Working in my garden recently, I twisted my ankle. Within two hours I couldn’t walk!

My only option was to lie down and elevate the ankle with a pack of ice. Twenty-four hours later, after promptly addressing it, I was up walking normally again.

I believe the City of Santa Barbara is in one of these situations 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. 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 wildfire season and El Niño to our door.

Just last week, we saw storm devastation in Southern California, including down the coast in Malibu. All the money in the world cannot fix this anytime soon.

Santa Barbara must recognize the situation and put laser focus on the following:

The One Option: Restoration of city contingency funds — Stop spending and direct all incoming revenue to restoration of the emergency funds as quickly as possible.

Then what?

• Preparedness — Everyone should be focused on preventative measures of clearing gutters and drains, sand bagging, clearing away dead brush, and building personal contingency funds.
• Replacement of Fire Station 7 at 2411 Stanwood Drive followed by renovations of Station 3 at 415 E. Sola St.
• Completion of the new police station — Now well underway (covered by Measure C funds) at the corner of East Cota and Santa Barbara streets, the new headquarters will make police operations for public safety more efficient. In the future, the city can partner with a developer to create affordable housing at the site of the current police station at 215 E. Figueroa St.
• Reinstate the Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant MTD accessible low-platform bus on State Street — all day, every day. Proper service for accessibility is long overdue.

My sense 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 Department of Rental Registry and Rent Stabilization. This is a big lift to define, much less to develop and implement — an entire department given that the current city staff is overloaded. We need to better understand the whole thing and come back in 2027.
• Relandscaping of the Anacapa Street side of City Hall. This is not an essential project right now. Let the gardeners give it a good rake to tidy it up until next year.
• Major infrastructure for resiliency and sustainability, including infrastructure capacity upgrades for new housing downtown. All of this is very big, very expensive, disruptive, and will take a long time to realize. The city can benefit and be informed by the next few months. The spectrum of solutions can be more fully understood in terms of creativity, effectiveness, implementation and funding by stepping back and taking time.
• Inclusionary housing / In lieu fees. We are now seeing progress of affordable and market-rate housing and there is great benefit to more collaborative work with our for-profit and nonprofit developers to arrive at the best solutions for both that will achieve affordable housing and building of the Local 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. All else will follow.