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# City could take lesson from Santa Barbara
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/city-could-take-lesson-from-santa-barbara/
- Published: 2005-05-23T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T07:11:26.000Z
- Author: Bill Bauer
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import, Homeless

*MY WRITE*

I’m back. Long time readers of the Daily Press may remember some of the 101 columns I’d written prior to taking a leave of absence last July to run for City Council.

“My Write” had its fans and detractors. Elected officials, city staff, so-called neighborhood activists and, especially, the political machine that dominates the city politic: Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights were frequent targets of my umbrage.

And, there’s a special place in my heart for those well-meaning social engineers in the cabal that really run the city from behind the scenes — the SMRR steering committee. It’s filled with political consultants out to line their own pockets, wannabe office holders and persons with “social justice” and “social services” agendas designed to change the world while ignoring community needs.

Across the political battlefield are the business interests: secretive, almost anonymous entrepreneurs who spent tens of thousands of dollars last year complaining about the number of transients on our streets and an inefficient City Hall then spent hundreds of thousands of dollars more to re-elect a three-term councilman who favored a beachside tent city for vagrants.

With all the monkeyshines, chicanery and downright crap, it’s a wonder that more people aren’t cynical, intolerant and fed up. Maybe that’s why a writer for a local online news service referred to me as “Mr. Cranky.” But, I look at this column as a voice for common sense and practicality. So hang on. We’re going to have a fun ride.

When I go out of town, I can’t help but realize how goofy things are here. I spent a day in Santa Barbara last week. As with most places I visit, the first thing I noticed was the dearth of drunks and street transients.

The lack of clutter was a refreshing change. You don’t see junky merchandise carts on State Street — Santa Barbara’s equivalent of our Third Street Promenade. Plantings between the street and the sidewalk are especially attractive. They provide a touch of green and separate pedestrians from motor vehicles.

Adjacent parking garages are directly accessible, eliminating scurrying through stinky, filthy alleys or walking around the block. If Santa Barbara can do it, why can’t we create a downtown that’s attractive, pleasant and well conceived?

Their oceanfront neighborhoods are not “walled off” from the community by high rise hotels and condos. They’re open, charming and low-key — a delightful mix of older, light industrial businesses, skateboard and surf shops, art galleries, crafts stores, apartments, family restaurants, and tourist-or recreation-related enterprises such as bicycle rental shops.

All of this is because of very restrictive building codes that reflect the desire for neighborhood preservation and low-scale development the citizenry favors. Their city government apparently listens. Here, City Hall seems to be favoring Macerich’s redo of Santa Monica Place into a mega-big and mega-swanky regional shopping center and housing development, which is unfortunate and the wrong way to go.

Santa Barbara’s pier, Stearn’s Wharf, is clean and friendly without the seedy, swap-meet atmosphere we’ve cultivated on our own pier and in downtown. And, their beach front skateboard park is free to anyone and everyone.

Back here, the homeless still take precedent for City Hall’s attention and resources. Recent City Council actions have included seeking a $1 million federal grant for homeless housing and a development of a plan to hire a “homeless czar” — a person “with a nationally known reputation” who will convince surrounding communities they should “do their share” to solve the problem of vagrants and transients living on the region’s streets. Yeah, right.

Keep in mind that a prospective sobering center near Brotman Memorial Hospital on the Culver City/West LA border and partially financed by Santa Monica, was recently scuttled after nearby residents complained. Wanna bet it’ll wind up here — most likely in the Pico corridor?

In West LA/Culver City, elected officials listen to and respond to citizen concerns. Here, City Hall really believes we want more vagrants and services for them in our community.

Tell me there isn’t something out of whack with a city that spends millions of our dollars annually on drunks, bums and transients, and then charges our youth $3 a day or $70 per season to use a public skate park. Unbelievable. (Bill Bauer is a longtime Santa Monica resident.)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 23, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/052305.pdf?ref=smdp.com)