The City of Goleta’s Housing Element was a long, bruising fight that left most everyone unhappy.
Among that unhappiness is that the city’s Third District does not have a seat on the City Council. Many people in El Encanto Heights felt this resulted in their voice and concerns being ignored or overrun.
These concerns include the fact that 74% of the city’s new housing units are in their district. Specifically, that the county is proposing 800-1,000 new units at Glen Annie Golf Course and so far there has been no discussion of the impact this would have on Goleta’s worst freeway intersection, Highway 101 at Glen Annie/Storke roads.
Santa Barbara County Third District Supervisor Joan Hartmann reached out to hear the peoples’ concerns. Her office booked the Dos Pueblos High School library for a meeting at 6 p.m. Jan. 29.
Please come! Democracy requires participation. It does little good to bemoan policies after the fact. Good government requires a knowledgeable and informed electorate.
Bring your questions and comments.
Richard Foster
Goleta
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Erin Graffy’s Jan. 21 column, “Community Lost Stars RoseAnna Vitetta, Eduardo Villa in 2023 But They’ll Shine Forever,” was wonderfully poignant and brought me to tears with that exquisite rendition of “Nessun dorma” as sung by Villa.
I’m not a long-standing Santa Barbaran, but how I wished I had been around when these two stars were casting their bright lights early in their careers. I wish I could have heard their beautiful voices on one of our local stages.
It’s particularly wonderful when someone’s writing can evoke that kind of a wishful state.
Josie Levy Martin
Montecito
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Just wanted to thank Erin Graffy for the great column on my uncle, Eddie. That’s what I called him … LOL. I appreciate the work put into that. Thank you so much!
Luke Pico
Santa Barbara
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Thank you to Erin Graffy for the beautiful tribute to Eduardo Villa. Thank you.
Ruth Ackerman
Santa Barbara
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The Jan. 20 article, “State Legislators Discuss California Budget Shortfall, Central Coast Caucus at Chamber Event,” was quite illustrative of our elected representatives’ lack of any economic sense or logic.
A deficit the size of California’s projected $68 billion shortfall is caused when the folks representing us run out of the money they have taken from us in the form of taxes.
Simply put: “poor money management.”
Unfortunately, we still put up with this by electing these economic lightweights.
Gerald Spurbeck
Los Olivos
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Lately, I have been driving past “I Stand with Teachers” yard signs. This feeling is shared by many in the neighborhood, myself included, who feel teachers should be paid a living wage.
My concern, along with pay, is the way teachers’ pension funds are managed. The California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) is the largest education-only pension fund in the word at $327 billion.
My concern is that the CalSTRS board recently voted to allow the fund to borrow as much as $30 billion, or 10%, of its portfolio. Why is this amount of leverage concerning? Well, the reason the fund needs to borrow cash is that 16.5% of its portfolio is invested in private equity — think illiquid and hard to get a market value — that makes it hard to meet cash needs.
This is not a prediction of gloom on my part for CalSTRS as other big pension funds have done similar things, and it may work out just fine.
But with markets at an all-time high, it pays to remember that this is teachers’ money, not retired CEOs’ money, and it should be managed conservatively.
David Wadors
Santa Barbara
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As a retired surgical nurse, I wish to appeal to parents who ride bicycles (especially with your children) to wear a bicycle helmet. I see too many families out for a lovely ride, only to observe the children wearing helmets and the parents not wearing them.
As a parent riding without a bicycle helmet, not only do you risk serious head injury and possibly even death if you are struck by a moving vehicle, but you leave your children at risk of losing their parent to care for them.
Additionally, the message you are sending to your children is that if you’re an adult you don’t need to wear a helmet, even though it is an easy measure to take that could save your life from injury, disfigurement, or worse — death.
Please be a responsible role model for your children and put a helmet on your head as you walk out the door for that afternoon family bike ride.
Thank you.
Paula Bottiani
Goleta
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Thank you to Robert Sulnick for his Jan. 24 commentary, “Voters Should Consider Climate Change and the Sun.” I haven’t laughed that loud in a while.
According to Sulnick, we have no choice but to worry about the condition of the Earth 150 million years from now — if “we care about the future of our planet and humanity beyond the lives of our children and grandchildren.”
I care about my children and future grandchildren but I’m just not that interested in children and grandchildren 6 MILLION generations from now, even if they can be traced back to my by then fossilized self! I also don’t think they’re going to care about what I did or did not do way back in 2024 when I drove a car with an internal combustion engine.
With Sulnick’s commentary, he once again proves the arrogance and absurdity of the climate change alarmist crowd. His points are laughably unconvincing.
Chris Spencer
Buellton
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Seems appropriate.
Luis Hernández
Santa Barbara
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I was pleasantly entertained reading Robert Sulnick’s commentary, “Voters Should Consider Climate Change and the Sun.” And then I saw his credentials and realized that maybe this wasn’t satire.
If it IS satire, it perfectly illustrates the absurdity of the modern global warming arguments. Bravo, Mr. Sulnick! If it’s NOT satire, it’s not clear to me what we’re supposed to do about the sun getting brighter and hotter.
Whatever it is, it seems we have somewhere between 26 years and 1.3 million years to get it done before the earth becomes uninhabitable. So there’s that.
Ross Lloyd
Santa Barbara
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Regarding Robert Sulnick’s Dec. 14 commentary, “Fossil Fuel Emissions Threaten Our Water Supplies,” climate change alarmists/lawyers need to dig up the news archives from the 1970s to prepare their briefs.
In my cross examination: How many polar vortex winter storms have there been in the last decade? A Bing search produced: “I found a few articles about the polar vortex, but none of them mentioned the exact number of polar vortex winter storms on record.”
How convienient. Is the internet being censored again?
Anecdotally, I think there’s been a chilling blast every year in the past decade, with associated deaths. Statistically, studies in the United Kingdom and Australia found that cold-related deaths in these countries accounted for more than 15 times higher mortality than heat.
Our water shortages are more to do with poor planning and conservation. No major water infrastructure has been built in California since its population was 16 million.
Now, with more than 40 million people, it has to be asked: Can the state meet its water needs without improved infrastructure?
California is one of the five Mediterranean climates on Earth where diverse agriculture can thrive along with unparalleled beauty and a preferred biosphere for many creatures, including humans, according to Don Wright’s 2023 California Globe article, “Sites Reservoir: Greenhouse Gas Threat or Hot Air?”
After huge snowpack gains in the Sierra Nevada, which Wright says are a continuous water source as they melts, much of that water is being drained off into the ocean.
Have you heard of the delta smelt preservation effort in San Francisco? Two NGO groups, Friends of The River and Tell The Dam Truth, have been fighting reservoir construction, claiming vlimate change. (My words now.)
Water vapor is the biggest contributor to climate change by more than 70% of the atmosphere, whereas CO2 is a trace gas at .04%. Yeah, these alarmists don’t see the glaring error in numbers when they go after fossil fuels. But the dam crusaders do.
It seems our drought alarm clowns are caught between a rock and a hard place. Preservation of human life depends on water and the convenience of labor-saving devices, and independent ability to travel requires a mix of energy sources — most important inexpensive, abundant sources.
If all the previous predictions of our demise from climate disasters had been true, we wouldn’t even be here now. So never mind.
Jan Lipski
Vandenberg Village
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In my many years serving as Goleta’s mayor and on the City Council, I’ve never met a more responsive Santa Barbara County supervisor than Joan Hartmann.
Since 2021, when the supervisorial district lines were redrawn to include 80% of Goleta in the Third District, Hartmann immediately dove in to learn our needs and work to address them.
That’s why I’m so eager to see her re-elected to the Third District seat.
Hartmann has been an environmental leader, protecting Goleta from the dangers of oil processing and transportation. She supported shutting down Venoco’s oil processing plant in Ellwood. And when the oil pipeline leak fouled our precious coast, she voted to prevent trains and trucks from transporting dangerous oil through our community.
When Goleta decided to ensure uninterrupted power by installing the largest battery storage facility in the county, Hartmann was in our corner.
Goleta has come close to being devastated by wildfires too often. To help protect our neighborhoods, Hartmann serves on the Fire Safe Council, which helps communities plan responses to fire threats.
There are so many other ways that Hartmann’s representation of Goleta at the county is vital to our interests, from providing county health services, to police and fire services, to reducing airport noise and more.
We are so lucky that she is fighting for us every day!
I urge Goleta residents to vote for Third District Supervisor Joan Hartmann when ballots arrive in early February. A vote for her is a vote for Goleta’s interests.
Paula Perotte
Goleta
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With the election nearing, I am grateful to be able to support Santa Barbara County Third District Supervisor Joan Hartmann.
As vice mayor of Buellton, I rely on her to be an advocate on the Board of Supervisors who is always willing to problem-solve our community’s challenges. As our supervisor, Hartmann is deeply responsive to the residents of Buellton, and has been a guiding voice for a thriving, vibrant and kind community here in the Santa Ynez Valley.
I appreciate that at the heart of Hartmann’s goals is a voice for equality, dignity and respect that is often lost in public office. She has always been at the front lines fighting for funding for our seniors, for resources for our schools, and for safety and respect for our most vulnerable communities.
She has been integral to de-escalation of hateful language and rhetoric, and has the incredible skill of bringing together differing parties and finding common ground from which to draw compromise and action.
The greatest part of Hartmann’s leadership is that it is authentically rooted in a place of service, as she considers how she can help each of us on a day-to-day basis. I am proud to have Hartmann represent me, my community and my district at the county level, but most important, I am proud to have a leader who cares about her hometown and shows up for each of us every day.
On March 5, please vote for Joan Hartmann, who leads from an authentic place of service to her community.
David Silva
Buellton
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As a longtime resident of Goleta, I was so pleased when Joan Hartmann became the Santa Barbara County supervisor for nearly 80% of our city.
She has more than delivered on her reputation as the hardest working and best informed member of the Board of Supervisors, so I am eager to see her re-elected on March 5!
Hartmann is special. She brings enormous professional expertise to the job, having been both a professor of government and environmental studies, then an environmental lawyer for the federal government, before “retiring” here with her husband 20-plus years ago.
Some retirement! She immediately volunteered her legal services on behalf of Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) of Santa Barbara County, which advocates for abused and neglected children.
She led the effort to limit Buellton’s expansion into agricultural land, so that now the voters have to decide. She served on several boards of directors, then rolled up her sleeves as a county planning commissioner — all hard unpaid work!
When Hartmann became a county supervisor, she promised to answer every inquiry in 24 hours — a hallmark of her commitment to her constituents.
She cares about every important issue, from fire prevention to public safety to green energy to expanded recreation and open space to fighting oil and gas development, and more!
Hartmann is known for her integrity — she says what she means, and she does what she says. Is there a more valuable trait in an elected official?
I hope you will join me in voting to re-elect this amazing woman to represent us for four more years!
Marian Shapiro
Goleta
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I love calling the Santa Ynez Valley home because residents show up to support each other. But it is evident that much of our workforce can’t be part of that because of the high cost of living here.
At the College Elementary School District in Santa Ynez, our school board and superintendent continually ask, “How can we best use our resources to maximize a thriving SYV?”
Our recent brainstorm was, “What if we could create homes on school property — where we have open space — that will help recruit the very best educators and alleviate our housing crunch?”
That’s where Santa Barbara County Third District Supervisor Joan Hartmann, who represents the Santa Ynez Valley as well as the region from Lompoc to Goleta, comes in. She understands this issue, and has been pitching in to move it forward.
The hardest lift for a housing project is navigating state and county regulations. Hartmann’s help has been invaluable. Her knowledge of the ins and outs of county committees, boards, and planning and development policies is exemplary.
She has been an ever-accessible resource and guide as we try to quickly navigate the requirements necessary to move this project forward.
Housing is one of the biggest and hardest issues for local governments to fix. Hartmann has been taking the lead to get us what we need so that our teachers — as well as firefighters, police, doctors and other key community members — can live where they work and be part of our village!
Peter Wright
Solvang
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As a Santa Barbara County supervisor, Joan Hartmann voted to prevent trucking of dangerous oil constantly through our communities — as many as 70 truckloads a day.
She has worked tirelessly to keep us safe from wildfires, especially by serving on the Fire Safe Council board, which collaborates with neighborhoods to identify and mitigate wildfire risks.
Hartmann has helped keep crime rates down, not only by voting to fund the new North County jail but also by backing programs that reduce repeat offenders, especially by providing increased services to those requiring treatment for substance abuse and mental health.
Hartmann has regularly demonstrated an understanding that government’s prime directive is to keep us safe.
I have known Hartmann for more than 15 years. I can truly say that she is one of the hardest-working people I have ever known. She is patient, evenhanded, intelligent and a good listener.
Please vote for Joan Hartmann on March 5.
Mark Preston
Goleta
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