I am writing to express my confusion about your newspaper.
Is there ever a week when The Independent is not singing the glories of Mayor Schneider? If there was, I must have missed it. Either you have her on the cover posing in front of the Clark Estate (without ever informing readers that half of her appointed trustees are backers of the Schneider-instigated lawsuits against the 101). I suppose this was a way to neutralize the one time reporter Nick Welsh wrote a somewhat critical piece on the community’s uprising against the mayor.
Not long after, The Indy was celebrating how Schneider survives in her “modest downtown home.” Okay, so hallelujah! that you published a hilarious piece by Ann Louise Bardach that laid out the whole sorry saga of the 101 Mess.
But then Schneider gets to write not one but two screeds in defense of what is truly indefensible: her attempts to derail the crucially needed, voter-approved initiative to rescue Santa Barbara from gridlock. Schneider’s self-serving babble fools no one: It’s clear as day that she’s doing the bidding (and collecting the bucks) of a few big wallets in Montecito.
Isn’t it time for The Independent to do some old-fashioned, shoe leather reporting and follow the money of what is driving Mayor Schneider agenda?