Honorable Mayor & Council,
Recently, working in the garden, I twisted my ankle. Within two hours I couldn’t walk! My only option was to lay down and elevate the ankle with a pack of ice. 24 hours later after promptly addressing it, I was up walking normally again.
I believe that Santa Barbara is in a similar situation now. Being “low on funds” is foreign to us and it seems like we don’t want to believe it. I think we should believe it and act swiftly to fix it. In my humble opinion, our finances and emergency funds must be addressed and restored before we can move forward with anything else — this is our critical ‘one option’. That is what I was taught and how I was raised.
Insufficient emergency funds put the community in a vulnerable position at the worst possible time. October is just a few days away, bringing high fire season and El Niño to our door.
Just last week, we saw this devastation in southern California. These are photos from a recent house inspection site in Malibu. All the money in the world cannot fix this anytime soon.
In short, I believe we must recognize the situation and put laser focus on the following:
- The ‘One Option’ before us — Restoration of city contingency funds via a stop on spending and a dedication of income to restore emergency reserves as quickly as possible.
Then what?
- Preparedness by focusing on preventative measures like clearing gutters and drains, sand bagging, clearing away dead brush, and building personal contingency funds.
- Replacement of Fire Station 7 on Stanwood Drive followed by renovations of Station 3 on East Sola St.
- Completion of the new police station, now well underway (covered by Measure C funds), that will make police operations for public safety more efficient. In the future, the city can partner to create affordable housing at the site of the old police station.
- Reinstatement of the ADA-compliant MTD accessible low-platform bus to operate up and down State Street all day every day. Proper service for accessibility is long overdue.
My sense of things is that we could all use a bit of a break and that great benefit could be had by pausing and taking time to think before moving further with the following (and probably more):
- Creation of a new city department of rental registry and rent stabilization. This is a big lift to define, much less to develop and implement, given the current city staff is overloaded. We need to better understand the whole thing and come back in 2027.
- Redesign of the Anacapa Street side of City Hall. This is not an essential project right now. Let the city gardeners do a bit of light tidying up until next year.
- Upgrading of major infrastructure for resiliency and sustainability including capacity improvements for new housing downtown. All of this is very big, very expensive, very disruptive, and will take a long time to realize. The city can benefit and be informed by the next few months. The spectrum of possible solutions can be more fully understood in terms of creativity, effectiveness, implementation and funding by stepping back and taking time.
- Establishment of inclusionary housing and in-lieu fees. We are now seeing progress on affordable and market rate housing and there is great benefit to more collaborative work with our for-profit and non-profit developers to arrive at the best solutions for all. The result should be more affordable housing and strengthening of the Housing Trust Fund.
Given time for the city to recover financially and manage the next few months, the community will have had time to “process” the proposed changes and be in a better place to consider and prioritize our next steps.
Fixing the budget is imperative and all else will follow.
To our community and all of you as our leaders, with thanks, gratitude, and sincerity,
Cassandra Ensberg, FAIA Architect & Artist
