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W W W. S A N TA B A R B A R A S E N T I N E L .CO M
COVER Mazza’s Missive P.15 Weekly Capitalist P.5 Ed’s Take
P.18 Presidio Sports
P.6 It’s Crime Time
P.20 The Beer Guy
P.7 Letters to the Editor P.22 Girl About Town P.8 The Dish
P.25 Man About Town
P.10 Eight Days A Week P.27 Keepin’ It Reel P.12 SBView
P.28 Plan B
P.13 Pump Yourself Faces of SB
P.29 LOVEmikana
P.14 Mad Science
P.30 Residential Real Estate
off-market. on target.
...continued from p.3 Fair enough. But what do you see as the single biggest challenge stemming from a lack of party support? The message. There’s sort of a message that comes out when you have a party behind you because you have people trumpeting it from the mountaintops. I have that unique challenge of actually having to sit here and get out in front of as many people as possible and put the message out there. And in many cases, it’s going to be a perspective that people are not familiar with because it doesn’t fit nicely into one box or another. So the biggest challenge is going to be educating people on my platform, to have to be the one that has to reiterate my message and not have other people reinforcing it for me.
You talk about educating people. Would you characterize your platform in any particular way? I like to say that my overall platform is common sense governance. I think the most important thing in local government is the ability to look at any given issue through a clear lens – not a red one or a blue one. How does the issue affect everyone in the City? What solutions are being offered by the private and nonprofit sectors? None of this has anything to do with party affiliation; it has to do with research and education and understanding and, ultimately, common sense. Sounds refreshing. So, why don’t you briefly describe three things that you would work toward changing – as part of that common sense governance approach – if you were elected to City Council today? First thing, I think it’s important to recognize there is a lot of fiscal irresponsibility going on at our city government level. An example, and there are many: something like ninety percent of our general fund is spent on staff and staff benefits. Unsustainable. We have $200 million plus in unfunded pension
liabilities, a number of infrastructure needs – and all of these problems can be routed back to the fact that when times were good in Santa Barbara, people spent a lot of money that quite frankly got them elected. We can [fix the unfunded pension situation and other problems], and not necessarily by simply raising sales taxes or bed taxes but through common sense fiscal reforms. We need to tighten the belt – just like any family who spent too much last month and needs to cut back – and I have plans to address those challenges. Can you give me one specific issue that you would address in this regard if elected? I met with an unnamed city source who told me the reason that, for example firefighters and police officers get paid so much in Santa Barbara is really twofold: overtime and cost of living, respectively. I want to be clear here – I am not picking on either group. In fact, my military background helps me understand the vital importance of each. But the city source told me that our firefighters are constantly paid overtime because it is cheaper to do that than it is to hire more personnel due to the high cost of pension and other pension-related benefits. I say that we need to put those costs in line with what a business in the private sector would bear; not for existing personnel (we made a promise and should keep it) but for new hires specifically. Won’t that hurt our competitiveness for new hires? Matt, would you take a firefighting job in Santa Barbara for over $100,000 even if pension and pension-related benefits were lessened from what they are now? Fair enough. What about the cost of living issue? That came up more in connection with our police officers. Again, I mean ...continued p.23
MADE FROM RECYCLED SANTA BARBARA LOGS
S o L D � 3 8 9 2 S tat e S t. Steve Brown, Austin Herlihy and Chris Parker represented the seller in the off-market sale of this approx. 9,200 SF Office Building located at 3892 State Street.
Steve Brown
Austin Herlihy
Chris Parker
DRE 00461986
DRE 01518112
DRE 01887788
� 805.879.9607
� 805.879.9633
� 805.879.9642
Log on to www.radiusgroup.com for complete listings. 2 0 5 E . C a r r i l l o s t. s u i t E 1 0 0 | s a n ta B a r B a r a C a 9 3 1 0 1 8 0 5 . 9 6 5 . 5 5 0 0 | r a d i u s g r o u p. C o m
CUSTOM SAW MILLING-FURNITURE-WOOD 805-705-1154 • rob@bjorklundranch.com Localwood.net