Regarding the July 29 article, “Santa Barbara Council Hears Public Feedback on Rent-Stabilization Ordinance,” there is only one way to turn what things cost into what people think is affordable.
If you cannot afford what things cost, someone else will have to make up the difference.
This magic is called a subsidy. Rent control requires property owners to subsidize the cost of a tenant’s housing, regardless of a property owner’s ability, and regardless of a tenant’s need.
It is not fair to put the entire burden of subsidizing our community’s housing on one small group of property owners.
If you decide to house everyone who wants live here, regardless of ability, this burden needs to be shared by the entire community.
Every business owner, including the government, needs to contribute toward the cost of housing their employees.
Every education facility needs to contribute toward the cost of housing its students.
Every homeowner needs to contribute toward the cost of housing the labor who work for them, including gardeners, house cleaners, auto detailers, plumbers, painters, etc.
Rent control only punishes the people who supply our community with rental housing. Rental housing providers do not collect any income from products or services.
The only way rental housing providers can cover their market expenses is through their ability to ask for market rent.
Rick Lang
Santa Barbara
• • •
Very sad to hear that both newborn red pandas and their mother passed away, as reported in the Aug. 6 article, “Mother of Santa Barbara Zoo’s Red Panda Cubs Dies.”
I grew up in Cincinnati and the zoo there is famous among zoos in the United States. I always followed the goings-on at the zoo as I found it amazing how it is able to enable the growth of so many different animals and the amount of knowledge and resources to make that happen.
The Santa Barbara zoo has a similar reputation.
I hope the brain trust of the Santa Barbara Zoo is able to find the keys to red pandas and increase their population.
I hope our red pandas are successful next year. Thoughts and prayers.
Bart Bader
Goleta
• • •
It was unfortunate to read Mark Patton’s Aug. 2. column, “Competing in New World of College Baseball Comes with High Price for UCSB,” a rambling apology and justification for the excess now plaguing what used to be known as amateur sports.
The association of amateur athletic teams with academic institutions was originally a sense of local pride and fun. There was a certain charm in the idea that “our boys and girls” were better than yours.
There was also a tradition of lauding sportsmanship and honest competition and perspective. That has disappeared in favor of corporate profits and personal egos.
The average major college football team cost its sponsoring school $40 million to $50 million yearly just for payroll. There are college athletes receiving $7 million to $11 million salaries and transferring to other schools when better offers come along.
What Patton did not discuss is the better alternative: De-escalate. Don’t spend $30 million on baseball and softball, spend it on intramural or new student exercise facilities — or academics even.
Lead the way to sanity and become a model for other academic institutions to walk away from this really inappropriate distortion of the university model.
Glen Mowrer
Santa Barbara
• • •
Regarding the July 25 article, “Public Safety Power Shutoffs Possible for 1,799 Santa Barbara County Customers,” the innovation of the public safety power shutoffs is a testament to the failure of power companies (Southern California Edison, PG&E, et. al.) to maintain their infrastructure for most of the last century (Edison, 139 years old, and PG&E 120).
Electrical power industries have profited hundreds of billions of dollars in the last 100-plus years while denying financial responsibility of their substandard infrastructure that has destroyed billions of dollars of homes and numerous lives.
Only since the recent billion-dollar lawsuits holding the electric utilities accountable did the PSPS start.
There is no other public utility that is a “fair weather” provider — not natural gas, not cable, not water, not internet, not gasoline, television, telephone, email, U.S. mail, your local trash guy, the guy who walks your dog, or any other provider — that ceases service because it gets hot or windy.
If it is possible to walk on the moon and fly to Mars, it should be possible to run wires to houses safely on Earth.
The California Public Utilities Commission and representatives from all jurisdictions and districts must respond to this serious degradation in quality of life and property values. This can not be the new normal!
If the current electrical providers are not willing or capable of providing reliable service, the monopoly should be given to another entity.
Joseph Garred
Santa Barbara
• • •
Thank you for publishing Wayne Mellinger’s Aug. 3 commentary, “Old Spanish Days and the Stories We Choose to Tell.”
Mellinger points out that celebrating our history as “Old Spanish Days” is not wrong, but it is incomplete. In fact, the Chumash ancestors lived on this land for thousands of years before European contact and conquest, and still reside here.
The importance of recognizing the indigenous Chumash, as well as the Mexicano settlers and rancheros who lived in Alta California before the Spanish arrival, cannot be overstated.
As Mellinger said, the Chumash were subjects of Spanish colonialism and suffered military occupation, illness, forced labor and forced conversion; the Mexicanos suffered a similar fate, essentially a form of slavery.
Enslaved African laborers likewise were forced to perform hazardous work in silver mines to enrich the Spanish crown.
Many ethnic groups contributed to what we now know as Santa Barbara, California. To valorize and romanticize one ethnic and cultural group over the many who contributed to where we live now is to ignore the complexity of history.
Let’s enjoy “Fiesta Forever,” while also acknowledging the depth and breadth of our land’s history.
Rachel Altman
Santa Barbara
• • •
My July 24 letter to the editor was about the proposal to locate a Costco gas station
on City of Santa Barbara-owned property within the City of Goleta, a deal involving the Santa Barbara Airport and Costco.
I stated that I thought this location made no sense and risked ground water pollution,
local air pollution and was too close to the flood plain that floods the airport each year.
While I still feel that way about this location, I have no objection to a Costco gas station at another location.
Another reader pointed out that citizens need lower gas prices and I agree. Let’s have the parties involved find another location that has less risk to the public and the environment.
Hopefully, City of Goleta leadership will raise some objections about this.
Frank DiMarco
Goleta
• • •
I received criticism in the July 31 letters to the editor about my letter about undocumented immigrants.
Let me clearly state that no killings are acceptable, but it’s not immigrants who are killing Americans. It’s American citizens.
FBI crime rates matched against census population data from 1980 to 2022 found that as the immigrant share of the population grew, overall crime rates fell substantially, and immigrants commit fewer crimes relative to their population share.
Since immigrants are only 14%-15% of the U.S. population and are found to offend at lower rates, it follows that native-born citizens account for the large majority of homicides.
What my critics also fail to point out is that suicides have consistently made up more than half of firearm deaths.
The bottom line is that immigrants are not people killing U.S. citizens. It’s other U.S. citizens.
Brian Epstein
Santa Barbara
• • •
Mail Calls
Noozhawk welcomes and encourages expressions of all views on Santa Barbara County issues. Click here to submit a letter to the editor.
Letters should be BRIEF — as in 200 words-BRIEF — and letters under 150 words are given priority. Each must include a valid mailing address and contact information. Pseudonyms will not be accepted, and repeat letters will be skipped. Letters may be edited for clarity, length and style.
As a hyperlocal news site, we ask that you keep your opinions and information relevant to Santa Barbara County and the Central Coast. Letters about issues beyond our local region have the absolute lowest priority of everything we publish.
With rare exceptions, this feature is published on Saturdays.
By submitting any content to Noozhawk, you warrant that the material is your original expression, free of plagiarism, and does not violate any copyright, proprietary, contract or personal right of anyone else. Noozhawk reserves, at our sole discretion, the right to choose not to publish a submission.
Click here for Noozhawk’s Terms of Use, and click here for more information about how to submit letters to the editor and other announcements, tips and stories.