Council Race Gets Negative

House's outrageous pandering to Latino supremacist groups and gang members alone should disqualify him from office. Let's not forget Grant House's first reaction after the horrific murder of Luis Linares -- to phone Casa De La Raza to inquire if the gang thugs were "safe" from rampaging Anglos.

I am glad I sent my ballot in already. I can just ignore all the lying and backstabbing and just wait for the results.

This is indeed a stealthy 1990's campaign. I certainly hope that this negative Van Wolfswinkel campaign backfires. If yard signs are an indication, then there is some indication of conflicted households out there. I am seeing yard signs of mixed pairings of candidates, even of contrary positions. I am seeing infrequent and surprising support for Van Wolfswinkel's campaign to install his hand-picked right wing candidates.

The most surprising is on Stanley Drive in the Samarkand neighborhood, home of the couple that spearheaded the effort for those menacing "traffic calming" chicanes after their own surveys determined it was nearly all local traffic on their street and the neighbors were speeding. This couple also applied for an received the only SFR zoned parcel in the neighborhood (or even perhaps the entire city) with a C.U.P. for a granny flat and subsequently added density to their neighborhood and city. This couple also appealed the approval of their next door neighbors modest single story addition because of a minor front yard encroachment even though the their own property encroaches into the front yard setback. The new young couple to the neighborhood wanted a single story home for their young new family, didn't want to build a second story and did not want to build behind the house because it would require the removal of a mature backyard tree. But this Stanley Drive couple not only suggested they build up but filed a successful appeal.

All of this is conflicting because this couple's white picket fenced household has yard signs supporting McCammon which isn't too weird but they also have signs up supporting Francisco, Self and measure B. I am assuming of course that if this Stanley Drive couple had their current choices of council members their requests for chicanes, C.U.P. and appeal likely would have resulted in different results. This couple is now put in my "I've got mine, too bad for you" category. At least they don't have a yard sign up supporting Hotchkiss, yet.

Only in The Peoples' Republic of Santa Barbara could the candidates backed by Van Wolfswinkel be considered "right wing". Balanced budget? Control of gang violence? Listening to more than just well-placed special interest groups? Don't need any of that, do we...

BTW, people keep forgetting to mention that Van Wolfswinkel is an SB native, grad from SB High School - so much more politically effective for his opponents to call him a "rich Texas developer".

Want to see real dishonesty in a campaign? Try Helene's self-serving ads claiming that she fought for a balanced budget and was a leader in fighting gang violence. Riiiggghht. But, hey, she's backed by the local Democratic machine, so she must be OK, right?

House's intelligent can be summed up in his one quote, "“I think it reflects badly on their mothers.”

He is a big joke that runs short on common sense.

I don't understand why, with the clear possibility of four council seat vacancies, we are only voting for three. There should be rank order voting for four, otherwise it is a certainty that the wishes of the voters will not be represented in the outcome should one of the council members be elected mayor. This is simply not democracy.

The negative ad referred to in the article is revealing in another sense...they can't even spell! Grimer? This is definitely GRIME!

How about voting for the guys who aren't raising any funds for their campaign? That would mean they owe nothing to anybody and can do their job without having to return the favor.

I agree with Grant House's assessment. That ad ... which I also received ... says more about Van Wolfswinkel and his paid political hacks than anything else. I can imagine VW telling his staff, "Get me some dirt on House, pronto!" so he'd have something to mail out.

Regarding Van Wolfswinkel's odd slate of candidates and Measure B, I think its a clever attempt to split the progressive vote.

Send a simple message, man. Don't vote for the Van Wolf candidates. There are many others in the race: liberal, conservative, in-between. Do a little shopping, just not at Whole Foods.

None of the candidates, conservative or liberal, have the guts to address the real problem. The gangs, PUEBLO and leftover 60s radicals with roots in the SDS have formed an effective shadow government.

These groups have used accusations of racism to let gangs run wild and prevent even minimal enforcement of immigration law in Santa Barbara. We have a police chief who refuses to cooperate with ICE, and a left/right alliance that wants an open border to provide Democratic votes and Republican cheap labor. The tolerance of illegal immigration in Santa Barbara sends a broader message to gang members that their actions will not be punished as long as they are of the right demographic.

Good points, revisionist. I would observe that Schneider and her crowd are IMO the least likely to address these issues.

It is sad to see the ignorance in many of these posts. If anyone posts that La Raza or Pueblo are "Latino supremacist groups" they are either trolling or they have a very loose connection to reality.. The other canard that I see from the nativist trollers is that the local police should do more about illegal aliens. News flash, immigration is a Federal responsibility. Anyone who thinks that Chief Sanchez does not cooperate with the ICE, does not know a thing about the real situation and does not even take the time to read the news. Some in Santa Barbara cannot get over the fact that a Latino is Chief and he is doing a great job. Lose your racist ideas, the future is here either climb on or get out of the way.

Compare the quality of life in Santa Barbara 30 years ago to the quality of life today--observe the change--and ask yourself where you think we'll be in thirty years.

Per Herschel_Greenspans's point: Revisionist is correct: Schneider and the rest of her allies wouldn't dare touch the issue of our open border with a ten-foot pole.

Revisionist and Locke did not ascribe any racial or eugenic arguments to this thread, they merely pointed out the cause-and-effect of the the U.S.'s practice of being a safely valve for Mexico's dysfunctional political system. No matter how you slice it, if this continues, the exponential population increase that is happening to the south of the border, will negate any ideas of maintaining quality of life as long as the U.S. encourages the open border.

What is interesting is that a few decades back people who then were called "liberals" who today are called "progressives" were very adamant about family planning and birth control; these days however, they see that advocating such ideas conflict with their racial ideologies and since they don't want to offend those hypothetical constituents who have been their support base (and they don't want to be called racists) they go along with the plan of griping about urbanization and demonizing developers while at the same time tacitly supporting the policies which are the underlying source of the population increase.

What is ironic about this is that the Big Business contingent on the political Right are laughing at all of this since they are the main beneficiaries of the exploitation of Mexican laborers which is done at the expense of quality of life on both sides of the border.

What I'm seeing is that people want it both ways: They want the open border, but still want the "small town" feel, but it doesn't work that way. It is as though they expect people to come in to the U.S. in unlimited numbers but don't want them in their back yard driving cars and taking up space.

I honestly hate dirty politics. Especially by rich people that are just digging anything up. Honestly no one in life is perfect so I in voting can't expect that. Especially in these wonderful economic times.

Van Wolfswinkel seems like just another rich person trying to buy their juice to me. Not just that but he's behind that Measure B thing too. How lame is that we are arguing over 20 feet or something like that. What is the point.

So if all these people are voted in he's supporting and Measure B win's I guess we should just elect this rich buy Mayor. Whats the point he already bought the town like in Patrick Swayze in Road House!

Some times living in this city it's appalling how people care about some of the dumbest things imaginable. Especially when we have so many other serious issues to contend with.

If it's not enough on a City Council of 7 people to be:

an honest, caring, experienced, informed long-time resident;

to be a genuine, independent "small business" owner, long married to another independent "small business" owner;

to be among the 52% of Santa Barbarans who are renters;

to be positive, hopeful, and upbeat;

to treat employees, customers, neighbors, with patience, interest, and respect;

to seek out, listen to, represent, the parts of the community least well served;

to build bridges between business, civic institutions, government, and residents;

to try to make Santa Barbara a safer, quieter, cleaner bit of this crazy world,

then perhaps there's no room for a Grant House on the new
Santa Barbara City Council.

Some of his votes leave me scratching my head too.

But if character, integrity, knowledge, hard work, good intentions, and achievement still mean something around here, few need hesitate to invest one of their (3) Council votes re-electing Grant House, the Council's only incumbent on the ballot this year.

I love the city of Santa Barbara because of our compassionate, progressive, peace loving leadership and residents.
We need to show these right wing rich guys that they are not wanted or needed in our community. Don't let them divide the Progressive majority that exists here and makes the city of Santa Barbara such a wonderful, welcoming place to live and visit! Send the mean spirited bullies home and use your common sense by not supporting their candidates.
Our problems can be handled with ingenuity and compassion by the progressive leaders that refuse to lower themselves to the ugly bottom feeder tactics of this VW campaign. Good for you, Grant House! Glad I voted for your re-election!

In response to Mr. McDermott’s piece, we think that we appreciate the author’s confusion at our nuanced positions. While we assume that he has only good motives, we would like to set the record straight.

There are a few inaccuracies in his comments: (1) The proposed addition next door would have encroached 6 out of 20 feet into the front setback. This didn't seem modest to us, or to many neighbors. (2) One wing of our house is two inches less than twenty feet from the front sidewalk, within the usual margin of error according to planning staff. (3) The neighbors would not have had to remove their tree. At the City Council hearing, Planning Commissioner Bill Mahan showed that another wing of their house already approached the tree more closely than shifting 6 feet of the new addition to the rear of the yard would have. Furthermore, they had presented plans for new back steps that would have approached the tree even closer.

The granny unit was added to our house when it was built around 1939, decades before we purchased it. We wanted to legalize it, which we did at some expense. It does increase the number of Samarkand residents by 1. The current resident is low income, had been homeless for a while, pays less rent than the CUP allows, and parks off street, which meet the City's intent for this ordinance and minimizes the impact.

We are conflicted about the traffic calming issues. However, it does appear that the anti-calming device advocates are correct about planners' desires to make it difficult for cars, especially downtown. We think that this is rather short-sighted and ill-advised.

Measure B is about the aesthetics of our city. While there are some wonderful cities with tall buildings, they seem inappropriate here. Once tall buildings are in place, short of an earthquake, they’re there for good. Trying to build affordable housing in tall buildings is a very expensive and an unproductive way to go. Furthermore, it seems most unlikely that a small condo in a crowded building is what most commuters to our city are looking for. There is plenty of room left in current multi-family zones to use up the remaining resources, e.g., water.

City Council positions are non-partisan. We are interested in candidates who have demonstrated strong support and advocacy for sound planning and neighborhood preservation. We are very pleased with Dale Francisco’s performance in office these last two years. In our experience he has shown real concern and positive action in regard to issues affecting residents in our neighborhood as well as the community at large. We have known and worked with Cathie McCammon for several years now and think that she would make an excellent Council Member. Her legal and planning experience would prove extremely valuable. Michael Self is a neighbor, a tireless worker who does her homework, and has the best interests of our community at heart. As to a fourth candidate, our yard is already too full of campaign signs.

Dear Stan, Bill, Don, and all the long worded column writers. This is a comments section, not an excuse for your editorials. Keep it short, keep it sweet. When I see these garrulous epistles I scroll on by. Wheee.

Indy staff, how about a word limit for these comment sections?

The banner for this article is misleading. A casual reader seeing it could assume that the IRS or some other authority was involved. How about, "Unsubstantiated claims accuse House of tax problems." Or, "Texan accuses House of tax problems." Or, "Politically motivated charges accuse House of tax problems."

I think the Indy owes Mr. House a retraction and an apology.