13 minute read
You may observe the live stream of the County Planning Commission meetings on (1) Local Cable Channel 20, (2) online at: http://www.countyofsb.org/ceo/csbtv/livestream.sbc; or (3) YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/user/CSBTV20
Thank you, News-Press, for the expanded Voices section in your newspaper.
Our democracy is the vehicle by which we peacefully and safely steer our country’s future. A properly functioning democracy listens respectfully to all voices. It does not stifle, censor or cancel out certain perspectives, because to do so would be to perpetrate a fraud on our democratic process.
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Our country is at such a critical juncture right now. It is more important than ever that the truth be told and that everyone think critically about all the issues. Only then can voters weigh everything in the balance, make their choice and mark their ballots.
Caroline Abate
Goleta
Respect the rule of law
Wake up, America. You are being held captive by the Democratic governors and mayors of your state, and you seem to take the stand, “But what I can I do?”
You are confined to your home. If you dare venture out, you must wear a mask or you can be fined. Your children share in this arrest and have lost the right to go to the schools that you have paid for in your property tax bill. Only those fortunate to have access to a computer can have contact with their studies. Those less fortunate — well, too bad, no learning BUT with time on their hands can go out in riot gangs, no mask needed, those that are fragile and can’t cope, choose suicide.
NO CHURCH GATHERINGS: Isolate and dehumanize and then wonder, what is happening?
You own a business, have workers, abide by the laws laid down by the state government, but that’s not good enough. Oh, you get to reopen; oh no, you are forced to close down again, and if you dare to sanitize to the “ninth” and open up, you are arrested but and here is the “but”: You can go out into the streets in gangs — no masks, destroy statues, buildings, throw paint. Mayors can paint streets, but you, who have a business and want to paint your business name on the street, are arrested. Gangs of rioters can and have blinded police with lasers, but when the police try for order, they are punished and police departments are defunded. Firecrackers, bricks and baseball bats are used against them.
In my “ancient” era, we had the groups of 18 to 20-plus enlist in the service of World War II, to defend their country and fight to protect, not tear this country down.
Gangs have broken into private, gated communities and threatened homeowners, and when the homeowner tries to defend, the HOMEOWNER IS ARRESTED. And of course, because of “THE VIRUS,” prisoners are released into the population and can do whatever, knowing they won’t get punished.
The news is not news, it is
donovan
Continued from Page A6 a scare tactic, with the tilted numbers of virus deaths, FYI, not all are virus deaths, but it makes the numbers look good Statistics show 99.8% of the people who had virus, recover
This is how to destroy this, OUR COUNTRY. Are you willing to continue to let power-grabbing governors, mayors continue this ruling?
I am not, thus this letter. Rule by law, not by lawlessness. Let’s take back what we all have worked for. KEEP AMERICA, AMERICA.
GOD BLESS AMERICA.
Anita Dwyer
Lompoc
Let’s ground flying banners
Iam shocked that the city of Santa Barbara is allowing the advertising banners being towed by airplanes along the beach.
Santa Barbara has always had the strictest sign rules. The city does not allow billboards. Signs must be small and artistic and go through a rigorous process with the Santa Barbara Sign Committee. (I’ve been through this process and know how meticulous they are).
These are not tasteful signs that enhance our beach areas. They are tacky banners towed over our city that take away from the beauty of our coastline.
The other issue is the noise factor from the planes flying back and forth every weekend and sometimes during the week.
I live in the city and have to listen to this obnoxious drown, and I’m sure the tourists and residents of the beach area feel the same way.
I think the Santa Barbara City Council should review and address this issue!
Sue Burk
Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara needs meaningful reform
Dear City Council, what would meaningful reform look like?
I have a litmus test: “Is it good for children?” If the answer is “yes,” then it’s a good policy. If the answer is “no,” then scrap it.
Housing, homelessness and elementary schools are the biggest problems facing children in Santa Barbara. Our City Council is failing the community with regard to all three.
The homeless. Protect the mentally ill and veterans. It is completely hypocritical to pretend that allowing a mentally ill person to sleep on the sidewalk is some sort of compassionate solution. Stop deceiving yourselves.
It is completely inhumane for the mentally ill homeless person. And it is also completely unacceptable for the public (read children) to whom the streets and parks and sidewalks belong and which the city has a duty to maintain for the use of children.
It’s a disgrace and it’s completely unacceptable. Find housing for every mentally ill homeless person in Santa Barbara. afford to build all this housing?
The city of Santa Barbara has received its latest RNHA numbers (Regional Needs Housing Assessment/Allocation) allotted from Santa Barbara County, and per our city officials, Sacramento has decreed that SB must add 8,000 more housing units by 2031. We wonder what are the numbers allocated to Goleta, Carpinteria, Santa Maria, Lompoc, Buellton?
California’s own native son, John Steinbeck, (whose son Thomas lived in Montecito and died here in 2016), wrote in 1961 the
Veterans. These people put their lives on the line for your freedom. Are you kidding me? Veterans are sleeping on the streets and in the parks? Find housing for every homeless veteran in Santa Barbara.
Cops. Do we have bad cops in Santa Barbara? Fire them. That would require meaningful reform to the police union.
The role of a police department with integrity is one of the most important roles in a civilized society. Our City Council must push back against the police union’s ability to protect bad cops from censure and punishment.
Police station. Don’t build a police station at Cota Street. Give that land back to the school district for the use of children. In 1870, Lincoln School was built. It served the children of Santa Barbara for over a hundred years. It must be rebuilt: on that Cota Street site, its historic site, to once again serve families in the downtown neighborhood. That’s something that would actually be meaningful reform.
Budget collapse from a global pandemic compounded by civic unrest calling for meaningful reform of society. Who would have thought that those might just be the unlikely catalysts to actually shake up the status quo and do something bold and beautiful. Citizens for Neighborhood Schools has been advocating for the rebuilding of Lincoln School for over 20 years.
Alice P. Post
Past president, Citizens for Neighborhood Schools
Let’s reopen completely
Below is a letter that I sent to the Santa Barbara City Council:
I can appreciate that you all are very busy now. However, I am stunned and angered by our city’s submission to the absurd requirements of our state government regarding the COVID19 virus.
To date there have been 60 deaths out of a county population of 500,000. That is .00012%. Citizens here should be demanding that the county reopen completely.
The officials and politicians who continue to promote false narratives should be voted out of office in November. And the reporting that you see on TV and read in the papers are only continuing the panic by promoting the number of new cases, not the reality that very, very few people in Santa Barbara will die from the virus. Yet the politicians and reporters all insist on ruining people’s lives and our economy. It is time for someone to take a stand for the people of this city and county.
Bill Rice
Santa Barbara
Editor’s note: The letter was submitted before the latest COVID19 numbers. As of Friday, there have been 77 deaths in the county, according to the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department (publichealthsb.org.) following as he observed rampant development of many California cities: “There must be a saturation point, and the progress may be a progression toward strangulation.” Los Angeles, Orange County, Bay Area —strangled.
Will they not rest until Santa Barbara is strangled too?
elias
Another weakness: The curriculum still divides Californians into four basic groups, as demanded by the Critical Ethnic Studies Association, an academic group focusing on “colonialism and conquest, racial chattel slavery and white supremacist (doctrines).”
These folks also dominated the design of last year’s rejected ethnic studies plan. It failed because rather than work toward racial harmony, it focused on falsehoods, divisive issues and longstanding grudges.
There was little concentration on achievements of any ethnic group, especially leaving out
all positives about European colonists and other white immigrants who designed the country that became the most successful on Earth, both economically and, often, in living up to its democratic ideals.
Ignore that history, and students will get a warped education on what it means to be American, how the nation was shaped and how to get along with others who look different from them. Or as Williamson Evers, a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, said, “They’re leaving out all kinds of ethnic groups … who had to work their way into success, and how they did it. There may be important lessons there.”
It’s possible the new plan will get more revisions to make it fairer and more accurate, while accomplishing state Schools Supt. Tony Thurmond’s stated goal of promoting a “fairer, more just society.”
But the plan doesn’t get near that yet, so it should be sent back for a second rewrite unless it’s improved considerably before next spring.
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, “The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It” is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more of Mr. Elias’ columns, visit www.californiafocus.net.
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