I agree 100 percent with your commentary. I have concluded that there are two general classes of people in our community:
The Progressive Liberals, who have the financial ability to ignore these increases. These are made up of Trust Funders, Government workers, Professionals and College students.
The Working Class, who have no interest, time or understanding of the consequences of their choice to remain uninformed and apathetic.
We know that most of the children in our schools fail math. So apparently do the voters. Those who resent those who are successful think "taxing the rich to pay their fair share" is something they ought to vote for. Not realizing higher property taxes will raise their own rents, the cost of products and services. The higher sales tax will cause people to go out of town for big-ticket purchases, another insult to locally owned businesses struggling against online shopping. But the worst insult of all is funding for the failing City College that will be wasted on a new sports pavilion, when our climate provides the ability to exercise outdoors year-round.
None of us voted to create the Lower State Death Alley. No one was given a chance to agree to the street grid destroying limitations, diversions, entry blocking, trees in former parking spaces, bike lanes removing trees....... and who of us needed to beautify the State Street underpass or believed it would draw tourists up from the beach?
Yes, local voters, many of which rent and don’t own their home, passed yet another tax increase…affecting who? Those that own property! Surprise! These tax schemes were passed by…wait for it…transient college kids! While all along they have been spoon fed this garbage by the local academic industrial complex. Can’t spell, can’t do math, can’t put together a compound sentence …no worries, no pasa nada!
In the meantime, we have created a new class of people, those part of the a local privilege class, who get everything funded by the property owners. I think the local mentality for those under say 45, is that they’ll never own a property or new car for that matter, so renting and leasing makes sense. Meanwhile, the rest of us are stuck with the tab!
Ever wonder what the low down is the local charity “One 805?” You know, the big bash held annually on Kevin Costner’s palatial pad? Yes, the one featuring rock stars, celebrities, Montecito wannabes, even British royalties! The funds appear to go to equipment upgrades for first responders and perhaps more importantly, mental counseling for said first responders. Why wouldn’t that funding come from our property tax dollars? Is it because there is no money for those activities because the majority of the budget goes to servicing their bloated salaries and pensions?
Oh well, you know what they have always said about SB?….”the newly wed and the nearly dead!” I see a “envy class” emerging here locally that have those in the workforce with no possibility of owning property, so why not stick it to the man?
Welcome to the SB bubble…that’s how we roll in the 805!
It will be interesting to see the precinct voter breakdown for the SBCC Measure P passage. Was it across the wider SBCC district from Carpinteria to Ellwood, or clustered in only a few voter dense areas?
I also recently learned that the state is set to double the annual registration fees for those of us with old -- gasoline-powered -- cars. I am on modest means with a husband in assisted living. I cannot afford a new car. My 15 year old Jeep and his 30 year old Chevy pickup are well-maintained, always passing the smog test. This latest tax will impact folks like me and the poor. Over the years, I paid thousands of dollars to drive my vehicles, from sales tax to the annual DMV fee, the highest in the nation. How is this new tax aimed at those struggling, how is it just? Justifiable?
Increased auto registration fees is what led to the recall of Gov Gray Davis at the start of this new century. Public will cried out back then. Are we too beaten down to do the same again?
Gov Newsom's total mismanagement of federal "covid" funds ( $42 billion in fraud?) is now getting tacked on to increased payroll deductions. Where is the tipping point for voters to finally scream enough of this, get out of here. And don't send in a RINO like Arnold Schwarzenegger this time to set things straight .
Playwright David Mamet has a chilling and insightful analysis in the WSJ today (in place of Peggy Noonan's increasingly vacuous commentary) about the current sheep mentality as a tradeoff for the misperceived protection offered by "Big Government". To not agree with government's increasing demands puts the sheep at risk of losing their false aura that Big Government pretends to protect them. Yet it does not. Reality and fantasy collide.
I once lived near Oregon where all DMV fees for all cars was the same. Someone figured out that the time saved by not having to figure out the tax at a different amount for every car made it possible to have one low fee for everyone. With the result that many of the students at my Washington college drove across the border to register their cars.
A quick glance online reveals "California gas prices could rise up to $1.15 per gallon next year thanks to the state’s new carbon credit system, taxes, refinery regulations, and refinery shutdown. This would require the typical Californian to make up to $1,000 per year more in pre-tax income to “break even,” according to an analysis from a professor at the USC Marshall School of Business. "
I volunteered for 4 weekends in the belly of the beast of Los Angeles. It’s worse than you can even imagine. Provisional ballots with no ID verification for as far as the eye can see
It seems like this interminable amount of time to count the ballots is always helping the Democratic candidates, as evidenced by some super close election results for House seats in Orange County.
hmmm…Santa Barbarans voted for every single tax increase on the ballot…why? because of people are uniformed and have a hard time finding their way thru the maze of misinformation put forth by proponents of new ideas (measures)…you said it succinctly, most people (progressives & conservatives) believe that the additional tax revenue will get them more services or better government…Make America Transparent Again!!!
The recent collapsing of local elections during the odd years, and now put in with the general elections in the even years is a big part of the (intentional?) voter confusion overload.
One more "election reform" measure crammed down with ultimately sinister impact. Did most voters even know there were TWO community ballot measures on the ballot? One was state wide for community colleges on the frontside of the ballot, and one was local for SBCC - on the back side of the ballot.
Democrats vote like sheep. They do whatever they are told to do by the herd leaders without questioning and without independent analysis. From a political standpoint they are the perfect voters. Why do you think they no longer teach critical thinking in college? They are taught what to think, not how to think. This is the result.
Yet Democrats did get rejected in 90% of US counties. We need to build on this, because that 90% rejection rate often lost out of the urban concentrations of voters in blue cities.
Yes this fits with what I said. For the first time in decades voters flipped. “Educated” voters went Democrat and working class voters flipped to Republican. This is because “educated” voters are taught what to think not how to think in school and are buried in Liberal professors. Thus the inability to think independently and they are more likely to vote as they are told, and to vote Democrat. Our Universities are now breeding mindless Democrat voters in other words and the breakdown of voters in this election confirms that. Trumps plan to eliminate the Department of Education is s good place to start.
A college degrees is often required for many/most government jobs. This can skew the "education level" concentration among those self-serving Democrat-voting government employee voters. SBCC does require a masters degree for teaching staff, with additional compensation for a doctorate, though not necessarily in one's subject area.
Yes it is a perfect plan, Government workers vote something like 90% Democrat, so create more and more "Government jobs" and require them to go to a "University" to get brainwashed into a Democrat in order to get that job, then hire them and voila! Another permanent Democrat who not only votes Democrat but also then becomes part of the Deep State unelected Democrat government machine that actually runs the country and is deeply imbedded. It is purely diabolical, and by no means coincidental.
The math is easy - 23 million government employees who bring in 2-3 other voters -family members and friends and you have a permanent Democrat majority.
Elon Musk got this right away. Plus he noted the fact Democrats were moving illegals mainly into swing states and giving them an easy paths to citizenship would soon reach their goal making these swing states permanently blue. Soaring Democrat abuse of our country, since this recent Biden 20 million population influx was entirely illegal.
We truly are close to "losing our democracy" and can only hope the buffers against mob rule built into the US Constitution continue to hold. But we are at a precarious tipping point in sheer numbers and voter self-interest when you have 23 million embedded government employees.
Exactly. This is our shot, we lose this we may lose it all. Sadly RINO"s are in charge of the Senate, with Thune as Leader, and McConell heading the rules committee, and RINO's like Murkowski voting purely with the Democrats there is a LOT they can stop of what Trump needs to do. We need to find a way to vote them out, OR, start a new RINO free third party.
Did local property tax owners need to tax themselves to keep SBCC solvent and the doors open? Or was this demand made to support long-standing misallocations of their guaranteed Prop 98 tax revenues, already gifted by taxpayers to SBCC.
NB: The top compensation payout at SBCC is listed for an "assistant professor" ($419,744/ year) on the 2023 Transparent California disclosures is also the lead SBCC instructors union negotiator. Does this include her release time to conduct union activities?
Something has gone fundamentally wrong at SBCC over this past decade, that led to this disingenuous cry for more local property tax dollars in order to support the current SBCC board-approved college expense model.
My gosh! What can you say?! Too bad this information was not put into The Independent to give people an idea was what kind of money is being spent with our tax dollars. Thank you, Bonnie, for the website.
J. Livingston always puts out Transparent California's website. Everyone needs to play around on this site and share it with everyone as much as possible.
Look up Newsom, Limon, Carbajal, Hart, and continue with any you know that receive a paycheck from us. (City, County, and State employees)
Add the $104, 568 city council total compensation to the SBCC $176,187 total compensation for Ms Kristen Sneddon and you have a cool tax payer drain of $280,755 for 2023 for just one of our local "public servants".
Over a quarter million dollars total for just one person for just this one year. Assume it will go up when the 2024 schedules are finally posted.
NB: Only now, after both SBCC and city tax increases passed, did they finally publish the 2023 compensation package schedules. Was this just a coincidence? Considering they have been sitting on this information for almost a year.
Now multiply all these tax payer funded compensation totals times the thousands also on the city and SBCC payrolls. Gives us a better idea why both the city and SBCC demanded more of our tax dollars this year. And next, and next?
Nothing’s going to change until we take the entire school system back from the progressives. the indoctrination begins the minute. They arrive and they don’t let up until they have left.
We definitely have a bunch of idiots living here. I can not believe they voted for more taxes on top of everything we already pay. It is insane to me. I did NOT vote for any new tax. I definitely would move if I were only younger. This is pathetic and sad.
The largest employer in this area is the government in its many forms - direct tax dollar supported government employees or their indirect employee numbers supported by government employee benefits - eg: health care benefits. Cottage is the second leading employer locally.
This makes us a "company town" so assume all tax increases will get sufficient support in the future. One does not easily vote against their own self-interests. So no, they are not "stupid". Quite smart actually. And it is in all our interests to support a certain degree of local public services ... as long as we feel we are getting direct value in return.
Right you are JL. When one looks at SB County as a whole, leading employers; UCSB, Cottage Hospital, VSFB, Dignity Health, Bureau of Prisons, Granite Construction and then probably Agriculture. Virtually none if any home construction as well as minimal energy jobs. Virtually ALL related to government contracts or subsidies.
I believe most of the voters did not understand the issues. I did not understand them either, but I voted as per your suggestions. Unfortunately not all the Santa Barbarins don’t read this publication.
No, they’re too busy reading the Independent or saying stupid things on Edhat. Ya, hopefully someday they’ll figure out the unworkable situation they find themselves in is because of the liberal industrial complex which has spoon fed them cradle to grave. Which is, hate everyone who is conservative and carry the water for liberal elite bullshit.
Excellent article. I vote NO NO NO on every tax. Especially school taxes. Our state teacher association is the worse organization ever. They take our tax money and spend it on administration salaries and retirements and benefits. Very few cents of our tax money ever goes for the children's education unless it is to brainwash them on sex changes or other liberal BS.
I really dislike how they use children to pander to our heart strings.
As to other taxes, 99.9% NO!
Government needs to get efficient. There is so much waste in government. You ask, how do I know? Because I worked 40 years for the government and tried to stop the waste in my department. My supervisors, harassed me constantly and finally forced me out. I know for fact, I could run my agency on 25% of its budget.
I pray that Musk and Trump can change things. But the Deep State is very very very deep and corrupt.
They have an almost impossible task ahead of them.
Unbelievable that the Santa Barbara community thinks that increasing sales tax will help anything. With the price of homes my property tax has doubled and everything is more expensive.
It buys a large box of bandaids. And then the next "term-limited" city council can kick this can down the road one more time, when they get their turn.
Mandatory revolving door elected officials are not working out as intended - no institutional history, no long term accountability, no personal reputation invested, and lots of wasted money re-inventing the wheel every few years.
The answer seems simple to me. People here in California still vote based on tribal loyalty which is promoted by local news channels and sources and financed by big business and developers. They are completely captured and distracted by their drug of choice, “pop culture” which is hedonism designed and fed to them 24/7 as virtue.
This has evolved over the past 50 years.
I’m not sure what the answer is but I have an inkling that the destruction of these oligarchs currently in charge will come from the very immigrants they currently believe will be theirs to control.
Lou, well said, I thought there was more than enough info re the SBCC bond to have everyone reject it. I remember growing up that public sector employees often made less than their counterparts in the private sector. So one way to balance that was to make sure that the public sector employees had great benefits, health, vacation and retirement to compensate for a lower salary. Now public sector employees are on par with private sector, possibly even slightly ahead, of the private sector but the benefits were never adjusted. Most of the public sector employees have retirement benefits that only private sector employees could dream of. If we don’t come up with a way to control public sector benefits we are going to be taxed and fee forever.
Stupid is what stupid does no getting around it. If our local government bodies manage to drive the proverbial car over the cliff, there would be those that say hey no big deal we can just fix it go on our regular car over cliff way, until we are over the cliff again.
We need change in Santa Barbara! The majority of the USA changed course on 11/5.
I am suspecting SBCC bond campaign concentrated getting the IV vote out, to pass this bond. This has been done in the past - for greater or lesser benefits. We do need to see the precinct breakdowns .
Pretty much everyone on NextDoor was very much anti-bond issue. So it will be interesting to learn how wide or how narrow the actual support was. Props to them if it was wide; but a skunk flower bouquet if they mainly harvested the concentrated IV vote.
SBCC has 9 presidents/superintendents making around $450,000 for a school of 12,000, so that is one for every 1,333 students. Few, if any, private companies are that top heavy.
Not quite the right data- SBCC has had that many CEO turnovers recently. But do you mean total current administrative personnel from VP's, to deans, to department chairs to non-teaching staff level positions like DEI directors?
I agree 100 percent with your commentary. I have concluded that there are two general classes of people in our community:
The Progressive Liberals, who have the financial ability to ignore these increases. These are made up of Trust Funders, Government workers, Professionals and College students.
The Working Class, who have no interest, time or understanding of the consequences of their choice to remain uninformed and apathetic.
We know that most of the children in our schools fail math. So apparently do the voters. Those who resent those who are successful think "taxing the rich to pay their fair share" is something they ought to vote for. Not realizing higher property taxes will raise their own rents, the cost of products and services. The higher sales tax will cause people to go out of town for big-ticket purchases, another insult to locally owned businesses struggling against online shopping. But the worst insult of all is funding for the failing City College that will be wasted on a new sports pavilion, when our climate provides the ability to exercise outdoors year-round.
None of us voted to create the Lower State Death Alley. No one was given a chance to agree to the street grid destroying limitations, diversions, entry blocking, trees in former parking spaces, bike lanes removing trees....... and who of us needed to beautify the State Street underpass or believed it would draw tourists up from the beach?
Who benefits?
Yes, local voters, many of which rent and don’t own their home, passed yet another tax increase…affecting who? Those that own property! Surprise! These tax schemes were passed by…wait for it…transient college kids! While all along they have been spoon fed this garbage by the local academic industrial complex. Can’t spell, can’t do math, can’t put together a compound sentence …no worries, no pasa nada!
In the meantime, we have created a new class of people, those part of the a local privilege class, who get everything funded by the property owners. I think the local mentality for those under say 45, is that they’ll never own a property or new car for that matter, so renting and leasing makes sense. Meanwhile, the rest of us are stuck with the tab!
Ever wonder what the low down is the local charity “One 805?” You know, the big bash held annually on Kevin Costner’s palatial pad? Yes, the one featuring rock stars, celebrities, Montecito wannabes, even British royalties! The funds appear to go to equipment upgrades for first responders and perhaps more importantly, mental counseling for said first responders. Why wouldn’t that funding come from our property tax dollars? Is it because there is no money for those activities because the majority of the budget goes to servicing their bloated salaries and pensions?
Oh well, you know what they have always said about SB?….”the newly wed and the nearly dead!” I see a “envy class” emerging here locally that have those in the workforce with no possibility of owning property, so why not stick it to the man?
Welcome to the SB bubble…that’s how we roll in the 805!
It will be interesting to see the precinct voter breakdown for the SBCC Measure P passage. Was it across the wider SBCC district from Carpinteria to Ellwood, or clustered in only a few voter dense areas?
LT - I don't agree on much you say. I'm sure we differ by 179 degrees on why this bubble is here - but much what you describe above is spot on.
Ummm, TJ I bet we agree on a lot more than you may think. ESPECIALLY when it involves our wallets!
I also recently learned that the state is set to double the annual registration fees for those of us with old -- gasoline-powered -- cars. I am on modest means with a husband in assisted living. I cannot afford a new car. My 15 year old Jeep and his 30 year old Chevy pickup are well-maintained, always passing the smog test. This latest tax will impact folks like me and the poor. Over the years, I paid thousands of dollars to drive my vehicles, from sales tax to the annual DMV fee, the highest in the nation. How is this new tax aimed at those struggling, how is it just? Justifiable?
Increased auto registration fees is what led to the recall of Gov Gray Davis at the start of this new century. Public will cried out back then. Are we too beaten down to do the same again?
Gov Newsom's total mismanagement of federal "covid" funds ( $42 billion in fraud?) is now getting tacked on to increased payroll deductions. Where is the tipping point for voters to finally scream enough of this, get out of here. And don't send in a RINO like Arnold Schwarzenegger this time to set things straight .
Playwright David Mamet has a chilling and insightful analysis in the WSJ today (in place of Peggy Noonan's increasingly vacuous commentary) about the current sheep mentality as a tradeoff for the misperceived protection offered by "Big Government". To not agree with government's increasing demands puts the sheep at risk of losing their false aura that Big Government pretends to protect them. Yet it does not. Reality and fantasy collide.
I once lived near Oregon where all DMV fees for all cars was the same. Someone figured out that the time saved by not having to figure out the tax at a different amount for every car made it possible to have one low fee for everyone. With the result that many of the students at my Washington college drove across the border to register their cars.
A quick glance online reveals "California gas prices could rise up to $1.15 per gallon next year thanks to the state’s new carbon credit system, taxes, refinery regulations, and refinery shutdown. This would require the typical Californian to make up to $1,000 per year more in pre-tax income to “break even,” according to an analysis from a professor at the USC Marshall School of Business. "
Celeste - do you have a source from where your heard that? I can't find anything about it on a quick google search.
I bet there is some serious monkey business happening in our local and State elections. Just a hunch…😉
The now notorious California "long counts" are ripe for abuse. But how would we know? Who can volunteer that long to be an onsite election observer.
I volunteered for 4 weekends in the belly of the beast of Los Angeles. It’s worse than you can even imagine. Provisional ballots with no ID verification for as far as the eye can see
Another recent "election reform measure" - same day registration.
It seems like this interminable amount of time to count the ballots is always helping the Democratic candidates, as evidenced by some super close election results for House seats in Orange County.
Yikes!
hmmm…Santa Barbarans voted for every single tax increase on the ballot…why? because of people are uniformed and have a hard time finding their way thru the maze of misinformation put forth by proponents of new ideas (measures)…you said it succinctly, most people (progressives & conservatives) believe that the additional tax revenue will get them more services or better government…Make America Transparent Again!!!
The recent collapsing of local elections during the odd years, and now put in with the general elections in the even years is a big part of the (intentional?) voter confusion overload.
One more "election reform" measure crammed down with ultimately sinister impact. Did most voters even know there were TWO community ballot measures on the ballot? One was state wide for community colleges on the frontside of the ballot, and one was local for SBCC - on the back side of the ballot.
the Midwits’ attempts to inform the public are smoke & mirrors, by design
Democrats vote like sheep. They do whatever they are told to do by the herd leaders without questioning and without independent analysis. From a political standpoint they are the perfect voters. Why do you think they no longer teach critical thinking in college? They are taught what to think, not how to think. This is the result.
Yet Democrats did get rejected in 90% of US counties. We need to build on this, because that 90% rejection rate often lost out of the urban concentrations of voters in blue cities.
Yes this fits with what I said. For the first time in decades voters flipped. “Educated” voters went Democrat and working class voters flipped to Republican. This is because “educated” voters are taught what to think not how to think in school and are buried in Liberal professors. Thus the inability to think independently and they are more likely to vote as they are told, and to vote Democrat. Our Universities are now breeding mindless Democrat voters in other words and the breakdown of voters in this election confirms that. Trumps plan to eliminate the Department of Education is s good place to start.
A college degrees is often required for many/most government jobs. This can skew the "education level" concentration among those self-serving Democrat-voting government employee voters. SBCC does require a masters degree for teaching staff, with additional compensation for a doctorate, though not necessarily in one's subject area.
Yes it is a perfect plan, Government workers vote something like 90% Democrat, so create more and more "Government jobs" and require them to go to a "University" to get brainwashed into a Democrat in order to get that job, then hire them and voila! Another permanent Democrat who not only votes Democrat but also then becomes part of the Deep State unelected Democrat government machine that actually runs the country and is deeply imbedded. It is purely diabolical, and by no means coincidental.
The math is easy - 23 million government employees who bring in 2-3 other voters -family members and friends and you have a permanent Democrat majority.
Elon Musk got this right away. Plus he noted the fact Democrats were moving illegals mainly into swing states and giving them an easy paths to citizenship would soon reach their goal making these swing states permanently blue. Soaring Democrat abuse of our country, since this recent Biden 20 million population influx was entirely illegal.
We truly are close to "losing our democracy" and can only hope the buffers against mob rule built into the US Constitution continue to hold. But we are at a precarious tipping point in sheer numbers and voter self-interest when you have 23 million embedded government employees.
Exactly. This is our shot, we lose this we may lose it all. Sadly RINO"s are in charge of the Senate, with Thune as Leader, and McConell heading the rules committee, and RINO's like Murkowski voting purely with the Democrats there is a LOT they can stop of what Trump needs to do. We need to find a way to vote them out, OR, start a new RINO free third party.
Did local property tax owners need to tax themselves to keep SBCC solvent and the doors open? Or was this demand made to support long-standing misallocations of their guaranteed Prop 98 tax revenues, already gifted by taxpayers to SBCC.
NB: The top compensation payout at SBCC is listed for an "assistant professor" ($419,744/ year) on the 2023 Transparent California disclosures is also the lead SBCC instructors union negotiator. Does this include her release time to conduct union activities?
Something has gone fundamentally wrong at SBCC over this past decade, that led to this disingenuous cry for more local property tax dollars in order to support the current SBCC board-approved college expense model.
Decide for yourself. https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2023/santa-barbara-city-college/
https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2023/santa-barbara-city-college/kristen-sneddon/
She also gets SB City Council pay and benefits!!!!
My gosh! What can you say?! Too bad this information was not put into The Independent to give people an idea was what kind of money is being spent with our tax dollars. Thank you, Bonnie, for the website.
J. Livingston always puts out Transparent California's website. Everyone needs to play around on this site and share it with everyone as much as possible.
Look up Newsom, Limon, Carbajal, Hart, and continue with any you know that receive a paycheck from us. (City, County, and State employees)
Add the $104, 568 city council total compensation to the SBCC $176,187 total compensation for Ms Kristen Sneddon and you have a cool tax payer drain of $280,755 for 2023 for just one of our local "public servants".
Over a quarter million dollars total for just one person for just this one year. Assume it will go up when the 2024 schedules are finally posted.
NB: Only now, after both SBCC and city tax increases passed, did they finally publish the 2023 compensation package schedules. Was this just a coincidence? Considering they have been sitting on this information for almost a year.
Now multiply all these tax payer funded compensation totals times the thousands also on the city and SBCC payrolls. Gives us a better idea why both the city and SBCC demanded more of our tax dollars this year. And next, and next?
Nothing’s going to change until we take the entire school system back from the progressives. the indoctrination begins the minute. They arrive and they don’t let up until they have left.
We definitely have a bunch of idiots living here. I can not believe they voted for more taxes on top of everything we already pay. It is insane to me. I did NOT vote for any new tax. I definitely would move if I were only younger. This is pathetic and sad.
The largest employer in this area is the government in its many forms - direct tax dollar supported government employees or their indirect employee numbers supported by government employee benefits - eg: health care benefits. Cottage is the second leading employer locally.
This makes us a "company town" so assume all tax increases will get sufficient support in the future. One does not easily vote against their own self-interests. So no, they are not "stupid". Quite smart actually. And it is in all our interests to support a certain degree of local public services ... as long as we feel we are getting direct value in return.
Right you are JL. When one looks at SB County as a whole, leading employers; UCSB, Cottage Hospital, VSFB, Dignity Health, Bureau of Prisons, Granite Construction and then probably Agriculture. Virtually none if any home construction as well as minimal energy jobs. Virtually ALL related to government contracts or subsidies.
I believe most of the voters did not understand the issues. I did not understand them either, but I voted as per your suggestions. Unfortunately not all the Santa Barbarins don’t read this publication.
No, they’re too busy reading the Independent or saying stupid things on Edhat. Ya, hopefully someday they’ll figure out the unworkable situation they find themselves in is because of the liberal industrial complex which has spoon fed them cradle to grave. Which is, hate everyone who is conservative and carry the water for liberal elite bullshit.
Excellent article. I vote NO NO NO on every tax. Especially school taxes. Our state teacher association is the worse organization ever. They take our tax money and spend it on administration salaries and retirements and benefits. Very few cents of our tax money ever goes for the children's education unless it is to brainwash them on sex changes or other liberal BS.
I really dislike how they use children to pander to our heart strings.
As to other taxes, 99.9% NO!
Government needs to get efficient. There is so much waste in government. You ask, how do I know? Because I worked 40 years for the government and tried to stop the waste in my department. My supervisors, harassed me constantly and finally forced me out. I know for fact, I could run my agency on 25% of its budget.
I pray that Musk and Trump can change things. But the Deep State is very very very deep and corrupt.
They have an almost impossible task ahead of them.
Unbelievable that the Santa Barbara community thinks that increasing sales tax will help anything. With the price of homes my property tax has doubled and everything is more expensive.
Hopefully everyone will wake up to this insanity
It buys a large box of bandaids. And then the next "term-limited" city council can kick this can down the road one more time, when they get their turn.
Mandatory revolving door elected officials are not working out as intended - no institutional history, no long term accountability, no personal reputation invested, and lots of wasted money re-inventing the wheel every few years.
The answer seems simple to me. People here in California still vote based on tribal loyalty which is promoted by local news channels and sources and financed by big business and developers. They are completely captured and distracted by their drug of choice, “pop culture” which is hedonism designed and fed to them 24/7 as virtue.
This has evolved over the past 50 years.
I’m not sure what the answer is but I have an inkling that the destruction of these oligarchs currently in charge will come from the very immigrants they currently believe will be theirs to control.
It’s fraud .. in the face fraud
Lou, well said, I thought there was more than enough info re the SBCC bond to have everyone reject it. I remember growing up that public sector employees often made less than their counterparts in the private sector. So one way to balance that was to make sure that the public sector employees had great benefits, health, vacation and retirement to compensate for a lower salary. Now public sector employees are on par with private sector, possibly even slightly ahead, of the private sector but the benefits were never adjusted. Most of the public sector employees have retirement benefits that only private sector employees could dream of. If we don’t come up with a way to control public sector benefits we are going to be taxed and fee forever.
Stupid is what stupid does no getting around it. If our local government bodies manage to drive the proverbial car over the cliff, there would be those that say hey no big deal we can just fix it go on our regular car over cliff way, until we are over the cliff again.
We need change in Santa Barbara! The majority of the USA changed course on 11/5.
In my opinion the reason the SBCC bond passed was they LIED and spent a boatload of money to spread the lie
I am suspecting SBCC bond campaign concentrated getting the IV vote out, to pass this bond. This has been done in the past - for greater or lesser benefits. We do need to see the precinct breakdowns .
Pretty much everyone on NextDoor was very much anti-bond issue. So it will be interesting to learn how wide or how narrow the actual support was. Props to them if it was wide; but a skunk flower bouquet if they mainly harvested the concentrated IV vote.
SBCC has 9 presidents/superintendents making around $450,000 for a school of 12,000, so that is one for every 1,333 students. Few, if any, private companies are that top heavy.
Not quite the right data- SBCC has had that many CEO turnovers recently. But do you mean total current administrative personnel from VP's, to deans, to department chairs to non-teaching staff level positions like DEI directors?