Keep Santa Barbara Classy

When I describe the city of Santa Barbara to my relatives in Kentucky, I love talking about its laid-back, small-town feel. Cute beach houses and happy people complement its coastline setting. However, Santa Barbara’s proposed new general plan threatens our community with a high-density housing plan that will turn this unique city into a miniature Manhattan.

In his article Density Deal Gone in a Blink, Nick Welsh reports that the Santa Barbara City Council has invested the past five years, and three million dollars, into the making of the General Plan, which is supposed to lay out the next 20 years worth of housing growth and development in Santa Barbara. The debate over whether to increase housing density, as a solution to employee concerns about affordable housing, has caused (as Josh Molina, writing in the The Daily Sound, put it) “gridlock” among councilmembers, who pushed back the issue for another two months.

Keep pushing, please.