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By an Edhat reader
The benches that were removed from State Street have been found in the empty Railroad Depot building. If you want a place to sit on State Street you might email the City Council to ask them them to take the benches out of mothballs.
Opioids
Population at large suffers because the vagrants do use and monopolize these benches. They serve no purpose whatsoever for anyone else. Plenty of other cities provide short-term seating that does not encourage the now well-documented and chronic abuses these former benches created. One can have it both ways- short term and sanitary seating and discourage long-term parking which had an extremely negative impact on both retail and tourism.
The Chamber of Commerce should be ignored. The overwhelming majority of their members and directors are not local business owners or entrepreneurs. The CoC is primarily made up of lawyers, bankers, real estate brokers, accountants and various corporate middle management. These are people whose professions are based on taking from other peoples work. They do not create things, they do not make products or build anything new. They are by large, takers and the last people we should turn to when you want to create something new or make anything better.
It’s been proven that the vagrants will just sit on the ground. It’s the tourists and elderly who are at a disadvantage.
We already have laws against sitting on the sidewalks. Small stools, backless benches – plenty of options. Check out the short-term stay benches at LAX.
Oh excuse me some people were squatting on the benches and pooping all over them. I really don’t see what the big deal is using the “S” Word there is poop and pee all over the place enough for every one who walks around town to step on and squish it between your toes…
Maybe Probation can walk up and down State street since it seems like they just drive up and down State doing nothing. Maybe they’ll spot some of their probationers if they were on foot. SBPD has bigger fish to fry. What exactly do they do for our community anyway?
When I say “they” I mean Probation.
Maybe provide disinfectant or wipes next to the bench?
Part and parcel of the City’s decision to give the State Street sidewalks to the landlords. The City Council is so blackmailed in terror of being falsely labeled “anti-business” that they said nothing while Public Works employees were seconded to the Downtown Organization. A parking garage manager was told he was now State Street Concierge and his job would now be to fulfill every request made by a business, while ignoring the rest of us. He always jumps higher than asked. 60-80 benches, which you paid a lot of money to have designed and installed, he ripped out. At your expense. What, no permits? That’s right. Ugly aftermath of mismatched and hazardously misaligned brick? Who cares. Silly me believed the hype that the City is so careful in maintaining the design of the historic district, and that everything requires permits and public input. How is it possible that a parking lot manager could unilaterally redesign our key pedestrian plaza and execute the plan? Who authorized this? Not City Council. Not Landmarks Commission. Even if you think that hurting everybody in order to hurt the homeless is the answer, do you agree that downtown should be redesigned per the self interested demands of failing crybaby vanity boutique owners and real estate speculators looking to flip at record per square foot prices? Who is in charge in this town? This was a decision that should have been made by the people we elected, with public input. Instead, there was no City Council. No Planning Commission. No Historic Landmarks Commission. Do have any idea how much this person spent in city labor time, with no accountability? Your money, to take away your ability to sit and rest in public, because a business targeting the 1% doesn’t like anyone sitting outside their store whose wallet is not so fat they lean over a little while sitting. Once the word got out that “all you have to do is ask,” business after business asked, and received. Bench after bench was whisked away. If you couldn’t get the bench yanked out from in front of your store within 24 hours like everyone else, you felt like a chump, Now 80 are gone, and only 40 left. All without any process. All without any input. All without any City decision at all. Just a parking garage manager taking orders by e-mail from business owners. If the normal processes had led to this outcome, fine. But the process that allowed this to happen, in this manner, is simply corrupt. The fact that the same owners who found they could make benches disappear, are now being given chunks of the newly widened sidewalk for free to take over for the exclusive use of their businesses, is so telling. The benches had to go to make it possible. The Mayor and City Council needs to wake up and realize they serve 92,000 of us, not two dozen.
1 Week to Fix This! Tell the City Council this “giveaway” isn’t helping residents. It is helping landlords who charge astronomical rents. Tell them to cancel the elimination of the rent of public property (right of way) you don’t want it. This will reduce services or residents that we need. We don’t need another business on State Street getting another hand out. That is what this is! Tell them we need our benches back and public servants that work for us not greedy property or business owners trying to ruin the City. Tell others and EMAIL them NOW at: SBCityCouncil@SantaBarbaraCA.Gov
They probably removed them to prevent homeless from occupying/sleeping on them. Which is a bit unfair to the tourist and elderly waiting for the shuttles. On the City’s website under contact us, your able to send one email to the city’s representatives: the Mayor, City Council, Nina Johnson (Senior Assistant to the City Administrator), and select staff in the Council office and City Administrator’s office.
Once again, the homeless make their mark on our town. Why do these out of town bums have total control of our city? What is wrong with vagrancy laws, loitering laws, harassment laws and why can’t our downtown be cleaned up?
Never saw tourists or elderly using those benches; only vagrants with their heaps of belongings and pan-handlers with signs. They served no beneficial purpose for tourists or elderly. Argument fail.
The Chamber of Commerce sent me a survey today, asking what they can do. Step one: pay proctors to walk up and down State Street and roust the riffraff and their dogs. “Nothing to see here, move along.” And if necessary disinfect the benches at night when they steam the sidewalks. We have lost the welcoming feeling downtown used to have. If we want to support brick-and-mortar businesses and make tourists feel safe we have to have priorities.
FACTOTUM. Lots of tourists made use of the benches. I sat on those benches and talked with other locals as we waited for the Shuttle Buses.
My understanding is that the City is already providing a lot of the services you are referring to, at great expense, and it is not solving the problem. It isn’t illegal to have your junk with you in a public place as long as you are not violating a law while doing so. So there is very little the City can do to people that don’t want to be helped. It isn’t even illegal to camp somewhere if the City doesn’t have enough beds for everyone, which they don’t. Not an easy problem to solve with the resources that we have.
I would buy two of them. SB, what are you storing them for, Miramartopia or July 4th?
Clearly none of these so called “solutions” pass the most basic smell test.
I remember a few years back when there was more republicans in the city council then democrats and all they did is complain like now, Nothing was done then either they had their chance.
Put the benches back! And keep outside patio dinning.
Get DA Joyce Dudley to do her job and stop single handed LT restructuring our community by her ndependent decisions of what laws to enforce. The CA Attr General local DAs determine IF a lawful ordinance will be enforced. She tells police don’t cite offenders because I will not prosecute homeless or illegal residents. Period. D8Vanilla you write: “If someone can come up with a method to keep those nice benches clean and available to the general public, ….have at it.” Downtown benches are critically mportant to the general public. Assign police cadets and tourist greeters foot patrols along State Street beats. Demand DA Dudley and Mayor Murillo and her Council herd back up our local police. Return our publicly owned benches to our publicly owned sidewalks. Create a camping space for homeless on County property off Cathefral Oaks; offer them $12/hour paid day jobs cleaning city streets.
They just need handles, to flush! Countdown to deletion…..
If everyone has a solution..
Why do we still have the problem?
ARNON- Council Reps only serve the DEM Machine that controls CA. The 92,000 you refer to are powerless pawns. Get real. Representative democracy requires independent leaders willing to serve and work in the best interests of community and country. You live in a Sanctuary State with new unwritten rules.
The world has turned upside down. There are about 100,000 law-abiding, hard-working, tax-paying residents in Santa Barbara. There are only a few handfuls of bums and hobos. The law-abiding, hard-working, tax-paying residents should run the bums and hobos, but because of the soft, doughy, politically-correct attitudes of the Progressives who run the city, the bums and hobos run the residents.
That’s right, get rid of the rule of law and let’s have vigilante justice on the streets now. If a person offends you, I’m sure you have the right to expel them from our fair city and send them somewhere else, it doesn’t matter where. Did you skip the year that they taught us about the constitution and government in school?
Downtown benches for the public are not as critical as clearing the bums off State Street. If you want to sit down, expect to buy a cup of coffee. Small price to pay, plus Starbucks lets you sit and use their free wifi no purchase necessary. ‘Benches” are a bogus excuse to allow bums to take over our downtown shopping and entertainment district.
You said vigilante. I say vigilance. The city’s police should constantly contact the vagrants. The city should contract with mental health experts to regularly assist the vagrants and make sure they are OK, and offer the vagrants the services the city provides. If during that process the police see the vagrants engaging in any illegal activity, the police should cite and if necessary arrest the offending vagrants. This process should be daily, constant and relentless. Eventually the vagrants will get the message and move on to another city which isn’t so vigilant. No normal person wants to live in a city among vagrants sitting around with their tents, drug needles, booze, stolen bicycles, pit bulls, urine and feces. Anyone who says they are OK with that is either a fool or trying to look good to their friends.
Does anyone really believe removal of the benches will prevent people from loitering on State? You will just be trading benches for sleeping bags, blankets etc.