Happy 2025, Santa Barbara!

As we welcome in our shiny new year, let’s take a brief inventory of some of the events that happened in Santa Barbara this past year. For the first time in more than a quarter of a century, we welcomed someone from outside the city ranks into the position of City Administrator. Kelly McAdoo, who had been the city manager in the city of Hayward, California, joined us in May. Kelly’s extensive background and fresh perspective have already paid dividends within our organization, and her goals and challenges for Santa Barbara present a worthy “to-do” list.

I have had the pleasure of working with Congressman Carbajal’s staff in securing FEMA funding as well as cooperation from Caltrans to address our chronic flooding issues during extreme storm events. State Senator Limon and Assemblymember Hart have been a constant presence in our quarterly All-County Mayors’ Conclaves and are tuned in to our local concerns and issues.

We opened a multi-agency navigation center on Chapala Street to help address the issue of directing folks off of the streets and out of the public parks into the appropriate available services. Council approved an “Affordable Housing Trust Fund” to provide opportunities to address our local housing needs.

Santa Barbara’s Police and Fire departments have been actively recruiting and filling in some positions that have been held open in the past few years due to budget cuts. The new academy graduates are incredibly impressive men and women who are joining our very fine public safety departments.

Illegal street food vendors have been a serious problem these past months within our city and throughout the state. Our city code enforcement personnel have dedicated many evening hours to mitigate these issues, and have performed to the limits of the law by citing and, in some cases, prosecuting violators. County Supervisor Joan Hartmann and I have formed a county-wide task force in a multi-agency effort to suppress this issue, including our public safety and county health departments. These unlicensed food vendors cause public danger, health and environmental hazards, as well as unfairly compete with local compliant food service operations. Please do your part by not patronizing these facilities.

After multiple decades of effort, we finally broke ground on a new police station. This building will provide a facility for modern policing as well as an active community center. In addition, the old station site may provide some interesting possibilities for housing. Dwight Murphy park is about to undergo major renovation, and will feature a fully accessible playground in the name of Gwendolyn Strong. The library plaza, named for local philanthropist Michael Towbes, is now open for business. Both of these major civic projects involved decades of planning within the community and long-term financial development. Next in line for the downtown will likely be De la Guerra Plaza, yet another project that’s been in the hopper for some time but is another piece of the downtown improvement portfolio.

Downtown revitalization is taking shape, perhaps not always at the pace we’d all like, but moving forward nonetheless. Along with some new retail establishments, cultural centers, such as the new Santa Barbara Film Festival theater, are injecting energy into the area. With the State Street Master Plan still in the conceptual stage, it is my hope that we can come to a consensus and move forward on some interim projects and experiment with configurations and possibilities to bolster vitality in the immediate term.

I am optimistic about 2025 and thereafter. We will be welcoming a new colleague onto council while acknowledging the dedication and service of a departing councilmember. Efficiencies and customer service within the city organization are top priorities for our new city administrator and my council colleagues. The voter-approved sales-tax revenues will not only serve to repair the budgetary wounds that remain from the pandemic, but allow the city to bring services to the appropriate levels.

While many are concerned with events in Washington, DC, I am confident that the fundamentals that define our country are solid and inviolable. For every distasteful or despicable act we see in the news, there are millions of positive and productive acts every day we often don’t hear about. I love this country and I love my city. (Okay, my state can get on my nerves from time to time, particularly when it comes to land use issues.) Local issues do matter. Maintaining our everyday quality of life is my top priority. At the end of the day, we are all still the de facto government. That which we have control over requires our awareness and individual involvement.

Wishing all of Santa Barbara a prosperous new year!