Albert Einstein shown riding a bicycle outside the home of Ben Meyer in Santa Barbara, California on February 18, 1933.

Tomorrow, May 18, 2012 is National Bike to Work Day.

Locally, bicyclists will gather at Santa Barbara’s Bike to Work Day celebration at De La Guerra and State Street in Downtown Santa Barbara for food, prizes, music and a bike art contest. According to the organizers, “Whether you are environmentally conscious or just love the exercise, biking to work is a great way to avoid the commuter traffic and stay in shape!”

Santa Barbara has a pretty cool program – restorative police and court. We’ve borrowed some tenets of the model from Santa Monica, and adapted them for our jurisdiction.

The term ‘homeless’ probably evoked an image of the crew hanging on State and Haley every day, but the true spectrum is broader. I borrowed these definitions from the article Million Dollar Murray, by Malcolm Gladwell – superb reading for understanding this issue, and why many solutions we’ve tried haven’t worked.

Transitional homeless make up about 80% of the homeless population, and use the fewest resources. They need a job, or a roof, just a little help, and they’re back on their feet. You’ve most likely never encountered any transitional homeless individuals, unless you were personally connected to them.

Chronically homeless have been our streets the longest – years. They may have been homeless in other jurisdictions before coming here. This group, according to Gladwell, makes up about 10% of the total homeless population, but consume enormous health and social care resources. Think of the chronic drunk down on the sidewalk, passed out. The police come, the fire dept comes (first responders for medical emergencies) and then the ambulance comes. Or maybe he gets arrested and booked into the jail. He’s out the next day, and back to it. Wash, rinse, repeat, multiply, and it’s easy to see why this group is so costly, and why it creates the biggest set of problems for a city.

Nobody can ever seem to help them, the addicted and mentally ill who refuse to leave the street. They have fallen out of every program, been kicked out of every shelter….and thus become the domain of the restorative police.

The restorative police force consists of two police officers (both Europeans, incidentally), one fantastic volunteer, three outreach workers, and six community service liaisons. The model is still evolving, but basically they use the power of the badge, and the pressure of the court to apply some stick and a bit of carrot to the most chronically homeless individuals on our streets.

Officer Hove was our lone restorative police officer until recently. Several business organizations lobbied for additional police officers last year, given the effectiveness of what we’d seen in Santa Monica, and the city put together this program.

The two restorative officers work this most difficult client base. They ferry clients between appointments as far away as Los Angeles, find them housing, and work to get them off the street. Sometimes being here is not good for them, or a treatment or program they need isn’t here, so there are also some relocations. Three outreach workers extend the officer’s social work capabilities, and six community service liaisons act as the eyes and ears of the police on State, the beachfront, and Milpas St – where the chronic homeless have historically been most prevalent.

Restorative Court meets every Wednesday from 10:00-noon. It consists of the restorative officers, the public defender’s office, and representatives from: the ACLU, Bringing Our Community Home, the Salvation Army (the ‘Sally’), and now Casa Esperanza. Sometimes the police need an immediate place for a client who is finally willing to come in off the street. The Sally has been providing some of that immediate shelter, and because their program requires sobriety and structure, it’s can be a very good fit.

The court works with clients who’ve received multiple tickets for various (and usually repeat) offenses, and offers to make those tickets go away in exchange for entering a program, relocating to be with supportive family, or entering housing. This is the stick, and the carrot.

The court has successfully handled 107 cases in the last year for some of the longest-term chronically homeless in our city. The homeless count in 2011 found 1,500 homeless here, and we know from Gladwell’s article that 10% of the homeless are that expensive chronic group, the clientele the restorative team works with. These results, then, are pretty impressive. The restorative police estimate they’ve helped place an additional 50 individuals without needing to put them through the court. The budget is $350,000 annually for the restorative policing program, a pittance in the city budget, though that funding is at risk. The Sally has a very modest budget as well, proving cost effective solutions are very attainable, even with the subset of homeless that traditionally consumes the most expensive public safety and emergency healthcare resources.

There’s always concern that someone might leave a program and resume their life on the street here. They might fall out of sobriety, or re-offend. These are the hardest cases, so recidivism is to be expected, depressing as that may be. But it doesn’t stop this team from pressing forward. It’s also why the model is continually evolving: as the police and court learn which solutions and programs (some of the needed programs are in other cities) are the most effective for their different cases, they shift their strategies accordingly.

They’re happy to thoroughly educate you on what they do, so if you’d like to have them come to your community meeting or business group, just schedule it with them. Email Mureen Brown Mureen Brown (their fantastic volunteer) at mureenbrown@yahoo.com.

A few weeks ago I wrote about an LA couple who told me they would never come to Santa Barbara again, after several unsettling and downright frightening encounters during their last weekend in America’s Riviera. They headed to La Jolla instead, where they did not have the up-close and personal encounters with homeless people that made them unwilling to spend their time and money here.

The Sunday Los Angeles Times contained a major article that—by omission—seemed to give credence to their concerns. It was one of those round-up pieces in the Travel Section that the paper often runs; this one was about Weekend Escapes for 48 Hours of Fun.

(I’ve written them myself, many about Santa Barbara: bargain shopping, bed-and-breakfasts, garden spots. Back in the day, Santa Barbara was always at the top of the list.)

But this LA Times piece ignored Santa Barbara completely. It focused on the wine, mission, brews and views of Ventura; the old California authenticity and good food in old San Juan Capistrano; the gilded age glamour of Rancho Mirage and sophistication by the sea in Del Mar.

Uh-oh, where was Santa Barbara in this survey of the best places for a weekend escape?

What’s disturbing to me—as a longtime Santa Barbara resident with a strong sense of pride of place—is that plenty of other lovely places have worked diligently to become special destinations and weekend playgrounds. And while they’ve been getting more appealing, many parts of Santa Barbara have gotten shabbier, tackier and even threatening at times.

The tourism industry has been a mainstay in this community forever, but we may have slipped a bit, figuring we could rest on our laurels, smug in our collective belief that Santa Barbara would always be top of mind for tourists.

I’m thinking Our Town may disappoint a lot of those seeking a weekend escape.

It doesn’t deliver on the promise of its postcards that depict a gleaming rainbow-colored gateway, a lively waterfront and an intriguing State Street. Many visitors experience a long-neglected rainbow that’s nearly faded away, a State Street that features a big ugly hole, a bunch of empty store fronts, chain stores, an alarming population of street people, and a waterfront taken over by RV dwellers.

Truth is, this isn’t what people are looking for on their holiday. And word may just have gotten around: other towns have nice beaches, historic sites, good food and wine and charming downtowns. They’re about the same distance away as Santa Barbara, many at lower cost.

We locals may grit our teeth with impatience, but understand that urban redevelopment around here takes time; the homeless are largely harmless, and there’s apparently no money for maintaining or improving our community aesthetics.

But tell that to the Orange County surburbanites, the couple from the Valley or the family from the Inland Empire who just want to have a little food and fun by the beach.When visitors to Santa Barbara return home scared, uncomfortable or disappointed, you can bet they tell their families and friends.

Note to City Hall: A damaged reputation is even tougher to clean up than the tattered welcome mat we now offer our visitors.

Subjects for my articles come from a variety of sources: concerned citizens, community meetings, emails, newspapers and magazines, and occasional pizza dreams where indigestion somehow engenders weird topics of interest. Then I begin phone calls, research and scanning the internet via Google, Yahoo and any other portal I can squeeze through…

This week, in light of the President’s trip down the birth canal of acceptance on gay marriage, I thought I first would investigate the heartbreak of those traditionally wed, heterosexual couples whose unions have crumbled under the pressure of living in states or countries where same sex marriage is permitted.

Can’t find a damn one…let me know if you hear of any, I’m always open to sources.

I suppose Britney Spears could have blamed the end of her fifty-five hour long sanctified marriage on the pressure of gays wanting to share in her marital bliss, or John Edwards’ defense team could conjecture some connection between changes to societal traditions and the infidelity to his wife to whom he had vowed to “love, honor and cherish.” Or maybe Mr. Limbaugh’s first, second, third or fourth sacred union dissolved because of those who dared to share or improve on his definition of “marriage.”

Last week I met a dear friend and one-time coworker at Cantwell’s for coffee. A divorcee herself, she said quite sincerely, “I don’t mind if gay people want to have a union…and I think they should have all the same rights, but just don’t call it marriage. That term has tradition, and it should belong to straight couples.”

I wanted to remind her that “separate but equal” had been part of our nation’s societal struggle against bigotry and prejudice since the days of segregation, but I didn’t. I wanted to assure her that rather than denigrate this sacred institution, gay couples wished to celebrate and honor its intention just as fully as anyone else.

What I did invite her to consider was the enormous challenge of same sex couples to hold their relationships together in spite of disapproval by society, rejection by the church, ostracizing by family, non-support by local, state or federal statutes, barriers to decision-making and durable powers of attorney for medical care or funeral direction, and- not being allowed to wed.

Of course, there was a time gay people were rejected as wildly promiscuous…now they’ve asked for the right to marry under legal definitions and strictures of being faithful and committed, and that’s somehow not okay either.

My online investigations did confirm that most of the funding for North Carolina’s Amendment One, which successfully defined marriage in their State constitution as only between a man and a woman, came from religious organizations and affiliated political action committees. Like the multimillion dollar Mormon-backed scare tactics of Proposition 8 in California, it is the ‘faith’ community that seems most threatened by the expansion of the flock of newlyweds.

I don’t understand the threat, especially after finding absolutely no evidence that gay marriages and unions have caused the first iota of harm to non-gay marriages in any locale in the world.

Generational differences exist, as is confirmed by a recent poll of Millennials (under 30) who mostly find the restriction by gender silly, and support same sex marriage by 70 percent. As members of society- like the President and Vice President- are gradually exposed to gays and same sex couples via friends, neighbors, schools, coworkers, media and institutions, and to their children, fear of the unfamiliar and bias against differences will continue to diminish.

For others representing more conservative mindset, the road will be longer.

Last Thursday, Dublin Ireland’s Catholic Archbishop Martin declared during a trip to the Vatican, that the church’s teaching on the “sanctity of marriage between man and woman was clear, unchangeable, and dates from the biblical account of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis.”

But the affirmation that, “What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate,” is no longer taken literally. In a church where Catholics once had to literally pay big bucks and petition the Pope for a rare decree of divorce, (recall why the Church of England was formed) it would seem that traditions do change.

However, if marriage is so sacred, so historically and traditionally pure, that same gender couples who have decades of dedication and love cannot share in the definition…if the threat is so great that a Constitutional amendment is considered, then lets treat this hallowed privilege with the respect it deserves from both civil and biblical tradition.
I’ll surrender to the protectionists, and agree to define Marriage as “The union of One man and One woman…but for One time only.” (Which should preclude sex outside of wedlock, as well.)

Say, “I do.”

It wasn’t all that long ago when online magazines and blogs, like Craig Smith’s, gained popularity by covering print publications, specifically the Santa Barbara News-Press.

The interesting offshoot will be the discussion of aggregation and the issue of intellectual property, which has already been raised. Some publications are quite proprietary about their information and  have asked websites to stop linking their news and information, because it gives the impression that the reporters/ writers are working for the aggregator.

An expert on employment trends told a county Workforce Investment Board forum in Santa Barbara on May 11 that the job situation is up and down as industries try to adjust to the changing economy and find workers with up-to-date skills.

Josh Williams, president of BW Research Partnership Inc., conducted the most recent study on county “industry clusters” so that the board could understand what hiring trends are occurring to bring the area out of the recession.

Williams spoke to about 125 business people, academics and county Chief Executive Officer Chandra Waller and Supervisor Salud Carbajal at the Workforce Investment Board forum at the Cabrillo Pavilion Arts Center.

After William’s remarks, a panel discussed which industries are growing and which are shrinking. The panel included Lesa Caputo of Beneflex, JM Holliday & Associates project manager Michelle Swanitz, Riverbench Vineyard General Manager Laura Mohseni, emPower SBC manager Angela Hacker, Impulse Advanced Communications President Dave Clark and Santa Barbara City College Acting President Jack Friedlander.

“Industry clusters represent a better way of segmenting and understanding the economy rather than just trying to look at it from a general perspective,” Williams said in remarks after his speech. Even though the county still had an 8.9 percent unemployment rate in March, some industries are hiring more workers, he said, while discounting the notion of a “jobless recovery,” as some economists have called current conditions.

Six industry clusters, including tourism, energy and environment, health care, agriculture and wineries, technology, business support services, and building and design were targeted in Williams’ study. Of these, he said, technology, energy and building industries will expand through 2015.

However, he said, the public sector is cutting jobs, retail is spotty, transportation is going backward and construction is not what it was just five years ago. Business support services, which are a good yardstick for things to come, are expanding. Williams also said tourism and the hotel industry is seeing a slight up tick in hiring after several years of decline.

After Williams made the comment that three out of five employers in the county are having trouble finding applicants with enough experience, Friedlander and other panelists addressed that issue by saying the public and private sectors must work together to track what skills must to be taught for the companies that need them. Technical and communication skills seem to be lacking the most, employers say.

The county labor market has three tiers: Tier 1 occupations are high skilled and best paid; Tier 2 includes middle-wage positions; Tier 3 represents service jobs that need little training, but pay the minimum.

According to William’s study, the county’s Tier 1 workers are 27 percent of the workforce, compared with to 22 percent statewide. Tier 2 employees make up 44 percent of the total workforce compared to California’s 59 percent. Tier 3 workers in the county are 29 percent of the workforce compared with the 19 percent statewide.

Not enough job seekers have the education or training to qualify for Tier 2 positions, Williams reported. Job seekers have to use training, such as that offered at SBCC, to learn the skills needed today to work in growing industries, he said.

Ergomotion not just lying around

Santa Barbara-based adjustable bed maker Ergomotion is expanding because it has outgrown its spaces at 19 E. Ortega St. and 118 E. Ortega St.

The company started by former custom carmaker Alain Clenet will expand into 9,656 square feet at 203 Chapala St. later this month.

It’s the largest commercial lease in Santa Barbara so far in 2012 in terms of space, according to Christos Celmayster of Hayes Commercial Group, who represented Ergomotion in the sublease transaction. Kristopher Roth and Liam Murphy, also of Hayes Commercial, represented the sublessor.

Founded by Clenet and his son Kelly Clenet, Ergomotion designs and manufactures adjustable bases.

When Santa Barbara companies reach their tipping point, they usually move to Goleta or Carpinteria where larger spaces are easier to find and cheaper. Ergomotion is one of several companies that have worked with Hayes Commercial Group to find ways to remain in downtown Santa Barbara through expansion. Sonos, Rightscale, Tempest Telecom, Control Point and ValueClick are other companies who  have resisted the move to the Good Land.

“Jerusalem these days is barely a day away from Santa Barbara. In 36 hours or so I moved from a society that seems to have annulled history – and even parts of reality – to a place a millennium away.” – Pico Iyer, December, 2007

The evening with Pico Iyer in conversation with Don George will benefit the Daniel Bryant Youth and Family Center, a program of the Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse.

From the plaque on the wall:

“This kitchen display is typical of the indoor cooking facilities of the early 1800s. Cooking was done both outdoors and indoors. Indoor cooking was usually done by women over hot, glowing charcoal.

FOOD SOURCES:

Large gardens, orchards and adjacent ranchos supplied the Indians and Mission community with vegetables, fruit livestock and grains such as wheat, barley, oats and corn. THE ORIGINAL ADOBE CAN BE SEEN ON THE LEFT SIDE WALL.”

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-Bill Heller

Contrary to popular belief, Mother’s Day was not conceived and fine-tuned in the boardroom of Hallmark. The earliest tributes to mothers date back to the annual spring festival the Greeks dedicated to Rhea, the mother of many deities, and to the offerings ancient Romans made to their Great Mother of Gods, Cybele. Christians celebrated this festival on the fourth Sunday in Lent in honor of Mary, mother of Christ. In England this holiday was expanded to include all mothers and was called Mothering Sunday.

Julia Ward Howe, a Boston poet, pacifist, suffragist, and author of the lyrics to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” organized a day encouraging mothers to rally for peace, since she believed they bore the loss of human life more harshly than anyone else.

In 1905 when Anna Jarvis died, her daughter, also named Anna, began a campaign to memorialize the life work of her mother. Legend has it that young Anna remembered a Sunday school lesson that her mother gave in which she said, “I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mother’s day. There are many days for men, but none for mothers.”

Anna began to lobby prominent businessmen like John Wannamaker, and politicians including Presidents Taft and Roosevelt to support her campaign to create a special day to honor mothers. At one of the first services organized to celebrate Anna’s mother in 1908, at her church in West Virginia, Anna handed out her mother’s favorite flower, the white carnation. Five years later, the House of Representatives adopted a resolution calling for officials of the federal government to wear white carnations on Mother’s Day. In 1914 Anna’s hard work paid off when Woodrow Wilson signed a bill recognizing Mother’s Day as a national holiday.

Railroad trestles tower over the sand strand and usually crowded campground located at the bend in the road—where east-west trending 101 turns north-south. A train rumbling over the high trestles is an impressive site. Take a walk out onto the historic fishing pier, which includes a boat hoist to get craft in and out of the water.

Facilities: Restrooms, picnic area, campground, fishing pier.

Cost: California State Parks day use fee.

Information: 805-968-1033, 805-968-1711

Directions: From Highway101 in Santa Barbara, drive 32 miles up-coast to Gaviota State Park.