Regarding the Feb. 2 article, “Developers Propose 443 Apartments at Site of Sears Building in La Cumbre Plaza,” adding more than a 1,000 new homes to the La Cumbre Plaza-State Street area means adding thousands of new residents and thousands of additional vehicles.
Beyond parking, are these developers (plus those adding small modular and other “build-out” homes in the area) contributing anything to widening State Street, La Cumbre Road, and especially the freeway overpasses on La Cumbre Road and State Street that support it?
The traffic in that area is already choking those roads, and we now want to bring them to a gridlock standstill?
Mark Cooper
Santa Barbara
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Proposed housing at both ends of La Cumbre Plaza will make this block the highest density area of Santa Barbara. My question is, why not spread out development ground Santa Barbara County?
I’ve seen this story before, living in downtown Seattle. More and more tall buildings crammed together, limited parking and green space, and traffic nightmares.
Assuming 1.5 cars per unit, we’re talking about more than 2,000 new vehicles trying to get in/out of the area — using State Street and Hope Avenue. How’s that going to work?
This is why we and so many others abandoned downtown Seattle. Please “share the wealth” and spread out the development here.
Kirk Greene
Santa Barbara
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Regarding the articles on immigration protests, I am an immigrant to this country.
I came from Poland, though not by choice. The communist government deported me and my family, stripping us of our citizenship and making it clear that we were no longer welcome in the place we had called home.
My father was a Holocaust survivor, having endured the unimaginable horrors of several concentration camps.
I say this not to claim any special status, but to explain that I, perhaps more than most, understand the pain of displacement, the fear of an uncertain future, and the deep longing for safety and opportunity.
I know what it means to leave everything behind, to hope for a better life in a country that offers the promise of freedom. But I also know something else — America must remain a nation of laws.
Every immigrant who crosses the border illegally knows, in that moment, that they have broken the law. They may have done so out of desperation, out of hope, or simply because they believed it was the easiest way. But the act remains illegal.
And for a country to survive, for it to remain a place worth coming to, its laws must mean something.
If we ignore them — if we decide that those who break immigration laws should be protected while those who abide by them must wait in endless bureaucratic lines — then we are not strengthening America; we are undermining it.
We have been on a dangerous path where ideology overrules the Constitution, where feelings dictate policy, and where selective enforcement erodes the very foundations of justice.
If this continues, America will cease to be the land that people risk everything to reach. Instead, it will become a place that people will want to leave.
I have seen this happen before. I have lived in a country where the rule of law was replaced by ideological purity, where the rights of some were sacrificed for the cause of others.
It did not make that country more just. It made it unlivable.
I want America to remain the land of opportunity, but opportunity does not mean open borders.
It means a system that does not reward those who circumvent the rules at the expense of those who follow them.
My heart is with those who long for a better life. But my mind tells me that America cannot offer that better life unless it stands for the rule of law.
Anything less is not justice — it is chaos.
Peter Sadowski
Santa Barbara
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I hope to see more American flags waved along with the flags Mexico, Guatemala and the like at future rallies in support of immigrants from Latin America.
Optics matter, and waving only flags of countries of origin provides fodder for so-called patriots to claim that these people are part of an “invasion” of the United States.
Actual evidence (what a concept!) shows that undocumented immigrants are an irreplaceable part of our economy and that they commit crimes at lower rates than citizens.
However, they are used as caricatured scapegoats by an aspiring dictator — a group upon which to place the blame of all of society’s ills. Those of us who paid attention in history class know that this strategy is an absolute necessity for a demagogue.
But why don’t they just come legally, you ask? In the face of crippling poverty or danger to one’s family, the idea of waiting years or decades (yes, that’s how long it can take) to go through the immigration process legally is simply not an option.
The decision to flee one’s homeland and come here illegally is certainly not one made lightly.
The truth is, Latin American immigrants — documented or not — drive our economy and enrich our communities. The American flag is theirs as much as it is mine.
I look forward to standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them at future rallies, waving the American flag, as they fight against unjust scapegoating by false patriots.
Blake Dorfman
Santa Barbara
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I can no longer patronize Noozhawk. I drove through/past the Lompoc protest and, while it was peaceful, it was also contentious.
I saw a couple people who were close to making it not peaceful and both sides were to blame equally.
Noozhawk’s reporting lends to what my angry conservative acquaintances call media bias. I’m no conservative or Trump supporter but we must have borders and laws that are followed. What’s going on is craziness, considering I cannot go to any foreign nation like people come here.
For the record, I am 37 years old, half-Guatemalan and half-who-knows-what, and proud to be me and proud I had parents who taught me that breaking the law is wrong no matter WHAT.
Jason Ross
Lompoc
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Regarding Tom Modugno’s Jan. 19 commentary, “Goleta Landmark Hangs in Balance as Golf Course Project Awaits City Approval,” isn’t this historic gas station sitting on top of a toxic waste dump?
I worked at a Chevron station in 1974, and all used motor fluids were disposed of by pouring into a large steel funnel in the garage that was welded to a steel pipe that went through the foundation into a sump under the station.
Everything from day-old coffee to brake fluid was poured down the pipe.
This may have been standard practice for that time period.
Mark Baird
Santa Barbara
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Battery storage units or large EV vehicle charging/parking areas should not be located in or near developed areas. The result of fires in these facilities can be seen in videos.
When a fire occurs in one of these facilities, it would require the evacuation of homes and businesses within a large area, sometimes lasting several days.
Even in facilities where there is separation between battery or EV charging stations, a fire in just one of the units or vehicles can require a lengthy evacuation period due to the uncontrolled release of toxic substances.
Based on the facts concerning these types of fires, I think it is unwise to locate them near developed areas of Santa Barbara County. Supporting these types of installations should require a risk versus gain evaluation.
Of course, there is no justification for risking community health when it is widely known that battery storage and charging stations pose a demonstrated fire/health hazard risk.
Ron Fink
Lompoc
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Regarding the Feb. 1 article, “Artificial Intelligence is Bringing Nuclear Power Back from the Dead — Maybe Even in California,” writer Alex Shultz didn’t really seem that familiar with the subject of small nuclear reactors.
He wrote they are basically a dream on the drawing board. That is not correct.
There is one — the only one — with an approved plan by the U.S. government that is in the process of building two plants in different parts of the world. The company is NuScale Power, listed on the NYSE as SMR and priced around $24 a share.
Ken Kimball
Santa Maria
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Solvang, like other Santa Ynez Valley towns, is small and built on strong community values — a place where people know their neighbors, where scenic views define the landscape, and where residents assume that, through their elected representatives, they have a voice in decisions affecting their future.
But action by city staff and inaction by the City Council regarding the Wildwood development application has shaken that sense of community.
Wildwood is a proposed 100-unit high-density apartment complex covering a steep hill and scenic viewscape at Alamo Pintado Road and Old Mission Drive.
On Jan. 13, residents gathered at the City Council meeting, demanding that the council follow the law and act to stop the Planning Department from pushing through a defective Wildwood application. Instead of action, residents were met with silence.
The council first failed to follow the law in 2023 when it was eight months late submitting to the State of California an approved General Plan Housing Element. The proposed Wildwood project is a blatant attempt to take advantage of that failure.
Wildwood will irrevocably damage Solvang’s small-town character. It will add more than 200 vehicles coming and going through an already congested main gateway into Solvang, and will create serious hazards for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.
A requested waiver allowing insufficient on-site parking will result in increased illegal parking as 250 new residents and their visitors fight for spaces.
Taxpayers will have to pay for new infrastructure to deal with blocked intersections, increased erosion runoff and flooding.
The developer’s builder’s remedy application attempts to bypass Solvang’s General Plan and zoning laws and shorten normal public review procedures.
Wildwood, promoted as addressing the affordable housing crisis, falls far short. The developer proposes only 13 affordable units — far below the 36-unit goal proposed in the General Plan, a goal we strongly support.
In addition, 87 higher income units are not needed, will damage Solvang’s vital tourism business, burden its infrastructure, consume precious resources and serve only to increase developer profits.
By following the law now, Solvang could easily recover from its past failures. From the beginning, the Wildwood application has failed to meet the clear and basic state code requirements, and therefore is void.
However, instead of following the law and declaring it void, city staff has overlooked the application’s deficiencies and pushed it along, thereby prioritizing developer interests over those of the community.
The council has a duty to oversee and correct the staff’s failure to follow the law. Instead, the council does nothing.
Residents have stated many times that the council cannot continue to give “our hands are bound by state law” as an excuse for inaction, when the council’s own staff continues to selectively follow that very law in favor of the developer: First applying the state code to invite the developer to file a builder’s remedy pre-application, then ignoring the code when it clearly provided rules, mandates and multiple remedies to reject the pre-application for initially failing to provide code-required information and later for failing to provide requested documentation before code-prescribed deadlines.
There is no excuse for the council’s failure to insist that staff consistently follow the law. This is not how good government functions.
This failure cannot go unchallenged. Without action from the council, residents are left with no choice but to consider legal action.
Residents have asked the council to either hear and act on their appeal of staff actions or act itself to direct staff to follow the law, stop processing the pre-application, and direct that a new, nonbuilder’s remedy application be submitted. But the council still does nothing.
This is about more than one project. It is about the future of Solvang and the Santa Ynez Valley, and whether our local governments will serve the people who live in this unique place, or serve the developers who seek to profit from that uniqueness and irrevocably damage it in the process.
All residents are urged to write, call or email Solvang City Council members and demand that they follow the law and stop processing the current Wildwood application.
Barbara Allen
Ted Allen
Dennis Beebe
Brian Carrillo
Felicia Carroll
Chantal Cloutier
Al Cortese
Kelley Davis
Kathleen Day
Lansing Duncan
Ginny Erlich
Janet C. Forster
Mark Frank
Peggie Holley
Heidi Iwasko
Jacqueline Kalina
Joseph Kalina
Craig Kent
Katie Kusske
Kent Lockart
Dan Martin
Linda Martin
Stephen Martin
Phyllis Martinez
Dr. Cynthia Matthews
Paul Matthies
Suzi Matthies
Sandra Mills
John Alexander Moisan
Elaine Morris
Michelle Neels
Jeff Nelson
Mark Oliver
Bill Powell
Susanne Powell
Susan Shehab
Linda C. Smith
Bob Snyder
Patricia Snyder
Diana Story
JoAnn Taylor
Karen Waite
Solvang and the Santa Ynez Valley
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In my Dec. 31 letter to the editor about the Goleta plane crash, I pointed out that the Cirrus SR22 is equipped with a parachute recovery system for the entire aircraft.
The parachute system in a CR22 has a minimum recommended deployment altitude of 400 feet if level (which apparently this aircraft was not, according to eyewitnesses) or 920 feet if in a spin. Speed and bank angle affect the deployment as well.
Some Federal Aviation Administration-certified tests have shown full parachute inflation could occur around 300 feet for some aircraft under optimum flight conditions.
In stabilized descent, the aircraft would descend at about 20 mph.
Almost 400 lives have been saved by this system since it was developed and installed.
So when I wrote that it appeared that the parachute was not employed for some reason, I was obviously wrong as subsequent information became available.
What I should have said was that the parachute was deployed at too low an altitude to be effective.
I hope that the two people injured in that accident recover quickly and completely, and are able to get back in the air soon.
Addison Thompson
Santa Barbara
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I will dispute Skona Brittain’s Jan. 31 letter to the editor denying that Noozhawk is biased against Republicans.
Last Labor Day, Noozhawk wrote a story about the local Democrats holding a political barbecue but didn’t even mention the local Republicans holding a political barbecue — in the same park and on the same day!
Additionally, Noozhawk ignored two big MAGA parades through Santa Barbara and Santa Maria during President Donald Trump’s election campaign.
I support Noozhawk but what its reporters CHOOSE not to report on is equally important. Do better.
C. Cota
Santa Barbara
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