades. ... On-street parking insufficient for high density "Builders' Remedy" projects and downtown workers driving in circles looking for a free place to stash their car all day.... CUI BONO? in English "to whom is it a benefit?", is a Latin phrase about identifying crime suspects.
The inmates are running the asylum. Until there is significant public accountability for these forced failed policies and programs it will get worse. What the City has allowed...actually encouraged...with high density housing, etc., is beyond immoral.
One need only to look at SB's zoning very reasonable ordinances in the 70's and 80's where open space, off street parking, setbacks, height limitation, shadow factors etc., were a basis for a well planned community. Today that has all been trashed...not just figuratively, but literally.
The claim that the State of California has "mandated" this debacle is weak cheese. If the CA State legislature told our local so-called "leaders" to burn the City to the ground would they (or have they)? Taking instructions from the most incompetent, bankrupt and corrupt legislature on the planet is indefensible.
Good practice to always insert the names our own elected representatives, Gregg Hart and Monique Limon, whenever referring to "the state". Gregg Hart and Monique Limon are doing this to us.
How else will we ever see change when we keep electing the same old, same old who have been doing this to us now for decades. Time to replace these quislings.
Hear hear. I'm an advocate of identifying the players... good, bad, ugly or indifferent....they should be called out. The inherent problem is that the list is so long, neither time nor space permits.
I would like to see a weekly or at least monthly chart or graph of how our elected officials have voted on a variety of significant issues. For example, if one views the collective voting record of someone like Salud Carbajal, it would be very difficult to conclude he has the back of the American people. Go down the line on a local level also...similar results. At the end of the day, these people have been voted into office and we must respect the process...including the fact that unions such as public employees or teachers unions have enormous influence in the outcome in these elections. Which explains in no small part why someone like Carbajal opposes parental choice when it comes to educating their own child.
Also, hotbed institutions of far-left ideology funded at taxpayer expense...such as UCSB and SBCC...vote monolithically at a 95%+. Which explains in no small part why someone like Carbajal, et. al., oppose parental choice regarding education or free tuition for illegal aliens, etc. Again...it's a long list.
So thank your neighbor…Or not...
Yet on the list, you have to have a column for those who sat on their hands, called in sick, or were absent. This is a thing they all do. When they don't want you to see a vote by them on something we oppose (or is BAD for SB). They know they have the vote for it to pass so they sit out.
Bingo!
Add to this the failed public transit boondoggle called MTD.
Every time I drive by a bus all I see is empty seats!
Yes almost all busses have just a very few riders that I have noticed. Why does MTD use the huge busses? What a waste! Adjust to ridership numbers and use the small bus/vans.
I don’t wanna sound like a broken record, but again this comes down to our school system turning out a bunch of mind numb robots that have brand programmed to agree with this nonsense.
In the name of “we are from the government, and we are here to help you” this demonstrates the folly of delegating problems to government bureaucrats. Once in place, with fat checks and pensions lined up, they feed at a public trough which they continue to fill and expand. The train to nowhere in Central California is a classic example of the result of central planning and misguided ideology. This article brings the folly of central planning down to our own area. Seeing cranes all over, and high buildings filling in ever empty lot or replacing a demolished older building is truly sad. These planners are turning our once beautiful city into just another Oxnard, or whatever ugly place you might think of. And yet the local voters keep re electing these folks, once again demonstrating Einstein’s definition of insanity.
Purge the ideologues in our city management; replace them with hard-nose pragmatists.
Santa Barbara continues to lose 25-45 year olds at an alarming rate, and the decline continues. Those in their working prime are heading for the exits, why? It’s the local economy, duh! Young people (my kids included) find it more important to have a good job elsewhere than to continue to live in la-la land, while many in this age group continue living at home with Mom and Dad. This is not how things are supposed to work. Past generations establish their careers, get married, have kids and buy a home, all of which has been canceled, courtesy of the liberal, lefty machine. Simply put, if you don’t work for the local, Democrat controlled governmental cabal, you don’t work!
Those that will remain from this failure in public policy will be illegals and senior citizens, left to pick up the tab. The other remaining workers will be highly compensated public employees, living in taxpayer subsidized high rise apartments, and yes, will get around by bicycle. This is all by design, folks! In the meantime, BOS Capps continues to look for County owned land to earmark for employee housing.
https://www.noozhawk.com/santa-barbara-county-leaders-say-region-prepared-for-tough-economic-times/
Those retirees also planning another protest against Billionaires on Labor day. Seems like the government workers make a pretty hefty salary plus Pension and benefits. Yet no one complains about them who make up the majority of our workers in this community.
GM: you must be new to this forum? Stick around. Share in the discussions .You will not be disappointed in your request.
Um,not new. Read before contributing. Now contributing. But not sure what your insinuation is about.
No insinuation. Just responding to your line ..."no one complains about government employee compensation packages". I again extend a welcome to this forum. We track this issue often, and let others make up their own minds how our tax dollars get allocated by our elected officials: personnel costs with automatic expense escalators requiring increased taxes vs. city infrastructure and improvements.
Double check my post. Putting something in quotes that I don't post is misleading.
You quotes me as this ."no one complains about government employee compensation packages"
And what I wrote in my post was "Seems like the government workers make a pretty hefty salary plus Pension and benefits. Yet no one complains about them who make up the majority of our workers in this community."
Agree, it was sloppy on my part.
I never made the connection with bicycles until now. But what they didn't expect was ebikes which is complicating the issue for them
Makes me wish we had gone with the Lime Scooters after all. They just littered the landscape and were annoying; but not motorized lethal weapons of destruction.
I just read that article. Can you imagine that after investing all this money and time on students and the many local colleges we have , they can't even afford to live and stay in this community.
Who is buying up all the housing?Blackrock,Vanguard or the Chinese?
Leave it to Democrats to run a surplus into a deficit.
We literally have a dying community and economy. There are more homeless than tourists on State Street a once thriving center for the community.
The schools enrollment for one is also declining that should be obvious to the leaders that families are not moving in either.
The leaders need to open their eyes in SB and beyond as it is turning into a Retirement Community vs a thriving and growing economy.
How many students expect and/or demand to stay in the same location where they went to college? The jobs/housing reality check for this area needs to be included in all student information packets.
Good point
SB was long a retirement community, and did just fine, until it was "discovered" by the outside world during the Reagan Winter White House Days.
The current full service, encompassing all demographics model, for Santa Barbara is the recent aberration.
My contrarian view, HC like any business is built on supply and demand. To be sustained on high demand, it must allow the entrepreneurs to be rewarded for taking the risk and making the innovations. Otherwise, you are left with the UK PHS.
When I first came to SB in the 1970's in my own early 30's, this 25-45 age group did not exist in significant numbers, outside of the new tracts in Goleta - Santa Barbara itself was mainly a retirement and tourism community which was reflected in the city general plans at that point: pensioners and tourism.
So this demographic "loss" is not alarming. It was alarming to see it even grow to its present, and unsustainable point in the first place. This is simply not a community where one builds a career or raises a family. It is a community best suited to its original iteration: a great place to enjoy one's retirement, or to have some sun-filled days while in college or on a short vacation stay.
In other words, turn the clock back to its original organic evolution and stop trying to be artificially all things to all people. Just think how different our planning decisions would be if we stopped chasing this "unlimited affordable workforce housing for families" chimera.
I didn't complain after arriving here and finding a dearth of my own demographics. Instead I concluded each year I continued to reside here would put me closer to the retirement set, who enjoyed and supported so many of the riches this town had to offer.
Disagree. Bought my home in my 30's. Both of us worked in the County. Raise to kids here.
You hit one of the the sweet spots back then too - government employment.
You shouldn't put something in quotes that's inaccurate and wasn't said originally. Please refrain from that.Thats misinformation and misrepresentation
Respectfully, I have to disagree. I came back here some 20 years after graduating high school. Raised a family, bought a home and retired after many years of a successful career. I know many people (mostly health care professionals) that did the same thing, so it can be done. My kids, unfortunately had to leave and have no desire to return.
Santa Barbara doesn’t have to be “newly wed and nearly dead,” we need young professionals and entrepreneurs.
"Health care" professionals is the key to surviving in this area, particularly when they are locally funded by generous government employee health care insurance benefits. That is a unique niche.
Our locally sustainable industries are government employment and government employment benefit supported auxiliary industries: aka health care. Along with government pension driven lifestyles.
All of which are tax-dollar supported. That should be a starting point when projecting long range planning for this area. That is what I mean about being pragmatic; and not idealistic - who in fact are we; not what we "should be". Even the growth of Goleta came from tax dollar supported defense industry contract research and development funding.
Unfortunately, even health care is going to potentially have some hard times. In SB County, the “payer mix” is less private carriers and now overwhelmingly, Medicare and Cencal. Hospitals need private insurers to thrive, coupled with reductions by the Big Beautiful Bill, spells major cut backs. SB reimbursement rates have historically been lower because we are considered “rural” by CMS! Imagine that, being lumped in with Taft, Maricopa and Bakersfield!
This is exactly the pragmatic information our city planners need when they concoct their utopian be all things to all people versions of Santa Barbara. Thank you. Indeed, there is no middle class between Medicare and CenCal. But that is the reality check driver we need to understand about our city's future.
The sad truth? The average “Boomer” has ZERO clue about healthcare delivery. While they’re protesting on Hope, millions of healthcare resources are being spent on illegals and the homeless, which means less care for them. It is not unusual for illegals to ring up a million dollar hospital bill on one patient or their neonatal kid who is in the Pediatric ICU for months.
I read this article titled "Population Down; Deficit Spending Up"
by Scott Wenz and of course I have a new title
"Complete Failure of Local & State Government"
I quote from Mr. Wenz below>
"The Demographic Projections of the 1960s are proving out. There is and will be a continuing population decline from the Greatest Generation, bringing it more aligned to the percentages of pre-WWII."
The Greatest Generation are all gone and it is better they all are not here to see the utter failure
of the WOKE-LIBERAL-DESTRUCTIVE-GOVERNMENT at work undermining the Great Generation
accomplishments since WWII. It is all a distant Memory as CRAZINESS REIGNS IN CALI
and in all of the other Destructive Local and State Governments. Any doubts look carefully here>
https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1960752267369332968
https://x.com/RealAlexJones/status/1961108791476519137
Any mentally ill young adults in SB? School Shooter?
Howard Walther, Member of a Military Family
Decreasing population yet the push to build hundreds of small apartments
Who are they going to house in these lower income units?
10% of SB are illegal immigrants who occupy lower income housing. Taking away housing making housing more expensive.
Is Montecito building workforce apartments for their maids & gardeners?
Great points about declining population while unemployment is going up.
Wait, what?
Less people & less jobs?
Oh and we are in a housing shortage with fewer people too, what?
There you go. Public education math at work!
I hear the 11 million dollar spent to make the State Street underpass a tourist destination has been a smashing success
While I personally think the Jeff Shelton 101 underpass was a very welcome change and got rid of the open air public urinal ambiance of the prior configuration, my recent walk through it from the beach into the upper State Street "promenade" was a creepy disappointment.
This now inviting pedestrian underpass dumps one into the tawdry looking State Street bar zone, with filthy sidewalks still littered with clotted Fiesta confetti. If a lively bar scene is one's thing fine, but there was nothing to entice one to keep going further up State Street. From the beach to the bar zone, that was sole the message of the improved underpass..
However, a visitor can only conclude why bother to traverse the rest of State Street into its upper more appealing reaches 10 blocks away, in the Historic Arts District, after that rude and crude invitation immediately awaits the upper side of this newly enlivened 101 underpass. How many SF visitors chose to traverse the Tenderloin to get to Union Square and Nob Hill?
$11 million was a crazy price tag, but who knows what state representatives Gregg Hart and Monique Limon demanded when major restructuring was required under Highway 101. It is always good to report the final breakdown on any public construction project - how much for soft costs and administrative overhead; and how much for actual bricks and mortar capital improvements.
Best current solution- make the bar zone a closed off street promenade, if one must. But open the entire rest of State Street to car traffic, and put Humpty Dumpty back together again. 10 blocks of closed down State Street is simply not working, except as a free for all e-bke terrorist zone.
Everyone needs to change their $11 million price tag. It came back to the city council for an increase...............
If that funding increase incorporates a 24/7 audio of Neil Young recordings, I would fully support it. Can't think of a better way to keep the homeless and other sundry bozos from assembling and/or loitering while being subjected to Mr. Young on a continuous loop.
The original bid had all the conduit etc included!!!
Shazam !! Then it's all over but the weeping...
Gasp, don't tell me there were cost-overruns and multiple change orders on top the the "lowest bid" government contract?
YEP! Jeff Shelton also had an increase...
So the genie rubbed the magic OPM money machine and out came endless new gold coins? Public contracts, overseen by know-nothing council persons, have a tendency to do that.
What I don't appreciate at all is the complete design disconnect of the stamped sheet metal fencing along the walk way; Geeze, what sleeze!
(Get the designers name and ban them from SB)
You must not recognize the name Shelton!!
Yes, the Santa Barbara City population has declined by about 10,000 people . It is too expensive to live there. Santa Maria population has increased. Why?
Don't knock a good thing. SB City budget requires lots of sales of high ticket properties which in turn increase annual property tax hauls. They only pretend they care about "affordable housing" for political cover.
But too much "affordable housing" will certainly decimate the city budget promises and projections for themselves, since the limited tax base is at a precarious tipping point as those who are actually paying the necessary taxes become fewer and fewer. Is Randy Rowse the only city council person who gets this?