Our 165th Year
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T U E S DAY, J U N E 16 , 2 0 2 0
‘Step it up. It’s time’
SB City Council mulls budget Members review changes for fiscal year 2021 By JOSH GREGA NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
The Santa Barbara City Council held a virtual online hearing Monday evening to discuss changes to the fiscal year 2021 recommended budget and reductions to it in the wake of COVID-19. As the News-Press reported, citywide revenue losses for the FY 2021 amount to $24 million. This will, among other things, lead to a reduction of the general fund capital budget by half, the revised funding now at $400,000 as opposed to the initial $800,000. Though some capital projects are recommended to receive the amount of funding originally intended, Santa Barbara Public Works director Rebecca Bjork
Citywide revenue losses for the FY 2021 amount to $24 million. stated that there are some major capital projects not recommended for any funding in the revised budget. These include renovating the lower level workplace of the Central Library, renovating the Central Library’s plaza and the construction of a new police station. Amid the protests against police brutality and nationwide Please see budget on A8
Zoo icon RAFAEL MALDONADO / NEWS-PRESS PHOTOS
Krystle Sieghart, left, and Simone Ruskamp discuss Healing Justice and what the organization aims to accomplish. Mrs. Ruskamp holds her two-year-old daughter.
Healing Justice strives to elevate black voices By GRAYCE MCCORMICK NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT
Two strong voices for social justice in Santa Barbara have combined forces to create Healing Justice: Black Lives Matter Santa Barbara. These two voices belong to Krystle Sieghart and Simone Ruskamp, both black mothers aiming to elevate voices within the black community. They want to create a space where people can be comfortable and talk about their experiences. Healing Justice is a blackcentered and -led organization created to “(ensure) that black lives are centered and uplifted in Santa Barbara,” according to Healing Justice’s Facebook page. Leadership consists of not only members of national BLM networks, but others who support the cause. The two women said they can’t exactly remember when, but they most likely met at a protest four to five years ago. The grassroots organizers, who worked together at Santa Barbara City College,
shared the same mission. Healing Justice was born from the George Floyd protests. “We’ve been dreaming and imagining this for a while,” Mrs. Sieghart said. “With the protests and all the energy that came out of that and all the support the black community needs here, it kind of just evolved into, ‘OK, the time is now.’” While Healing Justice is blackcentered, Mrs. Ruskamp said it’s also “centered around black women as people who are often forgotten or erased in narratives of police brutality and violence.” All six of the core organizers in the collective have children. “Everything we do is by and for black people,” Mrs. Sieghart said. “When you think about it, we don’t really have any kind of organization or agency or just a space to convene here.” The two women held a protest on May 31 at the County Courthouse that drew a crowd of 2,000 to 3,000. They said that creating this space wasn’t necessarily on their radar, but after the momentum the protest
Oakland native and UCSB grad Simone Ruskamp is finishing up classes and raising her daughter while she prepares for graduate school. She said Healing Justice strives to attach action to the protests and give people concrete, everyday things to support the black community.
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COURTESY PHOTO
Chadwick, who died in December, enjoyed a long and happy life at the Santa Barbara Zoo. Rich Block, the zoo’s CEO, looks back at the zoo’s long history with lions as Santa Barbara waits for the day that the zoo has a lion again. Story, A3.
Best Buy reopens at Goleta mall By BRIAN MACKLEY NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT
Krystle Sieghart, born in Santa Barbara and currently taking online classes at Los Angeles Pacific University, says that joining the antiracist movement starts in everyday life.
created, they saw the community need. “We were so angry,” Mrs. Sieghart said. “So we got together like, ‘Where do we place that anger in a way that is productive?’” She said of the protest, “I think what was beautiful about it was that it had so much love in it and so much truth and it also had pain. I think the community was able to connect with that. That’s how Healing Justice formed.” Mrs. Ruskamp added that they had held a healing circle a week before the protest, and found that while taking to the streets to elevate their voices was effective, the black community also needed nourishing and healing in a space where they can grieve and explain the pain they’re feeling. “We don’t want people to just show up one day and get really loud and then go back to how things were, because how things were wasn’t serving the black community,” she said. The group strives to maintain accessibility throughout its advocacy, providing community
members with very actionable things to commit to from home. Healing Justice sends people links to send messages to city councils and police departments, as well as the city budget, graphics and talking points. The organization encourages them to do their own research into where they can invest in their community. “So often we say we don’t want this to happen again, and then we have to ask ourselves, ‘Well what are we doing to prevent that?’ The protests don’t do that,” Mrs. Ruskamp said. She is originally from Oakland, but moved to Santa Barbara to attend UCSB and has remained here ever since. She balanced her job as a caseworker for those with disabilities or mental health issues with advocating for black people in community work. She later realized she wanted to align her job with her values. She then started working at SBCC where she advocated for Please see jUSTICE on A2
Customers came inside Best Buy in Goleta on Monday for the first time since the retailer closed its in-store shopping practices due to COVID-19 in March. The store, which is at Camino Real Marketplace, was one of more than 800 Best Buy locations
across the country that began allowing customers back into stores under coronavirus safety measures. The company, which had changed its service to curbside pickup, announced on June 9 that it would allow customers back inside the stores. Best Buy’s announcement came Please see BEST BUY on A7
RAFAEL MALDONADO / NEWS-PRESS
Customers enter wearing masks as the Best Buy in Goleta reopens its doors Monday for the first time since March.
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Comics................. A6 Local................. A 2-8 Obituaries............. A8
Saturday’s SUPER LOTTO: 21-25-30-34-42 Meganumber: 18
Monday’s DAILY 4: 3-7-0-2
Friday’s MEGA MILLIONS: 9-14-57-67-70 Meganumber: 2
Monday’s FANTASY 5: 1-5-13-21-22
Monday’s DAILY DERBY: 01-12-04 Time: 1:40.95
Saturday’s POWERBALL: 2-12-32-50-65 Meganumber: 5
Soduku................. A5 Weather................ A8
Monday’s DAILY 3: 8-2-1 / Midday 7-3-4