Today, per a request from Councilmembers Frank Hotchkiss And Randy Rowse, the Santa Babara City Council will hold a discussion regarding the enforcement of existing State laws and the City’s municipal ordinances concerning transient related street crimes. Specifically, panhandling.
Also on the docket:
- The Council will likely approve the leasing of the affordable rental property at 2904 State Street by the Housing Authority to WillBridge for use as transitional housing for formerly homeless persons. The site is a very close to Peabody school.
- The Council will likely authorize the City Clerk to conduct the November 2011 General Municipal Election as a Vote-By-Mail (VBM) Election.
- The Council will likely spend $12,000 from Appropriated Reserves to purchase a signature verification system for the VBM Election.
Business as ususal. Nothing really to debate, discuss etc.
The people hawking jewelry and hand made items should be cited and their should be a time limit one can spend on the bench, see treadmills at the gym. Glad to see a crack down!
So they get Will Bridge through as expected.
This will ensure jobs for someone working for the city whom already has a job. time limits are great also, hows about parking meters for benchs? pay me to inforce the time limits, only $20hr which is less than the city would get. And make them get prmits like all else.
Starve vagrants off of State Street. Starve them out of our town.
Expose Homeless Inc – protecting Homeless Inc executive director salaries requires a never-ending supply of vagrants, bums and slackers to “help and cure”. They advertise nationwide for vagrants to get into their programs to keep all that cash and grant money flowing into their own hands.
That is why we cant’ solve this problem. Too many now have a financial interest making sure we never do. Where is the grand jury investigation of this misuse of public funds and tax exempt charitable donations?
Darn it, another great opportunity missed. What started as a directive to police to step up enforcement on illegal behaviors…devolved into no directive, marred by calls for more programs and continuing with the things that don’t work. Nice try, but until someone takes the reigns at City Hall and starts driving, no forward movement will be possible.
I agree with downtownres that this evolved into another chatter session with so many public comments and long expositions. But that’s Santa Barbara where everyone has a right to speak. But “reigns” at City Hall????
Are you picking on my typo, or my thought process?
uhhh, both?! There are 7 co-equals on the Council and no one councilmember, including the mayor, can dictate (take the reins) to the others. The metaphor of “taking the reins” is an odd one in this context.
Maybe part of the problem is the number of public speakers, mostly saying similar things —- but that there are public speakers is a great virtue of Santa Barbara city government.
Sorry, local, that’s my brain moving far faster than government-standard-time, where a small issue takes months to move forward. I meant that with a majority on council, it should have been easy for at least 4 of them to collectively take the reins, to make a motion to direct increased enforcement to the troubled spots on the waterfront, State, and Milpas. That didn’t happen. The public speakers were great, but they are a feature in any local government hearing. I was hoping to see more forward motion than we got last night. I also found it interesting that the police brass departed at 5 PM, while the hearing was still going on, and that they left one lone captain to take ‘direction’ from council. No direction came, though. I am sure the police got the message, but the meeting stopped short of anyone taking any definitive action.
I had the feeling, watching it, that it all had been orchestrated beforehand. But as for the police, I didn’t know that they had left — the public access TV should scan the room at regular intervals to give those of us watching a sense of the theater, so to speak. Seemed to me there was an unnecessarily large number of police there when a large part of the budget problems is the high salaries paid to the public safety employees. (I doubt they were volunteering their time, but would love to be wrong.)
In fact, the numbers of public safety employees appearing in the council chambers l seem high, generally, but maybe they are volunteering their time.
But, back to the topic: I agree with you that it would have been helpful had there been some sort of direction but that’s not the way it goes. Instead, it’s create a noise, flap the flags in the hot air. (And I would not cut the public speakers but would wish they were less repetitive or predictable, but that’s a foolish wish.)
I think that’s called “Seagull Management” where the leaders fly in, crap all over everything, and then depart quickly. Sigh. Ouch, I was one of the speakers. Hope I was neither repetitive or predictable, but given the topic, I probably was both
What a slur on gulls! It reminded me of a a recent story about San Diego and the large numbers of pelicans recently and the large number of complaints about pelican guano. If it ain’t one thing, it’s another here in paradise. But as for the council speakers, it’s impossible to not be repetitive and, maybe, predictable on a topic that is of wide public interest. What’s important is participating – thank you for it. Get much more done that way than sitting at home watching Ch 18.
Joke is on anyone who thought these knuckleheads on the city council ever would “give direction” about police priorities. When would that ever end?
local above is totally correct.
Where’s Your Bag?