End of the Road

Apparently, there is a contest between the Santa Barbara and Goleta city governments, to see whether Santa Barbara can refuse to repair East Gutierrez Street and their part of the Fairview overpass longer than Goleta can refuse to repair South Kellogg Avenue and Hollister Avenue from Kinman to Ward Drive. (Santa Barbara apparently controls that part of Fairview along with airport property north of Hollister.)

The explanation I’ve heard is that those streets are part of larger repair projects to be done in the future, so it would be more expensive to repair them separately now, meaning, I assume, more expensive to the city budget. But our councilmembers seem to have forgotten that the actual money is provided by the people, not the budget. And having the streets in this condition for another year or two costs the people more, in the form of damage to the tens of thousands of cars that pass over those streets every day. Maybe they didn’t have time to think of this because they were busy “fixing” many streets that weren’t in as poor condition.

Oh, wait, I just realized it might be a scientific experiment to see which of those streets will be the first to deteriorate into being just a gravel road. That’s it, a science experiment. I should have thought of that before. Sorry to have taken your time.