Regarding Noozhawk publisher Bill Macfadyen’s June 30 column, “Architect’s State Street Design Concept Too Good to Be Used,” I want to say that architect Cass Ensberg’s rendition is exactly what we need downtown:

• Reduce planters to create more sidewalk areas with decorative iron fencing as shown in her illustrations.
• Bring back cars and return State Street to the center of Santa Barbara life.

Thanks for showing the public what can and should be done. Shame on those who put off a decision for years to come.

And, by the way, I’m a former fan of a closed-off State Street but now acknowledge it is a bad idea for the closure to continue — unless you are a kid on a bike or skateboard!

Elizabeth Badart
Santa Barbara

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I’ve lived in Santa Barbara for 34 years, and I’ve seen a lot of changes. I’ve ridden a bicycle on State Street the entire time. I’ve never ridden an electric bike.

I see so many plans to revitalize downtown State Street, but they all miss one important point: State Street is dying.

Businesses closed during the 2008 mortgage meltdown. City planners looked the other way when the Funk Zone became the Drunk Zone, further draining downtown. The COVID-19 pandemic made matters worse.

People have been talking about turning downtown State Street into a promenade for decades as a possible solution to the gridlock.

Bringing back automobiles will just turn the street into a packed parking lot even worse than it ever was. I doubt the blaring horns of parading cars on the weekend will be welcome.

As for shopping, Anacapa and Chapala streets already provide access to all the parking we need.

Personally, I favor architect Cass Ensberg’s design for downtown. It remedies more of people’s criticisms and lends to the beauty of Santa Barbara more than any other — but it will still be a futile attempt to rescue a sinking ship that sprang a leak long ago.

Brian Epstein
Santa Barbara

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Like Noozhawk publisher Bill Macfadyen, I’m tired of hearing the “same old, same old” arguments for State Street. I’m also tired of almost being knocked down by silent and any kind of bikes.

As a resident of downtown in a 62-plus community, I, like my friends and neighbors, miss the downtown shuttle where we could get to the beach or the zoo for a quarter and stroll down State Street without the fear of being knocked down.

Kanta MacDermott
Santa Barbara

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As a citizen of the Santa Barbara area for the past 75 years, I must voice my concerns over the mess on State Street.

To allow the retention of the “parklets” (I call them shacks) is not in the best interests of the community. Additionally, to favor eateries that happen to be on State Street over those that are simply somewhere else in the neighborhood is unconscionable.

Return State Street to pre-pandemic status with auto, bicycle and pedestrian access (it worked fine before), and allow restaurants to have tables and umbrellas where space allows. Remove the shacks; they are an eyesore!

R. Kent Richards
Montecito

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I find the best sources of local news here at Noozhawk, also with Noozhawk’s Josh Molina at SB Talks and Newsmakers with Jerry Roberts.

The latest post by Roberts is an interview with Santa Barbara Mayor Randy Rowse with Molina also asking questions.

Dan Seibert
Santa Barbara

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Could someone explain why City of Santa Barbara staff neglected to inform the City Council on June 27 of the Historic Landmarks Commission’s unanimous recommendations for the three issues put to them at the June 21 commission meeting.

City staff came to the Historic Landmarks Commission (HLC) for guidance on these specific items:

• What to do with existing State Street dining structures
• What to do about off-State Street dining “parklets”
• What to do about dining areas/structures on private property (primarily in the Funk Zone)

According to Noozhawk’s June 21 account, “Historic Landmarks Commission Wants Parklets Smaller on State Street, Gone Elsewhere in El Pueblo Viejo District,” the commission’s recommendations were unanimous and emphatic:

• State Street dining structures could remain during the interim while the State Street Advisory Committee process proceeds, but all roof structures should be immediately removed.
• All off-State Street dining parklets and structures should be removed immediately.
• All dining structures and areas on private property should be removed immediately.

Why was the full council — in open session — not informed of these recommendations prior to any public or council discussion of the issues?

It should be noted that Councilwoman Kristen Sneddon attended that Historic Landmarks Commission meeting. Did she not hear their discussion and recommendations? Why did she not inform her fellow council members and the public of the HLC’s recommendations?

Why was this information withheld from the public and the full City Council at the open meeting on June 27?

The HLC was relegated to a very short public comment about its recommendations.

The HLC is part of the City Charter, and has regulatory power over all projects in the El Pueblo Viejo District. Even the city must bring city projects to the commission for review and approvals.

Are pet projects of the City Council exempt from HLC review and regulation? While those of us in the private sector often spend months in the review and approval process?

By its actions on June 27, the council made it clear it intends to extend the ERETO provisions regarding all parklets and outdoor dining for the next three years.

The council also suggested provisions, not yet specified, for parklets off-State Street and on private property to be required to get regulatory approvals, again not specified, in order to continue operations.

Had the council been informed of the specific HLC recommendations to remove all off-State Street and private property dining parklets and areas, it is very possible that the actions above would have required more discussion before council approval.

The council would have had to ignore or override the HLC recommendations in an open meeting, in front of the public.

The City Council and staff are negligent in not informing the public of the HLC recommendations. Sneddon needs to explain why she did not disclose the HLC’s actions to her colleagues and the public in an open session.

The city attorney needs to explain how the council can put the city on a path to violating its own charter by disregarding its own regulatory Historic Landmarks Commission’s recommendations.

Has the City Council, by its actions, already violated its own charter?

When those off-State Street and private property structures come before HLC down the road, and are rejected, can we expect the council to again defy the HLC, and its own charter, and issue approvals?

When the Building Department denies approvals for those applicants due to municipal code issues, can we expect the council to again override the process?

This is the direction the City Council is taking the City of Santa Barbara. Why?

Kevin Boss
Santa Barbara

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Regarding the June 29 article, “City Task Force Targeting ‘Dangerous’ Sidewalk Vendors, Officials Say at Community Meeting,” the increasing appearance of food vendors that are operating unlawfully in Santa Barbara has risen to the top of the priority list for many people.

These pop-up restaurants are illegal if they are fixed in place, have open-flame cooking and a myriad of other characteristics. We have a coordinated City of Santa Barbara and Santa Barbara County enforcement team going out many times per week to cite these folks and shut them down.

But here’s a real problem: customers.

Folks have an affinity for “street food,” but these pop-ups are dangerous from a health and sanitation standard, from a sidewalk access perspective, and are extremely dangerous in terms of fire and explosion risk.

Bottom line: Never visit one using an open flame in the proximity of a gas station!

From a business perspective, they are competing with established family-owned restaurants and licensed food trucks. None of the revenue stays in our community, as these are all from out of town.

One of the most disturbing aspects, however, is the abusive and threatening language directed at our staff from customers for enforcing and at local news media for reporting. This behavior may not fall outside the lines of the law, but it doesn’t belong in a civil society.

Support of these illegal operations hurts local families and their businesses.

Mayor Randy Rowse
Santa Barbara

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While many of us were enjoying Fourth of July festivities in our own neighborhoods, Noozhawk reporters Rebecca Caraway, Serena Guentz and Janene Scully were covering all the countywide Independence Day events.

Their creative writing styles and Kodak Moment photos were super.

Personally, I saw people I knew in all three areas the reporters covered. Great job. It was almost like being there!

Shelley Azbell Garvey
Santa Barbara

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Regarding the July 3 article, “Hiker in Distress Airlifted from Mountains Above Santa Barbara,” I am wondering if I want to get a nice helicopter ride to the Santa Barbara Airport, what I should do is go for hike in the mountains and then call in that I am in distress.

The search and rescue guys show up with the helicopter, give me a ride to the airport and then I get to go home.

If that is true, we should all do so. A free helicopter ride or is there a cost to the helicopter ride? If there is a cost, that, too, should be made public.

Ron Nichols
Santa Barbara

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Thank you to Barry Punzal for his in-depth and detailed June 29 article, “Santa Barbara Coaching Legend Fred Warrecker Dies at Age 84,” about the iconic life of the late Santa Barbara High School baseball coach.

Warrecker made a definitive mark in the world of sports. A perspective of his I would like to share is from working with him as a fellow colleague in the English department at SBHS, and how his legacy continues with his sons, Wes and Donny, and his grandson Bryce, who I had the honor of teaching.

I just completed my 31st year as an English teacher at SBHS. Twenty of those years were also spent as the Olive & Gold yearbook adviser covering many a baseball game.

Through these lenses, I saw Coach Warrecker aspiring to be and inspiring others to be their ideal self: physically and intellectually developed and disciplined.

However, his ethos was not just of the “old-fashioned” variety; his echoed all the way back to ancient Greece. His expectations were rooted in his love of philosophy and a curiosity for life’s elementals.

Warrecker helped his athletes and his students understand the meaning of integrity, and gave meaning to the discipline it takes to achieve it. He was engaging as a teacher, coach and colleague because his love for learning was infectious.

I always felt good riding a wavelength of Warrecker’s thoughts on life. In his attempts to understand the meanings of things, he was a genuine and humble learner.

He was a reminder, no matter the context, that there is always a bigger picture, what Wordsworth would refer to as the “philosophic mind.”

Warrecker’s spirit continues. His two sons, Donny and Wes, bring to their jobs at SBHS an understanding of the intangibles that help develop and strengthen a person as well as those intangibles that can hurt and harm.

The strength and spirit of their family connection is evident in how they live their lives and interact with others. And I can attest that Bryce’s success in baseball is rooted in this same spirit of his dad’s: disciplined aspiration tempered my man’s humility at the depth and breadth of life itself.

Once again, as Wordsworth so aptly said, and Warrecker’s spirit inspires us to feel, “Thanks to the human heart by which we live, / Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, / To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

Thank you, Fred! Peace and Love to your family.

Maggie Light
Carpinteria

•        •        •

Since 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act has required improved accessibility for disabled individuals, resulting in substantial benefits for those individuals, their families and their communities.

Those with disabilities have enjoyed the freedom of improved access to businesses, transportation and institutions on which they depend.

Like many new mandates, however, the law has resulted in some unexpected consequences, one of which has become all-too familiar for many California residents and businesses.

Under the ADA, businesses and institutions are required to bring their facilities into compliance with prescribed standards that range from things such as size and colors of signs for handicapped parking places to the physical design of restrooms, ramps and other structural features.

ADA standards are a requirement for new construction and large corporate businesses have the resources to ensure that their facilities are retrofitted to comply with ADA standards. But many small businesses, through occupancy of older structures that may not be compliant or simply through lack of knowledge of ADA standards, may fail to meet ADA  construction requirements.

As a result, a cottage industry of opportunistic lawyers has emerged — their business model is a simple one — to target a small business, survey it for any detectable violations, file a lawsuit and hope for a quick settlement as the business owner faces the difficult choice of an extended and expensive legal battle or of making a payment to settle the case.

This has resulted in great economic stress for a growing number of small California businesses, resulting in many closures and job losses, with little hope for relief seen until the introduction of state Senate Bill 585.

SB 585 preserves all of the protections and standards of the ADA but affords small businesses, those with 50 or fewer employees, a 120-day window of opportunity to bring their facilities into compliance following notice of the filing of a lawsuit.

If compliance is achieved within those 120 days, the business owner receives relief from statutory penalties, attorney’s fees and other costs associated with the lawsuit.

SB 585 has received broad bipartisan support in the state Senate, including the support of our own state Sen. Monique Limón, D-Santa Barbara. As it moves to the Assembly, it must continue to receive bipartisan support if California’s small business are to receive the relief it promises.

It is of great importance that our own Assemblyman Greg Hart, D-Santa Barbara, also support passage of SB 585. Please contact him to ask for his help to protect small business in our local communities and throughout the state.

Please join us in our efforts to protect California’s vital small businesses from predatory lawsuits.

Roy Reed, Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Association board president
Santa Maria

•        •        •

D.C. Collier’s June 29 commentary, “Birds of a Feather Flock Together Spiritually,” reminds me again of the importance of our American constitutional right to Freedom of Speech.

This freedom exists regardless of whether others agree with what is being preached. I say this as a lawyer and as the son of a fundamentalist preacher who, but for the grace of whatever, could certainly have become a preacher.

However, when Collier refers to the ruling chief priests and elders of the Jews as “the hostile Jewish inquisition,” he characterizes it in overtly anti-Semitic terms.

What was obviously antipathy by those in power against the few who challenged that power (i.e. Jesus and his followers, that he cast as the underdogs) was not a “Jewish inquisition” as portrayed by Collier, rather a common struggle for control.

The term “inquisition” and its association with the Spanish Inquisition, notorious for the severity of its torture and persecution of Muslims and Jews and ultimate expulsion of thousands from Spain, is simply absurd.

Recall also that Jesus’ crucifixion was executed by Romans, not Jews.

Collier states that “in today’s post-Christian culture (which is itself a very debatable term) it has become increasingly harder for Christians to outwardly express their faith. The pressures to remain silent are many and intense.”

I would suggest that freedom of speech has been restricted, not because this is a “post-Christian” time but because the general population has been stifled from free personal expression by surrounding hateful behavior and “true believer” anger and rage (both religious and political).

Collier concludes with the ever popular fundamentalist principle that if you “Hang out with Jesus you’ll gain Heaven and all your temporal needs.”

In other words,  get rich with Jesus here on earth and have mansions with gates of pearl on streets of gold in heaven. The rest of you be doomed.

Ed Martin
Montecito

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