Regarding the March 16 article, “Santa Barbara Pays 2 Department Heads Nearly $800,000 in Employment Settlements,” I want a job in the city I was born in.
You quit and get RICH! LOL
Scott Sheldon
Santa Barbara
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I find it fascinating that the huge monies that are being given to just two ex-employees will generate a lot of taxes that will go to the federal government and some to the state. And some of that money will then come back to the City of Santa Barbara in the form of grants and loans.
Perhaps that is the reason that public workers get higher compensations, so that public entities can acquire more in the future.
Pretty sweet!
Dave Blunk
Santa Barbara
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Regarding Noozhawk publisher Bill Macfadyen’s March 21 column, “Santa Barbara Payouts to 2 Ex-Employees Total an Unsettling $800,000,” the payouts for the two former department heads cost the city about $1 million all in.
The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors approve a pay raise that will cost us $1 million, too.
Can we ask President Donald Trump or Elon Musk to run for mayor? Our city government cannot be trusted with our tax money.
Every check that is written needs to be posted for all the citizens to see. The problem is the politicians can’t be trusted to post those special payments they make every day.
Can the district attorney look into the city’s checkbook?
The issue is TRUST. Sorry, that ship has sailed … with our tax money on board.
Won’t be long now for another city, state and federal tax hike initiative. Remember the politicians saying, “It’s only a ½-cent sales tax and we need it to cover our special payments.”
We need a Department of Government Efficiency for OUR city review. Elon, we need your help!
Thank you again to Macfadyen for turning on the switch. Does he have any experience with DOGE? Let’s take the next step to help our citizens.
Bart Bader
Goleta
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After reading about the $800,000 employee payoffs, I can only feel empathy for the middle- and lower-income earners in town. That’s their ever-escalating tax dollars being spent recklessly.
While taxes will increase to cover poor decisions and expanding government bureaucracy, the economic fate of more and more Santa Barbarans is signed, sealed and delivered via auto renewal.
This all contributes to the exorbitant cost of living in not only the city, but Santa Barbara County and, by extension, all of California.
Until economic realities are considered, the poverty level will rise, and more and more fat and excess will prohibit the working class from existing here.
Who will cook, clean your mess, mow your lawns? Those who do toil in service industries will have to charge excessively for those services. It becomes an endless escalation, until the local economy implodes from the burden.
Think about it when you vote for leaders and call for oversight. Oops, that’s not good, right? A Santa Barbara Department of Government Efficiency? Perhaps SBDOGE IS IN YOUR BENEFICIAL FUTURE.
Brian Massey
Sonoita, Arizona, and formerly of Santa Barbara
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I read Noozhawk South County editor Josh Molina’s March 12 article, “Santa Barbara School Board Votes to Send 85 Layoff Notices in Grueling, Emotional 8-Hour Meeting.” By sticking it out for the entire session, Molina proves, once again, that he’s a hardcore newsman.
And in his March 14 column, “Teacher Layoffs? Don’t Sleep on the Santa Barbara School Board,” publisher Bill Macfadyen writes: “Given the gravity of the topic, the Santa Barbara Unified School District trustees’ marathon was a travesty of transparency. You flunked.” Once again, Macfadyen gets one of my “Beacon of Reality” awards.
While the meeting going until after 2 a.m. was bad enough, the trustees’ vote to ax 85 teachers was disgusting. Considering the slowing enrollment in the Santa Barbara Unified School District’s schools, its administrative staff is bloated.
Shame on Superintendant Hilda Maldonado. Aware of decreasing enrollment, she should have recommended cuts in her staff.
Barring a suggestion from Maldonado to cut her staff, that the school board was also unwilling to furlough administrators is repugnant and demonstrates the trustees’ indifference to the needs and desires of district students.
Noozhawk readers with children in SBUSD schools should be outraged. They should remember that trustees Gabe Escobedo and Rose Muñoz are up for re-election next year.
Show your displeasure, people! Vote the two of them out of office. That will leave the board with a less administration-focused and more student-centric majority able to make sensible policy decisions.
Kudos to trustee Celeste Kafri for remembering that school districts exist to educate our children, not be the administrators’ jobs bank.
In fact, I was so impressed with Kafri that if she runs for re-election in three years, my checkbook will be open for a nice, fat donation.
Hib Halverson
Goleta
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I worked with Blas Garza, Mike Caston and Deborah Flores as a credentialed bilingual (Spanish) media specialist from 1990 to 2012.
Migration during that time changed the population of the district from approximately 80% English speakers to less than 50% in a very short period (my guess on stats).
Many parents left the local schools and enrolled their children in private ones for instruction in English only.
The district provides services to mono and bilingual Spanish speaking students. It’s expensive and Title I federal funds helped a lot. If Title I is cut or eliminated, there will have to be severe cuts.
If the elementary district could find a way to bring those English-speaking families back, it might improve funding for arts and music and other popular programs. Loss of enrollment means loss of funding for the schools, although we all pay taxes to support local schools.
The Santa Barbara high school district local attendance and parental support is high, as you can see from the recent meetings. The arts program at San Marcos High and the tech program at Dos Pueblos High, in particular, are very popular.
The Goleta Union School District has high local attendance and the arts, music and sports programs that families love. Parents have choices as to language instruction in English, Spanish or bilingual Spanish. La Patera School is the focus school for the latter. I also worked for the GGUSD as a media specialist.
Thank you for what you are accomplishing with Noozhawk. I started out in journalism as an editor of the Lompoc High School newspaper, and at the same time, editor for the teen page at the Lompoc Record.
I still appreciate well-written journalism and community involvement, and Noozhawk does this so well. Keep up the great work.
Annie Linn
Goleta
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Regarding the March 17 article, “Goleta Council to Review Traffic Impacts of Old Town Striping Project,” in the agenda for the March 18 City Council meeting under C-1, Public Works director Luz “Nina” Buelna states: “… staff negotiated a change order with reduced construction cost of approximately $2 million.”
This is false and I resent staff’s willingness to mislead the public. Not building something does not reduce the cost of construction. That savings claim is not true. I brought this up at the March 5, 2024, council meeting. Video footage 1:02:21.
At that meeting, Buelna admitted this. She did argue that dropping parts of the original bid, including grinding and decorative painting, made the Security paving proposal $460,000 less than the Granite Construction proposal.
This causes me to doubt the veracity of all the data being presented about conditions in Old Town. I suspect the data, dates and time frames were cherry picked and massaged. Even if one uses them, it is not a great return on a $2.1 million investment.
Months ago, simple changes in striping to the center lane could have cheaply assisted businesses on the west end of Old Town with safer and legal access to come and go from their parking lots.
The original proposals showed the center lane as a continuous left turn lane, much like Calle Real through the Calle Real Center shopping district, which promotes safe entry and exit with a center lane.
Other needed changes: The yellow crosswalk light near Orange Avenue is hard to see, it is placed too high and makes crossing dangerous for pedestrians who trust it.
The crosswalk at the Goleta Valley Community Center changes immediately upon demand and this stacks traffic during peak hours. There should be a delay.
Back-in parking should end. It is not intrinsically safer but it does cause backups and leads to other drivers swerving around.
These changes have driven 10% of the cars out of Old Town. Sales tax is down 8%! And we recently had the first fatality on Hollister Avenue in more than a decade.
Our city thinks this is a success. Really?
Richard Foster
Goleta
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Regarding the March 14 article, “Vandenberg, University Studying ‘Roar of Rockets,’ Colonel Says,” my house shakes during these rocket launches.
There are concerns about the effects of the booms on the ocean and its inhabitants. How about the effect on all the fault lines that cover our coast? Will we start seeing more earthquakes?
I hope the studies include this possibility.
Nancy Beaver
Santa Barbara
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The March 18 Lompoc City Council meeting included an item concerning the purchase of some solar panels for the long-awaited transportation complex on North D Street.
Mayor Jim Mosby had some questions:
First, the size of this purchase, the panels would cover 100,000 square feet, which is the same area that the local Home Depot covers.
Next was what the city would do with the panels, is there a project planned?
The staffer answered that there was a project being discussed, but to date there was no firm plan.
So, why are we buying something if there isn’t a planned project? The staffer said, “it isn’t our (city) money, it’s a federal grant and we have to either use it or lose it.” But it’s still taxpayers who would be paying the $731,000.
The staffer also said that solar technology is changing. So, as a taxpayer, I wonder why buy something if there is no project to use them on, place them in storage for who knows how long and then find out that because technology is advancing these units might be incompatible if a project plan is ever completed?
Ron Fink
Lompoc
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Regarding Noozhawk publisher Bill Macfadyen’s Feb. 21 column, “Ex-Top Senate Democrat Gloria Romero Shares Republican Conversion Factors,” his motivation to reiterate three times Gloria Romero’s reprehensible recent remarks was very disappointing.
Romero changed her party so she could vote for President Donald Trump. Does she think he represents the best interests of the working class?
Her denigration of unions revealed a profound lack of knowledge of what unions have done for the working class.
Apparently she doesn’t know that the Education Department was created to provide appropriate education for our most vulnerable children, or maybe she doesn’t care. Supporting school choice only means that the support for fair and equal education for all students would be drained of financial resources.
Finally, the revelation that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s departure from the Democratic Party brought tears to her eyes was the ultimate ridiculous statement.
Macfadyen’s support of Romero appears to me to be an effort to recruit uninformed people to leave the Democratic Party in favor of the other party. Is this improving our country? I think not.
Joan Jamieson
Santa Barbara
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Regarding Rabbi Chaim Loschak’s March 13 commentary, “The Grocery List That Changed Everything,” about the serendipity of unexpected happenings, as a rather Reformed Jew, I enjoyed his quiet retelling of the Purim story.
No burning bushes, no thunderbolts, nothing supernatural, simply Esther, one brave young woman, doing the right thing at just the right time. She spoke truth to power. It was risky, the sleepless king could have disbelieved her with terrible consequences.
Whether the fabled story from the Old Testament actually happened this way, who can say?
Still, it encourages us to be prepared to accept miracles, large and mostly small … and to be grateful for when we have the humility and the presence of mind to recognize them.
Josie Levy Martin
Montecito
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As the CEO of Lompoc Valley Medical Center, I am writing to express my concern regarding the news of potential cuts to Medicaid funding that could have significant, deleterious effects for our hospital and community.
Lompoc Valley Medical Center is the only public hospital in Santa Barbara County, providing essential health-care services to our community.
Medicaid funding makes it possible for LVMC to provide health-care services that are indispensable to those in our hospital district. Severely reducing Medicaid funding would have devastating effects on the health, economy and emergency preparedness of our community.
LVMC is the backbone of health care for more than 60,000 residents, military personnel and all those who rely on our services.
We recognize the need for health-care reform and are ready to collaborate on solutions that focus on cost drivers and improving efficiency. This is central to our mission, values and strategic goals.
We are collaborating with several political officials, CenCal Health leadership, and health-care and medical associations to raise awareness to key decision-makers in Washington, D.C., urging them to consider the vital importance of preserving these funding streams for LVMC and our community.
Please join us in making sure our elected officials understand how important these resources are to the well-being of Lompoc and surrounding areas.
Yvette Cope
Lompoc Valley Medical Center
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