I remember Laura Crapps as a member of the school board during the height if the debate about requiring teachers to be vaccinated to keep their jobs. During the public comment section she filed her nails and surfed the web to pass the time during this most unpleasant exercise designed to give a democratic flavor to the meeting. After accusing descenting voices of echoing misinformation from bizarre websites the board unanimously voted to terminate teachers who refused to be vaccinated. All the while the fully vaccinated board sat at distance, masked, plastic shielded and in every way appearing unconvinced that the vaccine prevented anything. We know today that it was a bad decision as the vaccine does not prevent contraction or spread, may increase the chance of contraction and has many significant side effects. So the bizarre websites turned out to be the CDC website claiming safe and effective of which the bioweapon jab is neither.
Laura Crapps is an ideologue who only sees government solutions. Government provided low cost housing is the covid clot shot for housing affordability. It will only exacerbate the situation. Imagine the corruption associated with deciding who gets the privilege of an affordable home. Whatever the government gives must be taken from others. The bigger the government the smaller the citizen. This will be paid for by taking from the productive sector of the economy thereby weakening the very sector that pays taxes and provides opportunities. The endpoint of Ms Crapps ideology is universal poverty. While I will be accused of getting my ideas from some bizarre website spreading misinformation, I believe the solution is in the private sector through free market capitalism.
If we continue to elect midwits like Laura Crapps we will continue on the road to serfdom. Perhaps a requirement for public office should be to show a paycheck without the statue of liberty emblazoned on the front. Even better perhaps a requirement should be to have signed the front of a paycheck.
My favorite Laura Capps moment was when she deigned to visit my neighborhood to talk about the airport noise and the pot farms. She showed up in clothes suitable for Ivanka Trump but in Ukrainian colors. From how she was dressed one might think she cared more about Ukraine than her constituents. She certainly learned one lesson from her father: it's more important to get canonized for appearing to do good than it is to actually do good.
Well done Andy. I would add that the politicians or their employees do not own the county or any of its assets: we, the people, do. If you want to kill the projects,: require the first ones be built in Montecito.
How about requiring building on Marianne Partridge's 18,000 acres? That would really kill it - plus she'd run an Indy cover story about what a scam the “affordable” housing thing is. Hey, some truthful Indy journalism for once!
Good comment Brent, infortuntely that Good Ole Boys and Good Ole Gals
have controlled and owned Santa Barbara for a long time. The only way
that control has been forever broken is described in Tom Parker's Article
in the Independent "Perceptions of Political Corruption Too Often the Harbingers of Stark Reality" By Tom Parker Sat Feb 22, 2020 | 3:23pm
Former FBI Executive explains in detail what has happened and how they did it
and I quote>"Upon close inspection by trained investigators, the proscribed relationship between the official and the co-conspirator becomes apparent. It can also surface when those plotting the scheme covertly agree to conceal their being symbiotically joined at their hip pockets. In today’s ""electronic world of emails and high-speed research"", such concealment rarely lasts" (This is the exact method used for large scale Public-Corruption-Investigations)
In simple words they wire-tapped everyone in this County.
Think of UCSB as a conveyor-belt producing five thousand or so new graduates every single year, many of whom may well have become enamored with life on the central coast and do not want to leave. Have any UCSB student surveys been taken that can confirm or deny this speculation?
Might be reasonable to offer reality check counseling when students first enroll at UCSB regarding the likelihood they may not be able to stay after their college graduation, due to employment opportunity limitations, housing availability and the very low-turnover rates that do apply to the local housing stock.
The UCSB annual conveyer-belt crop of newly graduating students can then best plan their post-UCSB graduation futures accordingly.
During the drought there were no new water meters allowed, no new wells drilled.
Yet local government stated out the other side of their mouth they already took into consideration the thousands of new houses required by the state.
So why did they stop issuing water meters?
Did the local government expand water reservoirs during this time? Did they expand the number of houses that could be serviced?
City of SB rebuilt the Desal plant, then immediately sold off a percent of that water production to Montecito. While placing water restrictions and rate increases upon City water meters.
Who were they catering to, not the avg tax payer. That wasn’t an election year so they could do whatever they wanted.
Huh, did you notice it’s an election year?
Have you noticed how our Democratic politicians treat elections like a school elections.
“Free soda and no homework for everyone if you vote for me!”
Making ludicrous promises to the big voter base that they have no intention of honoring while pissing off the smaller voter base, homeowners & what qualifies as middle income according to real cost of living expenses.
But the Cult of the Donkey votes Blue even when they admit their elected officials are not acting in their best interest.
This is what truth sounds like. Thank you for saying it, Caldwell, for all the good it will do. People are so far gone down the rabbit hole here in California that they will believe anything, no matter how illogical, to confirm their own political biases.
I have lived and built all over the world. This is what truth sounds like:
“beware of the law of unintended consequences. That which artificially lowers the cost of development will come at the expense of the quality of life of current residents including water shortages, unbearable traffic, a shortage of parking spaces, and many other undesirable neighborhood impacts.”
good article…I moved to Santa Barbara - the big city - in 1973 after completing high school in Lompoc…I have always said that the powers-that-be can never create enough housing for all those that wish to live here…it’s just the economics of limited resources + the high demand…our current elected officials also know this but are bent on following the directions of those that pull the strings at the state & federal levels…
Unfortunately, these people do not have the interests of the working man in mind…our country has been captured by the communists/marxist…over the near past decades, they have captured all 3 branches of government…Trump was allowed to be elected to turn things around, and his presidency was immediately confronted by cabal because of their great fear of being exposed…
STEP One: Hype an invented threat of POTUS working w/ the RUSSIANS (disinformation campaign).
Step Two: Send FBI/DOJ/CONGRESS/SENATE/C_A/NSA/INTEL/FVEY/etc… to address and investigate the IMAGINARY THREAT.
Step Three: Justify the 'SPECIAL COUNSEL' and MILLIONS OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS SPENT as necessary to protect the public and our election process against an imaginary, made-up, non-existent threat (which really is) designed to protect the illegal activities of many elected officials.
Step Four: Open 'new' Fake & False investigations as (Schiff - CHAIRMAN of the House Intel Comm) to retain disinformation campaign designed to keep liberal/D Americans onboard to regain POWER & PREVENT prosecution…
this and many many other plays were employed to eliminate Trump - a true existential treat to their international crime syndicates…
1962, JFK by executive order allowed government employees to unionize, against all prior warnings to the contrary including those of FDR . Our country has never been the same since.
Over time, this self-interested group of unionized government employees found ways to sit on both sides of the public bargaining table. This fundamental power shift to the government employee unions, now sets public policy and controls the distribution of our mandated tax dollars.
We really do not need to look beyond reasonable self-interests as the primary and partisan political motivator. We all do it. Can we say we too do not put our own self-interests first when making voting decisions? However, any job that requires more tax dollars to fund increased salaries, perks and pensions does find ready supporters just within those very same government employee ranks. "Government" today is the largest employer in our local economy.
Enter now the government employee unions, whose primary function is to benefit their members. No need to look beyond them for a more sinister motivation. Personal self-interest will suffice. As tax payers and consumers of this public government product, we too are self-interested. Are we getting value for the ever-increasing amount of tax dollars we are now mandated to provide our government? Can our government continue to provide basic public services, when they are first beholden to government employee union bargained contract mandates?
We benefit from reasonably compensated "public servants", as long as value is traded in exchange for those tax dollars. However, the recent rise of government employee interests now sitting on both sides of the bargaining table has distorted that mutually agreed benefit between tax payers and government employees. The prior mutually bargained-for relationship has become quite distorted in the past few decades.
In other words, no need to look for "Marxists or communists" when in fact the sources of our current malaise are a lot closer to home.
I read this very good article on some of the core problems and I quote
"There are two big reasons why there is not enough affordable housing in the south county: UCSB and Santa Barbara City College. In fact, the City of Goleta and the County of Santa Barbara are suing UCSB because the college has failed to build housing on campus for the tens of thousands of students enrolled there."
As Tom Parker stated in his article in the Independent "Perceptions of Political Corruption
Too Often the Harbingers of Stark Reality"
And as Tom Parker said "Simply put, political corruption is the use of official power by government officials for illegitimate personal gain. Unfortunately, there is too often a laissez faire attitude among the honest leaders in the community where perceptions of a problem are ignored or merely swept under the rug."
What serious problems were there at UCSB and City College? How many "Foreign Students" attend and live in the "surrounding neighborhood" Like Mr. Rogers "Want to be my Neighbor"
Let me be very direct to everyone here.
1. Was the a Terrorist Incident at UCSB?
2. Was their a School Shooter Incident near SBCC
3. Were there other very serious incidents at UCSB and SBCC?
Thank God there was a Fairy God-Mother that was here and addressed same.
The quality Inn project is literally in my backyard. But they're not renting it to low income. They're giving it to homeless. How does this help? My granddaughter works two jobs, but can't afford an apartment but if she was homeless, maybe she'd get one. And who pays the rent for these people? We do!
Yes, I can smell the election season. This is the way politicians buy votes with non-government hard working private citizens and business owners tax money. Especially why government workers are 90% + liberal voters.
One can divide political candidates into two different camps: (1) the "Lady Bountiful" candidate who promises any number of new rewards, regardless of identifying new funding streams. And (2) the independent fiscal hawk, public policy oversight candidate.
Rarely do these qualities come together in the same candidate. More likely one carries a (D) by their names and the other carries a (R), even though most local elected offices are technically non-partisan.
I would say Trump falls more into the first camp than the second camp. Just listen to his pronouncements regarding entitlement spending and subsidies for ethanol and farmers. His Covid spending was obscene.
I agree with Andy's analysis. He has laid out a huge issue for many existing neighborhoods in the city of Santa Barbara. It exposes, at a personal level, the consequences for voters from these very neighborhoods who have enabled this chicken to come to their homes to roost. They have created such a monopoly of Democratic Party power throughout California that their elected representatives and government bureaucracies have become our masters.
Santa Barbara County has a population of 446,527. Registered voters are 48.9% of that population. Registered Democrats are 41.9% and Republicans are 25.3%. These percentages mirror the state-wide split between party registration.
Let us apply Andy's warnings to the area in Santa Barbara known as San Roque.
In this neighborhood, which abuts and includes both sides of Upper State Street and The Le Cumbre Plaza, homes are currently selling within 29 days on average. The median price achieved by these sales is $1,749,000. It is one of the prettiest urban neighbor hoods in the city.
Upper State Street is probably the most pass-through travelled part of State Street as a whole with two accesses to Rte. 101 and one access Rte. 154, and this stretch has very considerable shopping areas that also, draw traffic.
The current city plan for Le Cumbre Plaza together with the owners is to build 2,000 rental apartments to replace most of the existing commercial space. it will start with over 600 apartments in the space now occupied by Macys. The underlying rationale is to provide more affordable housing. My understanding is that 5%, or 100 units out of 2,000, will actually be designated and priced as affordable. But, for these units to be really affordable, Section 8 financing by the taxpayers will be necessary. It is likely that the other 1,900 units will draw additional population from outside of Santa Barbara, rather than satisfy existing population demands.
As I understand it, there is a prior plan to reduce the vehicle lanes from two on each side of State Street to only one on each side, so as to accommodate the widening of bike lanes on each side of State Street. If this is correct, you can imagine the results.
So, the question is where will the traffic be diverted to?
Other serious issues involve city-provided and, therefore, taxpayer financed, infrastructure necessary to support these developments.
But above all, is the fact that the Democratic Party voters did this. They gave a super-majority of power to one political party and now, they, as they as much as their Republican-voting neighbors, are going to suffer the consequences.
The big mystery is why the people of San Roque are not demonstrating in force outside of the pinnacles of power in Sacramento.
Perhaps, it is because we all are becoming enured to an era of socialist rule in this state, until it collapses.
Cramming more people in west Goleta will add left leaning people to the newly created 3rd supervisorial district. Hartmann's seat will likely be more secure.
Goleta doesn't want the development. Lompoc does. Frank Troise understands this.
I remember Laura Crapps as a member of the school board during the height if the debate about requiring teachers to be vaccinated to keep their jobs. During the public comment section she filed her nails and surfed the web to pass the time during this most unpleasant exercise designed to give a democratic flavor to the meeting. After accusing descenting voices of echoing misinformation from bizarre websites the board unanimously voted to terminate teachers who refused to be vaccinated. All the while the fully vaccinated board sat at distance, masked, plastic shielded and in every way appearing unconvinced that the vaccine prevented anything. We know today that it was a bad decision as the vaccine does not prevent contraction or spread, may increase the chance of contraction and has many significant side effects. So the bizarre websites turned out to be the CDC website claiming safe and effective of which the bioweapon jab is neither.
Laura Crapps is an ideologue who only sees government solutions. Government provided low cost housing is the covid clot shot for housing affordability. It will only exacerbate the situation. Imagine the corruption associated with deciding who gets the privilege of an affordable home. Whatever the government gives must be taken from others. The bigger the government the smaller the citizen. This will be paid for by taking from the productive sector of the economy thereby weakening the very sector that pays taxes and provides opportunities. The endpoint of Ms Crapps ideology is universal poverty. While I will be accused of getting my ideas from some bizarre website spreading misinformation, I believe the solution is in the private sector through free market capitalism.
If we continue to elect midwits like Laura Crapps we will continue on the road to serfdom. Perhaps a requirement for public office should be to show a paycheck without the statue of liberty emblazoned on the front. Even better perhaps a requirement should be to have signed the front of a paycheck.
My favorite Laura Capps moment was when she deigned to visit my neighborhood to talk about the airport noise and the pot farms. She showed up in clothes suitable for Ivanka Trump but in Ukrainian colors. From how she was dressed one might think she cared more about Ukraine than her constituents. She certainly learned one lesson from her father: it's more important to get canonized for appearing to do good than it is to actually do good.
Well done Andy. I would add that the politicians or their employees do not own the county or any of its assets: we, the people, do. If you want to kill the projects,: require the first ones be built in Montecito.
How about requiring building on Marianne Partridge's 18,000 acres? That would really kill it - plus she'd run an Indy cover story about what a scam the “affordable” housing thing is. Hey, some truthful Indy journalism for once!
Good comment Brent, infortuntely that Good Ole Boys and Good Ole Gals
have controlled and owned Santa Barbara for a long time. The only way
that control has been forever broken is described in Tom Parker's Article
in the Independent "Perceptions of Political Corruption Too Often the Harbingers of Stark Reality" By Tom Parker Sat Feb 22, 2020 | 3:23pm
Former FBI Executive explains in detail what has happened and how they did it
and I quote>"Upon close inspection by trained investigators, the proscribed relationship between the official and the co-conspirator becomes apparent. It can also surface when those plotting the scheme covertly agree to conceal their being symbiotically joined at their hip pockets. In today’s ""electronic world of emails and high-speed research"", such concealment rarely lasts" (This is the exact method used for large scale Public-Corruption-Investigations)
In simple words they wire-tapped everyone in this County.
Howard Walther, member of a Military Family
Think of UCSB as a conveyor-belt producing five thousand or so new graduates every single year, many of whom may well have become enamored with life on the central coast and do not want to leave. Have any UCSB student surveys been taken that can confirm or deny this speculation?
Might be reasonable to offer reality check counseling when students first enroll at UCSB regarding the likelihood they may not be able to stay after their college graduation, due to employment opportunity limitations, housing availability and the very low-turnover rates that do apply to the local housing stock.
The UCSB annual conveyer-belt crop of newly graduating students can then best plan their post-UCSB graduation futures accordingly.
Water.
During the drought there were no new water meters allowed, no new wells drilled.
Yet local government stated out the other side of their mouth they already took into consideration the thousands of new houses required by the state.
So why did they stop issuing water meters?
Did the local government expand water reservoirs during this time? Did they expand the number of houses that could be serviced?
City of SB rebuilt the Desal plant, then immediately sold off a percent of that water production to Montecito. While placing water restrictions and rate increases upon City water meters.
Who were they catering to, not the avg tax payer. That wasn’t an election year so they could do whatever they wanted.
Huh, did you notice it’s an election year?
Have you noticed how our Democratic politicians treat elections like a school elections.
“Free soda and no homework for everyone if you vote for me!”
Making ludicrous promises to the big voter base that they have no intention of honoring while pissing off the smaller voter base, homeowners & what qualifies as middle income according to real cost of living expenses.
But the Cult of the Donkey votes Blue even when they admit their elected officials are not acting in their best interest.
This is what truth sounds like. Thank you for saying it, Caldwell, for all the good it will do. People are so far gone down the rabbit hole here in California that they will believe anything, no matter how illogical, to confirm their own political biases.
I have lived and built all over the world. This is what truth sounds like:
“beware of the law of unintended consequences. That which artificially lowers the cost of development will come at the expense of the quality of life of current residents including water shortages, unbearable traffic, a shortage of parking spaces, and many other undesirable neighborhood impacts.”
good article…I moved to Santa Barbara - the big city - in 1973 after completing high school in Lompoc…I have always said that the powers-that-be can never create enough housing for all those that wish to live here…it’s just the economics of limited resources + the high demand…our current elected officials also know this but are bent on following the directions of those that pull the strings at the state & federal levels…
Unfortunately, these people do not have the interests of the working man in mind…our country has been captured by the communists/marxist…over the near past decades, they have captured all 3 branches of government…Trump was allowed to be elected to turn things around, and his presidency was immediately confronted by cabal because of their great fear of being exposed…
STEP One: Hype an invented threat of POTUS working w/ the RUSSIANS (disinformation campaign).
Step Two: Send FBI/DOJ/CONGRESS/SENATE/C_A/NSA/INTEL/FVEY/etc… to address and investigate the IMAGINARY THREAT.
Step Three: Justify the 'SPECIAL COUNSEL' and MILLIONS OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS SPENT as necessary to protect the public and our election process against an imaginary, made-up, non-existent threat (which really is) designed to protect the illegal activities of many elected officials.
Step Four: Open 'new' Fake & False investigations as (Schiff - CHAIRMAN of the House Intel Comm) to retain disinformation campaign designed to keep liberal/D Americans onboard to regain POWER & PREVENT prosecution…
this and many many other plays were employed to eliminate Trump - a true existential treat to their international crime syndicates…
Fight for your families…Fight for Trump!
1962, JFK by executive order allowed government employees to unionize, against all prior warnings to the contrary including those of FDR . Our country has never been the same since.
Over time, this self-interested group of unionized government employees found ways to sit on both sides of the public bargaining table. This fundamental power shift to the government employee unions, now sets public policy and controls the distribution of our mandated tax dollars.
We really do not need to look beyond reasonable self-interests as the primary and partisan political motivator. We all do it. Can we say we too do not put our own self-interests first when making voting decisions? However, any job that requires more tax dollars to fund increased salaries, perks and pensions does find ready supporters just within those very same government employee ranks. "Government" today is the largest employer in our local economy.
Enter now the government employee unions, whose primary function is to benefit their members. No need to look beyond them for a more sinister motivation. Personal self-interest will suffice. As tax payers and consumers of this public government product, we too are self-interested. Are we getting value for the ever-increasing amount of tax dollars we are now mandated to provide our government? Can our government continue to provide basic public services, when they are first beholden to government employee union bargained contract mandates?
We benefit from reasonably compensated "public servants", as long as value is traded in exchange for those tax dollars. However, the recent rise of government employee interests now sitting on both sides of the bargaining table has distorted that mutually agreed benefit between tax payers and government employees. The prior mutually bargained-for relationship has become quite distorted in the past few decades.
In other words, no need to look for "Marxists or communists" when in fact the sources of our current malaise are a lot closer to home.
I read this very good article on some of the core problems and I quote
"There are two big reasons why there is not enough affordable housing in the south county: UCSB and Santa Barbara City College. In fact, the City of Goleta and the County of Santa Barbara are suing UCSB because the college has failed to build housing on campus for the tens of thousands of students enrolled there."
As Tom Parker stated in his article in the Independent "Perceptions of Political Corruption
Too Often the Harbingers of Stark Reality"
And as Tom Parker said "Simply put, political corruption is the use of official power by government officials for illegitimate personal gain. Unfortunately, there is too often a laissez faire attitude among the honest leaders in the community where perceptions of a problem are ignored or merely swept under the rug."
What serious problems were there at UCSB and City College? How many "Foreign Students" attend and live in the "surrounding neighborhood" Like Mr. Rogers "Want to be my Neighbor"
Let me be very direct to everyone here.
1. Was the a Terrorist Incident at UCSB?
2. Was their a School Shooter Incident near SBCC
3. Were there other very serious incidents at UCSB and SBCC?
Thank God there was a Fairy God-Mother that was here and addressed same.
Howard Walther, member of a Military Family
The quality Inn project is literally in my backyard. But they're not renting it to low income. They're giving it to homeless. How does this help? My granddaughter works two jobs, but can't afford an apartment but if she was homeless, maybe she'd get one. And who pays the rent for these people? We do!
Yes, I can smell the election season. This is the way politicians buy votes with non-government hard working private citizens and business owners tax money. Especially why government workers are 90% + liberal voters.
One can divide political candidates into two different camps: (1) the "Lady Bountiful" candidate who promises any number of new rewards, regardless of identifying new funding streams. And (2) the independent fiscal hawk, public policy oversight candidate.
Rarely do these qualities come together in the same candidate. More likely one carries a (D) by their names and the other carries a (R), even though most local elected offices are technically non-partisan.
I would say Trump falls more into the first camp than the second camp. Just listen to his pronouncements regarding entitlement spending and subsidies for ethanol and farmers. His Covid spending was obscene.
I agree with Andy's analysis. He has laid out a huge issue for many existing neighborhoods in the city of Santa Barbara. It exposes, at a personal level, the consequences for voters from these very neighborhoods who have enabled this chicken to come to their homes to roost. They have created such a monopoly of Democratic Party power throughout California that their elected representatives and government bureaucracies have become our masters.
Santa Barbara County has a population of 446,527. Registered voters are 48.9% of that population. Registered Democrats are 41.9% and Republicans are 25.3%. These percentages mirror the state-wide split between party registration.
Let us apply Andy's warnings to the area in Santa Barbara known as San Roque.
In this neighborhood, which abuts and includes both sides of Upper State Street and The Le Cumbre Plaza, homes are currently selling within 29 days on average. The median price achieved by these sales is $1,749,000. It is one of the prettiest urban neighbor hoods in the city.
Upper State Street is probably the most pass-through travelled part of State Street as a whole with two accesses to Rte. 101 and one access Rte. 154, and this stretch has very considerable shopping areas that also, draw traffic.
The current city plan for Le Cumbre Plaza together with the owners is to build 2,000 rental apartments to replace most of the existing commercial space. it will start with over 600 apartments in the space now occupied by Macys. The underlying rationale is to provide more affordable housing. My understanding is that 5%, or 100 units out of 2,000, will actually be designated and priced as affordable. But, for these units to be really affordable, Section 8 financing by the taxpayers will be necessary. It is likely that the other 1,900 units will draw additional population from outside of Santa Barbara, rather than satisfy existing population demands.
As I understand it, there is a prior plan to reduce the vehicle lanes from two on each side of State Street to only one on each side, so as to accommodate the widening of bike lanes on each side of State Street. If this is correct, you can imagine the results.
So, the question is where will the traffic be diverted to?
Other serious issues involve city-provided and, therefore, taxpayer financed, infrastructure necessary to support these developments.
But above all, is the fact that the Democratic Party voters did this. They gave a super-majority of power to one political party and now, they, as they as much as their Republican-voting neighbors, are going to suffer the consequences.
The big mystery is why the people of San Roque are not demonstrating in force outside of the pinnacles of power in Sacramento.
Perhaps, it is because we all are becoming enured to an era of socialist rule in this state, until it collapses.
Right on
Cramming more people in west Goleta will add left leaning people to the newly created 3rd supervisorial district. Hartmann's seat will likely be more secure.
Goleta doesn't want the development. Lompoc does. Frank Troise understands this.
She's wrong. Capps' usually are.