Source: City of Santa Barbara
Mayor Cathy Murillo and City Administrator Paul Casey recently presented the State of the City address. Watch the video to learn achievements and highlights from the past year.
Santa Barbara’s State of the City Address
Anonymous
April 1, 2019, 2:04 am
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Get rid of the transients/druggies. The Urban Dictionary: Tough Love: “A version of being cruel to be kind. To show somebody some tough love today will save them heartache in the future but may cause a small amount of upset for the receiver immediately after the tough love has been dispensed. They would suffer more if you let them get on with their life with no interference from third parties.”
Private sector is the only thing that this city look like it is thriving. The major problems this city continues to face are entirely causes by too many years of voters electing “progressive” city councils – our roads are terrible, our city employee pension debt is punishing demanding more and more of our tex dollars, progressive vagrant coddling long passed its critical tipping point and is undermining us from within, too many city workers extremely over-paid and indifferent to any job description other than their own self-perpetuation and creating more annoying and intrusive busy work to justify their paychecks. That is the state of our city. Murillo needs to take credit for the public sector train wreck; and stay as far away as she can from the private sector.
if the City would streamline the building permit process, it would be a huge improvement for SB City.
Am I the only one not exited about amazon coming? Online shopping is partially why downtown has no stores. I don’t see how this will help. It’s employees will most likely be from out of town/state like all the other tech companies and will further add to the traffic because we know damn well they are going to drive to work not bike or scooter. How many parking spots will be provided? Two? Three?
From her Cathy Murillo for Mayor tv ad: “As your mayor, I will take the lead on job creation, public safety and affordable housing. And in this changing retail world, I will pursue thoughtful innovation to revive our downtown.” ….the only thing missing was the sizzling smoke coming out of her robotic head and bugs coming out of her lying mouth. Bohnett Park, De la Cruz Park, Ortega Park, McKensie Park, ….dare I say 1816 State Street?
Like almost all government communications nowadays, this “report” is a jumble of platitudes and lies. With the amount City residents are taxed, they should expect and accept nothing less than a first-rate local government. Instead, we get a corrupt, nepotistic, and incompetent bureaucracy that goes out of its way to ignore or exacerbate glaring problems like a lack of affordable housing, a dying retail sector, homelessness, aging infrastructure, and incompetent city government. My grandfather worked for the City when public service was something people took pride in and worked hard at. Working for the City was an honor. Then it became a joke: “Get a job at the City, you can’t get fired and don’t do anything.”
Such a sad report. Full of half truths and economic stretches. The facts are that the city, during the height of domestic economic activity, is just skating along. We are not thriving, not saving and certainly not acting in the best interest of the citizens. Our local government survives on Federal and State grants. They could not meet their obligations without these gifts because they spend all of our funds on their pet project, redundant consultants, attorney fee and obscene settlements. And of course, insane pension obligations. All to the chagrin of the citizens who see that the city is clearly falling apart. Murillo has turned out to be the worst mayor in our history. She is utterly ineffective and incapable of making tough decisions or leading us towards anything. The city needs to cut expenses, reduce its exposure to risk, pay down its debt and stop pandering to a small but vocal minority. It is not the city of Santa Barbara’s duty to house people, employ people or spend millions on incentives for low wage, low skill tourist focused jobs. Every single department manager needs to cut their budgets instead of looking for every possible way to inflate them and or spend more. Times are good right now, is the city preparing for the next slow down? Nope. They’re spending like there is no tomorrow and ignoring the cries and wishes of the very people who live and make up this city’s core. The state of the city is represented on State Street. It represents everything wrong with the current leadership and direction.
FYI Amazon, Google, Microsoft and other large tech companies have been in SB for some time. The growth of Alexa and their acquisition of Graphiq spawned the new offices on State, not e-commerce. UCSB is one of the top engineering schools in the world. These companies have had offices and people here for a while because of the talent pool that already exists. But maybe you’d prefer that our best people move to SF or Seattle instead? Or maybe, just maybe you should have learned the skills necessary to land one of these high paying jobs instead of sitting on the beach in your early years? Personally I’ll take 10 Amazons over a Target or another large hotel. Those are the companies and the jobs you should be fighting against. They are the ones that lower everyone’s wages and increase government subsidies and pull profits away. We need more tech and less tourists if we want a future.
Living in SB sounds miserable to me. I must live in a completely different city than you. My city is a paradise with a few minor first world problems.
Most of your fellow New Yorkers living here would definitely agree with you. Helene did a good job xforming SB into her beloved NY, so possibly that is why you feel at home.
Thank you Pitmix. Yes, an attitude of gratitude certainly makes life a lot more pleasurable. Address the problems, but enjoy the many blessings.
@SB OBSERVER- In your well written letter, you could have used Mayor “Schnieder” or “Murillo”, it makes (has made) zero difference. Instead of a City/ Municipality focusing on what they were created for- Public Safety, Streets, Water/Sewer and Parks, the City of SB has become , literally as “Social Welfare State”, spending 100’s of MILLIONS of taxpayer funds to Homeless Inc, Santa Barbara Housing Authority , social welfare councilors, the list goes on… For what? So Helene Schnieder (From New York), could get an Award for building homeless condos all over town…
Pitmix, it’s more like your definition of paradise is skewed. Paradise is not defined by a sandy beach and palm trees, its defined as a place where life is easy, people are kind hearted and welcoming and one never, ever, ever fears for their safety, their loved ones safety or their property. If that matches your life here, you are either a child of extreme wealth who has led a rather sheltered existence or delusional. SB is many things but paradise it is not and no amount of PollyAnna like spin will make it such. Perhaps if you spent less time congratulating yourself and more time trying to make Santa Barbara more like a paradise, we would all benefit? There is absolutely no harm in wanting to improve our community, there is only harm in ignoring both its needs and it’s potential.
They were bad indeed, but Murillo is worse. Of course she has a couple more years to prove me and others wrong but I wouldn’t hold out for any change in her abilities or her actions. She has proven woefully incapable of addressing or directing the needed changes at city hall and instead has retreated back to the padded security of acting first and foremost as a union and party shill.