Comments by GregMohr
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Posted on April 13 at 5:17 p.m.
-siiigh- Queen had the signature song, "Another One Bites The Dust," but literally it's pretty tasteless these days. This is much better, as performed by J. Andrew Caldwell's smarter brother: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZkouu... .
Posted on April 13 at 4:54 p.m.
Ken, nice try but it wouldn't pass the equal protection clause. The best we can do is my favorite bumper sticker: "Welcome to Santa Barbara! Spend freely, leave your kids here, and go home."
Posted on April 13 at 12:46 p.m.
"sbrobert" and others, the OTD requires all of the protection you mention, in plain black and white (the OTD and other relevant documents are available online, see http://santabarbara.legistar.com/Legi... ). The BOS decision on 4/9 was strictly economic and political: let the state Coastal Conservancy accept the OTD, along with the major burden of defending against the threatened lawsuit. The really crappy message this sends is, if you want to do something that needs county approval and have access to piles of cash for your lawyers, all you need to do to get your way is threaten to sue. The BOS majority will cave in to such threats, because they-we need to spend money to fix roads. If you doubt my take, review the hearing online and draw your own conclusions.
The BOS action was cowardly, duplicitous, and completely predictable and understandable. We as taxpayers will foot the bill for legal defense, no matter what. Some day, somehow, people other than HRA members and their faves will have access to that coastline. I was encouraged by Mr. Amerikaner's apparent offering of the proverbial olive branch, to work something out, but for cryin' out loud: it's been 31 years since the OTD was recorded, and well over 40 years since the ranch was subdivided and walled off to the unwashed masses. If Sea Ranch up north could work out a deal for the public's benefit, while protecting the interests of property owners and the natural environment, we can do it here.
Posted on April 13 at 11:56 a.m.
Lost in all this is the fact that the sales tax is the most regressive, disproportionately falling upon the people with the least discretionary income and accumulated wealth. Santa Barbara is a very wealthy place--can't we do better than raising the sales tax?
And as for "willy88"'s "... why can't we get 10% more efficiency out of our existing government workers and processes? Answer: there is no incentive to do this and no penalty for changing how things are done": government workers are doing more with less, and have been doing so since at least the late '70s, just like all workers. It's the standards of productivity that keep being raised higher and higher, to the point where highly educated and trained staff are doing their own erstwhile clerical work through automated systems for written products, record-keeping, mailing, and even technical drafting. Not to mention '88's non sequitur, "no penalty for changing how things are done." I guarantee, there are severe penalties for changing how things are done, unless you get authorization from several layers of management, and it'd better be in writing or else you'll be hung out for the buzzards. Been there, done that, got hung out more than once and then once too often.
Posted on April 5 at 4:46 a.m.
Role models: Steve Pappas and Mike Stoker. Just for laughs, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perennia... ; there's a perennial candidate named Vermin Supreme.
Posted on February 23 at 9:51 a.m.
Interesting comments, all. In my view, as one who worked for the county for over 28 years under six CAO-CEOs spanning four decades (1979-2007), Eckermann gets my nod as being most spot-on.
Dear BOS: DON'T hire another career-climbing outsider who tells you what you want to hear, and spends a lot of time trying to figure out what it is you want to hear next. DO hire a dedicated local with a commitment to providing excellent public service above all else, and who won't hesitate to tell you what you need to hear. And look for someone who'll cleanse some upper echelons of management, getting rid of those who are technically incompetent, mendacious, personally malicious and vindictive, and otherwise ineffective in accomplishing that main objective: providing excellent public service--doing the greatest public good, with the least private and public harm.
The echo chamber of sycophants must go the way of the dodo, not just at the county, but everywhere. That's the type of management that got us into invading Iraq, and that's killed off countless previously-successful business enterprises. Don't run government like a business, burning it to the ground and collecting the insurance (credit Lewis Black). Run it like a successful non-profit organization, the kind that prospers and lasts.
Posted on February 23 at 9:11 a.m.
Not Chik-whatever--think Domino's Pizza and how many millions it's funneled to the owners' pet causes, mainly subverting reproductive freedom.
Posted on February 13 at 4:57 a.m.
Amazing. Put the $6 a day in context: the price of a decent but inexpensive bottle of wine; less than 1.5 gallons of gas; a footlong sub at a well-known franchise, plus a soft drink, no tip; or less than many yuppies spend on overpriced coffee drinks in a single morning. Six measly bucks for a day's worth of sustenance is pathetic.
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Posted on April 24 at 12:26 p.m.
Ah-HAH! It all comes down to "those damned unions, damn them." What's the link between "willy88" and "foofighter," except for incognito references to WWII villains real and imagined?
But seriously...willy88's castigation of unions, in the context of an unverified disproportionate increase in NON-teaching staff between 1955 and [now?], is just plain non sequitur. And foofighter's attacks on access to humanity's accumulated knowledge is just plain unbelievable. Yeah, let's burn the books, that's what we'll do! Gets rid of lice too!
On Opposition to Bond Sales Prompts Lawsuit