Fall, 2009
Sheila Lodge,
Dear friends, neighbors and fellow concerned citizens of Santa Barbara,
10/28
Gil Barry,
Here's What's Really Going On, SB N-P, 10/27
Hattie Beresford, Limiting Heights Sends City A Message, SB N-P, 10/27
Judy Orias, Allied Neighborhoods Assn, Measure B Protects City's Views,
SB N-P, 10/26
October 24, Opinion: MEASURE B:
TO BE OR NOT TO BE? Raze
craze for city to get big
October 24, 2009 6:29 AM
VOICE FROM SANTA BARBARA: Lanny Ebenstein
In 1923, Dr. Charles Lummis penned the following words when Santa Barbara
was threatened then with overdevelopment:
"Stand fast Santa Barbara!
"Save the storied romance of old California in this, its last and
most romantic stronghold. :::snip:::
links here of a pdf
copy of the Santa
Barbara News-Press (click).
October 22: Good overview of the issues less than two weeks before the
election:
Measure B caught in political turmoil
By JOSHUA MOLINA — Oct. 22, 2009
A year ago Measure B sprouted from a grassroots movement. More than 11,000 people signed a petition to lower maximum building heights from 60 to 40 feet in the downtown El Pueblo Viejo area and 45 feet in other parts of the city.
But today, Measure B has become tangled in confusion and turned into a pawn in a larger political battle over power and control in the Santa Barbara mayoral and city council election. :::snip::: Daily Sound
September, 25: Unfair campaign tactics revealed, push-polling by a Miami firm, Sun Surveys.
Save El Pueblo Viejo Committee calls a press conference for Friday, 1:30pm on the City Hall steps to ask the media to call attention to this new, dismaying - and illegal - twist to local politics. Attending were many of the SEPV committee members and Mayor Blum, and media representatives.
Santa Barbara Daily Sound, Colby Frazier reporting, 9/26
Noozhawk, Lara Cooper reporting, 9/26
The Santa Barbara News-Press dug and found the source to be no on B real
estate supporters, the Washington DC-based National Association of Realtors:
"...On Friday, the News-Press learned that the National Association of Realtors, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is responsible for the telephone polls. According to Alyson Spann, president of the Santa Barbara Association of Realtors, NAR hired an independent consulting firm to call about 400 local homeowners to conduct the poll. Krista Pleiser, the government affairs director of the Santa Barbara association, also confirmed that NAR was behind the poll. ..." SB-News-Press, front page story.
Judging by the number of reports we've received, there would seem to be considerably more than 400 calls being made.
Push polling is universally decried. See the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC):
"...Most recently the issues tackled by the AAPC have included defending free political speech and in 1996 issuing a declaration condemning the practice of Push Polling. The AAPC defines a “Push Poll” as when phone calls aimed at voter persuasion are dishonestly presented to voters as surveys of public opinion." (emphasis added.)
See also Wikipedia . Several communities, including San Francisco, and the State of New Hampshire forbid such polling on behalf of candidates without a clear statement of who is the beneficiary of the "polls".
More to the local point: it's also forbidden by the Santa Barbara Municipal Code: see Code section 2.03.120 c 3 which says those who made the call are required to identify themselves.
Summer, 2009
8-13, Independent, Op-Ed, Lanny Ebenstein: Don’t Go Tall in El Pueblo Viejo, Three-Story Construction Outside Historic Downtown a Better Affordable Housing Plan "This November will provide Santa Barbarans a rare opportunity to set the future of their community for decades. Rarely have the lines been so clearly drawn. Rarely have the stakes been higher. :::snip:::"
BALLOT ARGUMENT in Favor of Measure B
Letters to the editors:
7-26, SB
News-Press, Bill
Marks: Height initiative Protects Landmarks
7-7, Daily Sound, Guest Opinion by Joe
Rution
: Limiting Height, Not Growth
6-26, SB News-Press, Judy
Orias: Height
Initiative Lets Voters Choose
March 2009
March 24, the CC vote and subsequent rumbles: The City Council decides not to place a competing ballot initiative on the November ballot. The afternoon City Council agenda item, #16, see here for the videos for the City Council, was covered by the local media, including the Daily Sound (Tuesday and Wednesday), the Santa Barbara News-Press and Noozhawk; March 26, the Independent, news story by Nick Welsh. Musings about the ramifications of the vote, "Vote May Be Costly for Mayoral Candidate," Daily Sound, March 26.
Sunday, March 9: Height Fight Turns Personal, Independent, Nick Welsh. "The battle over proposed new building height restrictions got downright personal this week during a hearing by a Santa Barbara City Council subcommittee, when Councilmember Das Williams lashed out at supporters of a strict limit on the heights of new buildings both downtown and citywide. :::snip:::
Far more than a testy exchange between Williams and Mahan is at issue. The debate underscores a seemingly irreconcilable split within the environmental community over how much growth should be allowed, what kind, where, and for whom.:::snip::: "
December 2008
SB Daily Sound, selections from the op-ed, December 2, Loretta Redd: "... This week an aggregious (sic) power grab-- designed, drawn and delivered by Councilman Roger Horton-- was set in motion to do an end run around the voting citizens of Santa Barbara. ...
Let me be among the first to remind the Council that the reason the citizens went to the time and expense to qualify the building height limitation in the first place, is because they felt ignored by the process of appeal. These citizens were troubled by the trend of monolithic structures being built or proposed downtown, with their Barbie sized setbacks and view obliterating mass. Long time residents like Bill Mahon had taken the time to object to the Planning Commission and then to City Hall, but when repeatedly ignored and summarily dismissed, they took matters into their own hands.
Members of our City Council, including Mr. Horton, Das Williams, Grant House and Helene Schneider, were apparently distressed by the possibility of the people who live in Santa Barbara having a voice in what the city looks like, since most didn't have the awareness of an architect, the connections of the Chamber, or the deep pockets of a developer. The lowering of building heights from sixty to forty-five feet was apparently such a "draconian measure" that an alternative initiative must now be drawn up to be placed on the ballot.
The competing initiative would reduce heights to a maximum of forty-five feet as well, so that's apparently not a problem. But it would allow for "The possible exception of projects designated a community priority by council, or for affordable or rental units." Aha. We need the Council to decide for us what is a community priority; and those building heights would simply be ignored in order to house that inimitable workforce. ...
The real purpose of the additional 'choice' on the ballot is to confuse the voters and to water down the voting block so that NEITHER of the restrictions are able to pass. Objecting mostly to the utter waste of attorney, planning and administrative time along with the cost of a modified EIR, were the reasonable conservators of our coffers and defenders of the public will, Mayor Blum and Councilman Dale Francisco. Kudos to them for remembering who city council is supposed to represent. ..."
Santa
Barbara News-Press, December 2, editorial:
Our Opinion: A power play on building heights
"Shame on Santa Barbara City Council members Roger Horton, Grant House, Helene
Schneider and Das Williams for trying to thwart the will of the people. These
four politicians in late November worked behind the scenes to come up with a
scheme to counter a citizens' movement to reduce maximum building heights in
the city. Residents collected enough signatures to put the matter on the November
2009 ballot. But these four couldn't let the matter rest with that. Instead,
they want the city's planning staff to come up with an alternative proposal to
place on the ballot as well. ..." more (requires a subscription or payment for
access.)
August 2008
LA
Times, August 4: In Santa Monica, a citizens' group aims
to fight traffic by curbing growth with a ballot measure proposed for
November; it would halve the rate of commercial construction for 15 years.
Meanwhile, the city's proposed general plan suggests capping heights
based on buildings' use.
"Indeed, Proposition 13 exacerbated the long-standing pressure on elected officials
to make development their priority. The constant search for revenue, prosperity
and jobs -- in other words, growth -- explains in large part why Southern California
looks the way it does: sprawly, congested and polluted. ...
"But community activists
are determined to have a voice in matters that they say affect their quality
of life.
...'Developers and their friends at City Hall want you to believe that runaway
commercial development is good for our city,' the measure's backers say in their
arguments for the measure. 'Big developers make huge profits in our city, while
residents get stuck with -- and pay for -- the huge traffic mess they create.'"
July 2008
"Is Housing a Real Problem,"
by Loretta Redd
The
Daily Sound, July 29, page 6.
An interesting piece not specifically about the height limits but about "smart-growth" and
Einstein's observation, "We cannot solve the problems we have created
with the same thinking that created them."
Ms Redd continues in the DS article: "...Before we rely on SLEUTH,
or models of livability already failing in other cities, lets (sic) first do
the most logical and politically suicidal task of all: let's determine an accurate
census count for the City of Santa Barbara, and an accurate dwelling assessment.
Only then, can we determine is (sic) 'Smart Growth' is an opportunity or an oxymoron."
See the issue of August 5, Tuesday,
page 7, for a letter responding to a critical letter on 7/31.
"Why Old Lefty Tree-Huggers
Are Slow to Embrace the New Sustainability; What’s So Smart About It?"
By Joe Rutian
Independent,
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
"Santa Barbara’s political order has been reshuffled. Old lefty environmental
slow-growthers are taking potshots at today’s progressives—the sustainability-oriented
smart-growthers—while the development crowd cuddles up to them. ...
Santa Barbara’s desirability factor changes everything, eviscerating the anti-sprawl premise that dense in-city development will supplant building in outlying open space. That works where development pressure is finite, as it is in most places; here it is anything but finite. Building housing towers downtown will never slake the appetite to develop, say, the Gaviota Coast.
Our desirability factor also has effects on real estate economics that destroy
the efficacy of our bonus density and inclusionary policies—current lynchpins
in our hopes for producing workforce affordable housing. It results in the “market-rate”
units being priced out of reach of workers, and their well-heeled occupants generate
the need for even more workforce than the projects can house. “Affordability
by design” is a myth in places as desirable as Santa Barbara. ..."
"Important City Planning
Decisions Loom"
by Lanny Ebenstein
SB
News-Press, July 17, 2008
"Should Santa Barbara embrace a future of “smart growth” in which development
occurs in perhaps a score of “uban villages” with perhaps 100 or more new
three-and four-story congregate mixed -use projects, connected by bus routes?
This is the future strongly favored by members of the City Council and by
the city planning and transportation staff. ...
An interim ordinance to stave off the Save El Pueblo Viejo charger amendment was sent to the city council’s ordinance committee in April, and it is now considered likely that it will return to the council in August just as the Save El Pueblo petitions are being submitted, but before they have been counted.
The proposed interim ordinance would be an exercise in public disinformation and duplicity. Exceptions would include public-benefit projects and affordable housing.
The Plan Santa Barbara process is at loggerheads with the traditional slow-growth
and preservation attitudes of the people. The people, partly in response,
are attempting to place an initiative on the ballot that would control and
limit heights. City Council members and staff, in turn, are pushing for a
fake interim ordinance limiting heights in a much less restrictive way that
would allow them to implement their high-density, high-growth development
future. ..."
July 17: Letters to the Editor
Santa Barbara News Press
Dear Editor:
Individuals interested in preserving El Pueblo Viejo (City’s historic district) should attend one of the signature-gathering walks this Saturday morning, July 19, starting at the Roosevelt Elementary School and Washington Elementary School parking lots at 9:00 a.m.
Almost 8,500 signatures have been gathered by the Save El Pueblo Viejo Committee toward a goal of 10,000 signatures to ensure that the proposed charter amendment - to limit building heights to 40 ft. in El Pueblo Viejo and 45 ft. in the rest of the City – reaches the ballot. All signatures will be submitted in August.
The signatures that are gathered in the next two weeks could determine whether or not the Save El Pueblo Viejo initiative appears on the ballot. If individuals are not able to participated this Saturday, please call the Save El pueblo Committee (at 963-4322), and we will deliver a petition to you to gather signatures of your family, friends, and neighbors.
Help us preserve Santa Barbara’s small town character and charm!
Jim Westby
Santa Barbara
