The City Council, administrative staff, and the head honchos from every city department came together Tuesday for an all-day planning workshop, as city leadership works toward a five-year “Strategic Plan” that bridges both short- and long-term goals for the future of Santa Barbara.
The workshop allowed city leaders to take a big-picture look at the city’s priorities to help guide the specific plan for the next three to five years to determine which issues the council wants to address — such as housing or downtown revitalization — so city staff could realistically assess the costs and tradeoffs of each. As City Administrator Kelly McAdoo explained, the conversation was to be framed from the 10,000-foot level.
“We’re not making decisions today,” said Nancy Hetrick, vice president of Raftelis Financial Consultants, the group contracted by the city to facilitate the strategic plan at a cost of $84,000. “We’re not landing the plane today.”
The early portion of the workshop was filled with talk about abstract shared goals. Most everybody in the room agreed that the city supported the need for more housing, financial stability, and a vibrant downtown core. But with the upcoming budget deliberations lurking in the background, discussion over big-picture goals was soon dragged down to reality by the on-the-ground challenges city councilmembers will have to face in the coming weeks.
Mayor Randy Rowse said that he was sure the council would come to a consensus about overall priorities, but that it was more difficult to find agreement when it came to the “pathways” to reaching those goals. This conflict has come into play with the recent push by housing advocates to increase the funding in the Local Housing Trust Fund to at least $5 million — a move that would require the city to either dip into its reserves or reallocate other funds on an already tight budget.
“Everything we want to do is gonna depend on if we can be successful and sustainable financially,” Mayor Rowse said. “At the end of the day, our budget’s gonna be a photo finish.”
In the final exercise of the day, the councilmembers each took a blue Sharpie and a stack of yellow Post-It notes and jotted down their ideas of what success would look like in the next three to five years. The notes were all stuck to the wall: adopt and fund a permanent plan for State Street; simplify permitting process to make building housing easier; protect open spaces; pay city workers an above-market wage that would allow them to live in Santa Barbara; rent stabilization; and a permanent source of funding for more affordable housing.
When they read back the notes, the discussion soon returned to the real-world costs of these lofty goals. “There’s no way to pay for all that,” said Councilmember Eric Friedman.
“Yeah, it’s true that we can’t pay for all of it,” Councilmember Wendy Santamaria responded. “But I think there’s some things that we can prioritize.”
As the five-hour workshop came to a close, Councilmember Meagan Harmon said she was skeptical about how the “shared vision” would work out when the council would be making tough decisions in the near future. “Maybe we’re trying to get at something that doesn’t exist,” she said. “The only thing that is real is the budget.”
City staff will continue to work with the consultants at Raftelis to create the five-year strategic plan, with opportunity for community input in the coming months. The council will begin budget deliberations during next week’s regular meeting.
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