Unsafe on State Street

Residents

By NEIL HARTSTEIN NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER

The Santa Barbara City Council Tuesday got an update on the State Street Master Plan and its focus on turning lower State Street into a future haven for pedestrians to shop and dine — by keeping the downtown portion of the city’s main artery closed to traffic.

But council members first had to deal with the reality of today’s State Street.

Several public speakers talked about problems they and the city face right now in the form of aggressive homeless people who are violent, threaten, vandalize, panhandle and generally make residents feel unsafe.

Judy Frank from East Beach said she and a companion recently took a stroll up State Street and felt increasingly uncomfortable and vulnerable as they left the downtown area and the security that light from the restaurants and bars there provided.

Along the way, she said they saw more and more homeless people lying or sitting in store doorways and the area became more and more dark, vacant and run down.

“I never want to take this walk again,” she said. Maybe if council members took the same walk they did, she said, they might take more steps to protect the city and its residents.

Jonathan Pu’u, owner of Pu’u Muay Thai Santa Barbara, a martial arts studio on State Street, told how he’s been personally threatened no less than five times, once by a man wielding a hatchet. He talked about how a transient set their Dumpster on fire, how he had to clean up human fecal matter, how another transient exposed himself to staff and then urinated in front of his business, how some homeless people are openly dealing drugs on State Street, and how they’ve had to deal with handful of drug overdoses.

And Rebecca Brand spoke about how she heard a rock hit the front window of Rudy’s restaurant as she walked by on Christmas Eve and watched it shatter right in front of her. She also told about how a homeless woman who was there attacked her, grabbed her phone and hurt her in the process.

She said she posted what happened on her local social media site, and to date it has received 1,139 comments.

“I am a victim,” Ms. Brand said. “This has to stop. They have to be held accountable. It is your duty to keep people safe.”

After the public comments, council members moved through their agenda to get to the main event: the progress report on the State Street Master Plan. Along the way, they approved a new mayor pro tempore: Alejandra Gutierrez, named three council members to the Ordinance Committee: Oscar Gutierrez (new chair), Kristen Sneddon and Mike Jordan, and selected three council members to the Finance Committee: Eric Friedman (chair,