blazer
By Blazer
This nice round 10,000 homes number was tossed out by Kristen Miller, CEO of the Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce, during the annual State of the Cities luncheon this past Thursday. Miller set the tone for the afternoon to an assembled crowd of 400 at the Hilton Santa Barbara.
Building 10,000 units of workforce housing was Miller’s mic drop moment on the dais, details were short in accomplishing her five figure housing goal as she handed the baton to the Mayors of Santa Barbara, Goleta and Carpinteria to fill in the blanks. Click here to read the Chamber’s “Roadmap to Recovery” document.
First up was Santa Barbara Mayor Randy Rowse. He wasted no time framing his accomplishments in disaster preparation, homeless challenges, expanded policing, water storage and online permitting processes. Rowse steered clear of mentioning permitting fees or State Street parklets but talked about how raising the sales tax to 9% has created less surprises in our Public Works Department. Anyone remember the last time we had a water main break? Solutions for workforce housing in the downtown corridor was mentioned but no numbers were promised. Overall, Rowse did a good job of reminding everyone of why he got the most votes last time around.
Paula Perotte, Mayor of Goleta, jumped into the fray with a promise of spending $42 on infrastructure in the Goleta Valley. She, too, was excited to speak of all that could be done thanks to Goleta’s 1.25% sales tax increase kicking in January 1st. More safety, services and roundabouts are all coming to Goleta, and you thought it was hard to recognize the place last time you visited Costco. A prediction of moving the city to 100% renewable energy by 2030 was an aggressive promise, a slide show that featured tearing down the Haskell’s pier was offered as proof Goleta is no longer an oil town. Again lack of workforce housing was painted as the villain in the Good Land, the answer of how we fix that given the number of projects already completed in the last 10 years remained fairly opaque. Goleta will be doing much of the heavy lifting on the homeless front with the Super 8 near the corner of Hollister and Fairview opening soon as Buena Terra, a County run housing and service center for those in need.
Al Clark of Carpinteria closed the mayoral portion of the show. His low key delivery on why Carpinteria is one of the last remaining small beach towns in California was a sharp contrast to the other two mayors. Clark walked a fine line between wishing for more single family homes and opposing a project just over the city limits on County land. Blame for lack of housing in Clark’s view is vacation rentals and part time residents. He went on to opine that 50% of the houses in his Concha Loma neighborhood are uninhabited most of the year. Clark also acknowledged the success of the 1.25% hike in the sales tax a few years back, claiming that tourist pay half of all sales tax in Carpinteria. No evidence was offered to support his observation. Keeping with the small town focus, Clark said proudly there was no Costco in Carpinteria, nor would there be on his watch.
City Manager Roundtable (courtesy photo)
The show was closed by city managers in a roundtable discussion moderated by Trevor Large predicting where we will be in the next dozen or so years. Santa Barbara City Administrator Rebecca Bjork, Goleta City Manager Robert Nesbit and Carpinteria’s Assistant City Manager Mike Ramierz were well prepared to answer the budget questions and gave a quick wrap on our journey ahead.
As the crowd spilled out of the meeting to blue skies and 75 degrees, we were all reminded how easy it is to look past the high prices, the housing crunch and 4 months of rain to focus on what’s really important. Summer is only 60 days away and this is where we get to live.
What a piece of propaganda crap.
Hey 951, I was just reporting what transpired at a public gathering. where is it inaccurate?
“Clark also acknowledged the success of the 1.25% hike in the sales tax a few years back, claiming that tourist pay half of all sales tax in Carpinteria. No evidence was offered to support his observation.”
I’m so old I can remember when journalists used to look these kinds of things up.
A quick Google shows where that statement “tourist(s) pay half of all sales tax in Carpinteria” comes from.
ToT or Transitory Occupancy Tax is a sales tax $2.3M
State Sales Tax $1.9M
Slightly more than 1/2
From the 2022 Budget, Page 3 (you don’t have to read al 342 pages)
The City’s transient occupancy tax (TOT) revenue, projected at $2.3 million
(representing 19.8% of total revenues) has been most significantly impacted by the
decrease in tourism due to the ongoing pandemic. While projected TOT revenue
represents a significant 21.0% improvement over prior year, it remains below the prepandemic annual high.
State sales tax revenue, projected at $1.9 million (representing 16.7% of total
revenue), reflects an increase of 8.4% increase over previous year. While the projected
sales tax revenue continues to improve from the negative impact throughout the
pandemic, it still remains below fiscal year 2019 levels. On the horizon, mass
deployment of the Covid-19 vaccine and the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 will
further support greater consumer spending.
Thanks for the update Edney. TOT while it is a sales tax of 12% on room nights in the city it was unaffected by the voters approved retail sales tax of November 2018. In his speech, Mr. Clark was referring to the 9% sales tax and claiming half of that total is paid for by tourists. I am curious how that calculation is made.
Build, baby, build. The chamber likes concrete and oil. And on the national level, the Chamber does not support pay equity. Why do these local chamber women put up with that.
Miller has been dreaming of building 10,000 homes in Goleta for her entire career as Chamber Queen. A lot of us wish she really would drop the mic and retire already.
We’ve been talking about this for years, if not decades, yet NO ONE has proposed HOW we’re going to build 1,000 workforce housing units let along 10,000. Lot’s of blame and finger pointing, but no solutions.
Developers make housing for rich people who require workers for their support, but no housing is made for the workers who get marginal pay. These people cannot afford to live her and must commute or live three families to a house. Instead of developing land with 85% of housing for upper incomes and 15% for affordable housing, the opposite needs to occur, with 85% of affordable housing and 15% of upper income housing, since it takes so many service people to address the “needs” of upper-income people. Lets get our proirities in line with the reality of our community.