Even though a great percentage of your readers are against Measure S, you chose to endorse it. You have stabbed your paper’s constituents and the people of the SBCC district in the back. SBCC and its 12,000 or more outside students is a growing cancer on our community. These students have become adverse to the quiet enjoyment of other residents, especially on the Westside of Santa Barbara and Isla Vista.

Measure S has no specific spending guidelines listed and is a blank check of $288 million for Lori Gaskin & Co. The oversight committee for Measure V is a group of political cronies, who for the most part don’t have any background in finance and construction. The Measure S citizen’s oversight committee will also be chosen by the SBCC trustees, the very people that they are supposed to oversee.

Any existing housing for SBCC’s outside students that is purchased with our money will cause the forced move of non-student renters, including workers, the poor, the elderly, and those on fixed incomes. Many will have to leave Santa Barbara and commute. The purchase of Torres Towers by UCSB resulted in a loss of property taxes and assessments of one million dollars per year, causing a reduction in law enforcement and other public agencies’ funding in Isla Vista. Because of this UCSB purchase, Isla Vista has a continuing poor tax base for public service, just as SBCC buying apartment complexes will.

For The Santa Barbara Independent to take the position of first giving Gaskin & Co. $288 million and then thinking she and the school will solve the many problems that the school has dumped on the district is an Orwellian concept. You have it backward!

The Independent has done a gross injustice to our people by supporting Measure S

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