Tourism remains crucial to Santa Barbara.
Did You Know?
By Bonnie Donovan
Now that the new year has begun, here are a few things to think about.
Several people at the State Street advisory meeting called out what a failure State Street will be if the research is not focused on “how to make it work” and on “what everyone wants.”
We continue to hear the drumbeat that retail is over, but we feel the need to shop in person with human contact. A city needs more than restaurants.
If/when Macy’s at La Cumbre closes, no clothes shopping will exist in Santa Barbara. As it is now, Santa Barbara’s only choices are Macy’s, Marshall’s, Ross, Old Navy or Target. In a town of this caliber and setting, the only shopping will be the choices Amazon offers.
Some entrepreneurs really took off like gangbusters with the restrictions of COVID. The big box stores and Jeff Bezos of Amazon flourished, while the mom-and-pop local stores have been squeezed out of the market. How is that a “green” community when the public must drive to Camarillo or be part of the not-so-eco-friendly, over-packaged goods from mail order?
Did You Know? was forwarded a letter by a person living downtown on State Street who claims his wife has never stepped foot in a retail store on State Street. She orders everything online. Isn’t the city’s idea to build housing downtown so that everyone could walk to what they needed?
From New York City to Santa Barbara, the same problems exist: Empty storefronts, a growing transient population, petty crime that detracts from foot traffic, filthy streets infested with rats and local governments with no backbone to represent the taxpayers and take action that promotes community.
Our local government officials insist retail is dead and that ghetto housing is the future. What helps to kill retail? Crime.
Our present criminal justice system (really? justice?) has resulted in free reign for shoplifting.
Shoplifting closed the Scolari’s Food and Drug store on Milpas Street years ago.
Look at the plans for La Cumbre Plaza with 2,000 units stacked like a cheapened version of the Bedford Stuyvesant Housing complex in Brooklyn. The push to quickly approve the projects by the likes of Supervisor Das Williams and the edicts of Sacramento to diminish the checks and balances of local building boards and commissions, including the Historic Landmarks Commission, the Architectural Board of Review and Single Family Design Board, will be the demise of Santa Barbara and change the city from a special place to an “anywhere.”
Drive State Route 217 to the Santa Barbara Airport and Highway 101 in Goleta or Ventura. It all looks the same: cheap, big box uninspiring housing “units.”
Just as the occupants of these studios to two-bedroom units will be transient (hard to raise a family there) so are the people making these decisions that will affect Santa Barbara for decades to come. And not so long after, these decision-makers will have moved on. You can see the reason good governance and any decision-making body is best executed with a system of checks and balances.
And on checks and balances, where is the equity for travelers? Where are Santa Barbara’s hostels? Wasn’t a condition made for Fess Parker to build a hostel on Montecito Street before he was allowed to build his second hotel on Cabrillo Boulevard? Now that he is deceased, do those terms no longer apply? A Quonset Hut Hostel housed many travelers/tourists years ago. Will the city of Santa Barbara start building hostels?
Where is the equity with the city acknowledging that the hotel room rates have gone up tremendously which is why the city has received higher bed tax in the last two quarters?
By the way, tourism is big business because of the draw to beautiful and carefully preserved historical Santa Barbara.
Tourists don’t visit Rotterdam, a city with modern architecture. They go to Amsterdam for the historical and quaint architecture.
It doesn’t take many to ruin a good thing. A myopic city council, planning commission or board of supervisors can kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Real quick like.
On more checks and balances, regarding remote/work-from-home employees: Do remote employees work their complete shift (at home)? Are they more or less productive? Do remote workers engage in other household duties, such as cooking, laundry, drinking, pot smoking, during work? Do they entertain friends while they say they are working? We wonder.
More things to ponder. People are asking if there will be enough money to fund the increase of children in the schools after all the new housing units are built (8,101 by 2031) Think about it. It is said that there is no money for programs in schools or to hire more teachers and pay them fairly.
We have written so many times that all of the Housing Authority of Santa Barbara properties are taken off the property tax rolls. That equates to less money for schools, first responders or infrastructure. It is inevitable that more bonds will be put on your tax bill!
What does that do to rental properties but increase rents and discourage the individual from investing in rental property?
Sacramento will come after Proposition 13 again soon it’s up to property owners, and renters to get out to make sure it doesn’t pass.
Our congressman — U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Santa Barbara — published his New Year list of goals. Absent was: Fix the southern border and protect his constituents from harm — harm from the criminals and the deadly drugs brought across our borders. Can this be the not-so-silent takeover of America?
Recently reporters interviewed people who had crossed the U.S. border. Russians and Afghans said they took an Uber from Tijuana and that the drivers knew where the drop was to cross. At the Rio Grande, others were videoed paying the coyotes — people who smuggle illegal immigrants.
Each month breaks another record; 220,000 have invaded our country in Dec 2022, alone with 4.5 million people total since President Biden took office. How would we know? Many and much is trafficked by the drug cartels very successfully, and their business model appears to be backed by the Democratic Party.
With 800,000 people waiting for their hearing, that would take eight years to process. Talk about being lost in the system! Once here, why would they leave? We now have a completely open border with free transportation, hotels, food, medical care and education. And with cash in hand, funded by you the taxpayer.
As we were told by an international student attending Santa Barbara City College, “I thought everything was free in America”.
Our thoughts and prayers are with all of the young athletes dropping dead from cardiac arrest and suffering from myocarditis all over the world. In Europe, it was reported that normally 29 athletes die a year; however now it’s up to 1,500. In Ireland, this increase in deaths is front-page news. Why isn’t this front-page news in the U.S.?
Where is the public outcry for these young people?
Bonnie Donovan writes the “Did You Know?” column in conjunction with a bipartisan group of local citizens. It appears Saturdays in the Voices section.
