Regarding the June 11 article, “Santa Barbara Council Votes to Put Sales Tax Measure on Ballot, OKs Overall Budget,” if approved, this tax increase would bring the city sales tax to 9.25%.

Apparently the 1% Measure C sales tax increase in 2017 wasn’t enough to enable the city staff to balance the budget for 2025 and going forward.

In all of the discussions about the city’s budget shortfall there has been almost no discussion of cutting the expense side of the equation (as is the first option in the private sector).

A review of all of the staff reports and ordinance language reveals nothing about cutting expenses.

Following the lead of our tax-and-spend federal and state governments, staff has only proposed, and the City Council approved, ways to raise more revenue.

There does not appear to have been any discussions as to what, or if, other options could have been considered and why they were discarded.

Last month, during the council’s Finance Committee budget discussions, it was pointed out that one of the key factors driving the budget shortfall is the steady and significant increase in salary and pension costs.

In 2023, the city spent $75.6 million in salaries and $46 million in benefits. One year later, salaries were up to $86 million and benefits up to $55.7 million.

That is a 14% and 21% increase respectively in one year! But no explanation has been given as to why or how this could or should be controlled going forward.

Measured against other California communities, Santa Barbara is demonstrably over-staffed. And comparing public sector to private sector management and executive salaries and benefits (especially retirement plans), generally shows that the public sector comes out significantly ahead.

So right-sized staffing and bringing top-level salaries more in line with the private sector are definitely areas to focus on rather than to use the simple expediency of resorting to another regressive sales tax increase.

It would be nice if the City Council and the city staff dealt with the budget and funding challenges more as we in the private sector must, rather than simply continuing to squeeze taxpayers.

Art Thomas
Santa Barbara

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In response to the June 7 letters to the editor regarding the misbelief that the back-in angled parking spaces coming to Hollister Avenue in Old Town Goleta and Cathedral Oaks Road are too dangerous.

I offer a suggestion: Drive east on East Cabrillo Boulevard just beyond the Cabrillo Pavilion to the East Beach beach volleyball courts and try out the angled parking spaces that were installed by the City of Santa Barbara in 2019. They mimic exactly the design planned for Goleta. Traffic lane, bike lane, angled parking.

Since that change there hasn’t been any serious car versus car or car versus bike accidents directly related to the parking arrangement.

How is this possible? One can postulate that back-in angled parking is not as dangerous as some would try to have us believe.

Kevin McDaniels
Santa Barbara

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Regarding the June 12 article, “Police Clear UCSB Building Occupied By Protesters; No Students Arrested,” the UC Santa Barbara students vandalizing Givertz Hall should be prosecuted.

Not only should they be prosecuted, each of them should be identified and expelled from attending any U.S. university.

If the students are unhappy with the investments made by UCSB or any university, why would they make the decision to apply to and attend such a disgraceful establishment?

This behavior needs to end. These spoiled, privileged individuals need to be made an example of. The demand for full legal and academic amnesty has got to top the list of stupidity.

Patrick Cooper
Santa Barbara

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I wonder why the “occupying” folks didn’t tunnel under Givertz Hall. Seems more Hamas-like to do that.

Ness Carroll
Santa Barbara

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As a UCSB student I can attest that college has become bafflingly expensive. This ballooning price tag means that, for many, a public four-year university is prohibitively costly.

This cost means any plan to make college more accessible must address the root issue: gargantuan tuition that only seems to be increasing.

One significant factor driving up costs are textbook publishers’ schemes to inflate prices in collusion with universities. Nationwide, publishers are pushing for a policy of automatic textbook billing that would automatically add the costs of textbooks to students’ tuition bills.

Despite student pushback, these programs are rolling out throughout California. My friends tell me about being inundated with unnecessary or exorbitantly priced materials automatically billed to them.

We need the Education Department to ensure that students aren’t automatically opted in to these costly programs. The Biden administration should listen to students and not cater to publishers and bookstores.

Jake Twomey
Isla Vista

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Cheri Rae’s June 9 commentary, “Why Is ‘Tree City’ Santa Barbara Destroying Historic Landmark Pines?” was somewhere between terrible journalism and gaslighting.

There was no mention — ZERO —of the reason the trees are being removed: that they are dead or dying, and falling on cars and perhaps people.

I’m surprised Noozhawk put its good name on something so one-sided.

David Beaver
Santa Barbara

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I’m not an arborist but many of those East Anapamu Street pine trees are obviously unwell — to put it charitably. I’m sorry to see them go, but I’d prefer that to one of them crushing my car in the next storm.

A. Cardones
Santa Barbara

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In his June 7 letter to the editor, Glen Dorfman may have forgotten that our civilization and constitutions value and use numbers to determine the will of the voting people.

It is this construct that determines how Americans determine who becomes the next president. To implement that construct of majority, I used Dominion voting machines. Disinformation was given by one so-called “news” station that was proven wrong and paid the penalty for lying.

I was questioning Dorfman’s opinion that disinformation cannot be “taught” by the liars in our society. It takes more time and energy but it is possible.

Against many dishonest voices, President Joe Biden was chosen by NUMBERS. That method has worked throughout our government’s existence and only recently have we had to fight disinformation.

Dorfman’s original premise was that one cannot learn to separate disinformation from lies, and I continue to challenge him. There are sources and entities within our society that have the ability, as in the Dominion case, to demonstrate that those voting machines counted accurately who had won the presidency. How can he challenge that truth?

There are also, in the face of lies, the concepts of reality, of logic, of historical facts. It is unfortunate that to defend our democracy we must prove and prove again what is true, what is real against the mountains of lies being flung into our daily lives — and only because there are dishonest men greedy for power who will say and do anything to achieve it. But we can demonstrate that they are lying.

In high school I was taught that the Earth was round. I believed my teacher. Since then I have seen photographs that Earth IS round.

I don’t know what the Flat-Earthers are saying these days. I hope soon schools will be teaching children the skills to separate myth from reality, truth from disinformation.

Nancy Freeman
Goleta

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