A recent comment about cutting city employees in half reminds me of Margaret Pettigrew, a woman who in the mid 1970s regularly wrote to the newspaper to demand the same thing. I always wondered if she meant vertically or horizontally.

I would like to remind everyone that the city of Santa Barbara provides many more services than most. For example, we have our own police, harbor, airport, water, and wastewater departments. In contrast, the City of Goleta provides none of these. (They contract with the sheriff for police services).

In addition, because of tourism and Santa Barbara’s position as a job center, there are many more people in the community on a daily basis than actually live here. They create additional demand for city services. Population alone is not an appropriate measure for the number of city employees a community should have. — Sheila Lodge

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