On Oct. 30, a special Goleta City Council meeting will consider a five-year plan for capital improvement projects. City staff recommends that the council approve a $65 million contract for Project Connect, a plan to connect side streets in the industrial areas of Old Town.
In 2021, the city had a five-year capital improvement plan totaling $247 million, of which $108.5 million was unfunded. Noozhawk reported at the time that the Ekwill Street and Fowler Road extension was projected to cost $33 million. Three years later, that number is $65 million.
To help close the gap, the city is asking that the $8.3 million of Measure A funds that are set aside for the Brandon Drive overcrossing on Highway 101 be looted for this project. Ten years ago, the Public Works Department called that project a “necessity” in western Goleta.
Staff also recommends taking money from Measure B sales tax revenue, which the city let the public believe would repair our sidewalks and streets.
Numerous projects are delayed, which means the city started the project, wasted staff time and often spent revenue, yet put it on the shelf for lack of funding. Now, the city wants to start new underfunded projects!
Last year, the backlog on infrastructure was $43 million. Not one council member could tell me what that backlog is today. (Answer: around $50 million.)
We need a course correction by the City Council. It is time to deliver what was promised, take health and safety issues seriously, and build the infrastructure needed in western Goleta not an industrial zone.
Show up and tell the city council No!
Richard Foster
Goleta
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Having read some excellent comments on Santa Barbara and being of sound mind maybe, just maybe, some folks in our town and state may consider changing your vote to rid this town and state of these kind of folks in office who basically ruin everything they touch.
Just keep in mind that Gov. Gavin Newsom wants all 50 states to be like California. Just think on that for a bit!
John Sween
Santa Barbara
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I attended the Oct. 24 Santa Barbara Unified School District school board meeting to speak about Dyslexia Awareness Month.
In more than a decade of advocating for dyslexic students, I have worked to persuade SBUSD officials to improve practices, with varying degrees of success, depending on district leadership, but too few lasting institutional changes.
Dyslexia affects 20% of students and, when they are not identified or taught in the way they learn, these students experience reading struggles that lead to academic difficulties and socio-emotional effects.
This time, I spoke about a bright, frustrated fifth-grader who cannot read. Since kindergarten, his classroom experience has been one failure after another through no fault of his own.
His dyslexia was misidentified as ADHD, and inappropriate instruction has kept him from reaching his full potential. Now the district has dug in, unwilling to provide the intensive intervention that would most benefit him, offering instead a patchwork approach with an inexperienced, overworked educator unlikely to significantly improve his life chances.
I had only 90 seconds to speak, rather than three minutes, because there were more than 20 speakers that night. Most were teachers asking for significant salary increases. They described personal financial hardships, staffing shortages, and alarming special education violations that add insight to why students like the fifth-grader are falling so far behind.
These issues are inextricably linked as educators are forced to publicly plead for improved working conditions; parents and advocates are forced to plead in interminable meetings for the free appropriate public education for a child.
All are making their case for improved conditions to an ever-changing array of well-paid district officials, sitting behind their laptops, unmoved, holding individual fates in their hands. And school board trustees observing it all.
My own dyslexic son — whose struggles started me on this path of dyslexia knowledge 15 years ago — compares this crusade to banging my head against the wall. For years, he has told me, “Mom, they don’t want to hear what you have to say.”
He figured it out long before I did.
Cheri Rae
The Dyslexia Project director
Santa Barbara
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It was interesting to read the information about Santa Barbara’s “Free School” in the Oct. 24 article, “Santa Barbara Free School’s Mission Is to Create a Vibrant Community That Grows for Generations.”
Starting classes at 10 a.m. is certainly great for adolescent learners, and the amount of choice given the students feels overwhelming but also positive.
However, in this sponsored piece I have to chuckle at the school calling itself the “only democratic school” in Santa Barbara. Really?!
This school seems to be part of a disturbing trend in which “teachers” are reduced to mere “specialists” who may or may not be “called in” as the students determine their needs in classes they fashion.
The school leaders (never named) contend that “nontraditional teachers offer much to our students that conventional subject-matter teachers cannot: professional experience, cross-curricular learning, collaborative power dynamics, and fresh energy, just to name a few.”
In my 45 years of teaching, 36 at Crane Country Day School, our teachers generally possessed professional experience and pushed “cross-curricular learning” … ooh, and “collaborative power dynamics” whatever that odd phrase means.
We never hear about civics, about traditional mathematics and science instruction. Do they have a science lab, and so on?
I’ve also taught in public schools, and I find the outlook of the Free School to be part of a disheartening trend in which teacher has almost become a bad word, and the respect for classroom teachers has declined significantly. You know, those darned regular teachers, they just don’t have that “fresh energy.”
Baloney! I know many public school teachers brimming with energy who come in every day and work very hard.
I salute our community’s wonderful “conventional subject-matter teachers” in public and private schools who work in difficult conditions, face all kinds of students (and parents), and are the heroes of this generation.
Dan McCaslin
Santa Barbara
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While 1,400 people were killed in the surprise attack in Israel and continue to be killed or wounded, it’s important to note that it wasn’t only Jews killed but people of various faiths and nationalities currently living in or visiting Israel.
Jamie Edlin
Santa Ynez Valley
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The Los Olivos Community Service District has been gifted a $75,000 grant to complete a third-party study to determine the most efficient and cost-effective wastewater options for Los Olivos residents, to protect the groundwater, and to preserve our quaint town’s history and open spaces.
After months of dithering and nay-saying by the district’s board president, POLO, a local nonprofit organization founded in 2003 to protect the rural character of Los Olivos and the Santa Ynez Valley, threw a much-needed lifeline to the district that was short on cash and seemed to be fresh out of inspiration.
The district will have spent more than $1 million of district residents’ taxpayer money in the last five years without yet constructing adequate test wells and/or commencing work on an appropriate design for a wastewater collection and treatment system.
The latter is especially disappointing in light of the fact that the district board had community and Santa Barbara County agency buy-in for a “phased approach” that, had the CSD board pursued it, would already have the downtown commercial core off septic and, most likely, also would have decent public restrooms available downtown for residents and visitors alike.
Over the course of the last four years, that has not happened, but this POLO grant presents an opportunity to get this project back on track with a focus on a local solution to a local problem.
POLO believes that how Los Olivos addresses its wastewater issues is the single biggest issue controlling the preservation of Los Olivos and the character of the greater Santa Ynez Valley.
It is vital that the residents and property owners of Los Olivos fully understand the costs, benefits, and negatives of the various collection and treatment options available.
As a result, POLO is donating up to $75,000 to the Los Olivos Community Service District for the purpose of completing a third-party engineering study to evaluate the feasibility, design, and cost of various local wastewater collection and treatment options in the district service area.
Michelle de Werd
Los Olivos
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