Am I In A Bad Dream?
Mayor Marty Blum Can’t Believe the Incumbents
By Marty Blum
Friday, November 4, 2011
Holy Cow! The three Council Members who are on the City ballot – Dale Francisco, Randy Rowse, Michael Self – have done an about-face and are espousing radical concepts like services for the homeless, public safety, and neighborhood traffic calming instead of doing what they usually do: fighting them.
I don't believe them. I have watched Dale fighting all of the above for four years. I have watched Michael Self and newcomer Randy Rowse voting with him most of the time against traffic calming and against the homeless while calling for “a cleaner downtown.” In the forums, in their ads, and in their press conference they suddenly love calm traffic, services for the homeless, and our police.
My first inkling of the about-face occurred when I watched incumbent Dale Francisco at the League of Women Voters forum in the library saying his highest priority for the City is to make it walkable and bicycle-friendly. I pinched myself. Is this the same Council Member who fought every traffic-slowing measure ever brought to the Council?
In the last Council, Das Williams and I went round and round with Dale on slowing traffic in various areas of the City. He wasn't listening to the staff or the people. When a man died on De la Vina, it was business as usual for Dale. And now he didn't bat an eye when Eva Inbar, famous for Safe Routes to School, asked for a light at Milpas and Ortega in honor of two people who have been killed by cars there in the last couple of years. I didn't hear his answer, but I remember Michael Self always calling for more and more police officers to give traffic tickets. That was her answer for every traffic issue, for every traffic death. A couple of years ago she called the Mayor's radio show wanting to get rid of anything that slows traffic, and she advocated for police officers in every neighborhood. When she ran for Council the first time, it was her own nine cars she pointed to very proudly in her ads.
Tonight I heard incumbent Michael Self on the news calling for neighborhood traffic planning. Whoa! Another pinch for myself. Is this the same person who questioned the City's traffic planning with the neighbors in the bungalow area? Those neighbors came up with a plan which had only begun to be implemented but was stopped because then-candidate Michael Self fought their plan tooth and nail. She then undermined planning in the Cottage Hospital area, causing the City to scuttle neighborhood traffic planning altogether. Now she wants to lead the City in making the neighborhoods do traffic planning? I sincerely hope she doesn't meet someone like herself who will undermine the neighbors' plans like she did.
Then there is Randy Rowse whose “clean up downtown” mantra – a lightly veiled “get rid of the homeless” – wasn't gaining traction, so he was on TV using the word "sustainable," but not about the environment. Instead he was pointing to a more sustainable police force and a balanced budget. Another pinch for me. The City Council balances the budget every year because it is the right thing to do, and it is required by the City Charter. In addition, as long as I served on the Council, the Police Chief was empowered to overhire police officers because they take a couple of years to train and are often on injury leave. So those two issues are easy.
However, it is curious in this election that the police officers have endorsed three other people instead of the incumbents. Maybe the police know when people are telling the truth and when they are not. This City deserves better, and I deserve not to be pinched so much! I am worried if we vote for the three incumbents, they will feel empowered to change their rhetoric back. Their actions speak volumes; we deserve an honest City Council. I, for one, am not voting for any of the incumbents.
Marty Blum is the immediate past mayor of Santa Barbara
Comments
Independent Discussion GuidelinesPlease just go away Marty your time thankfully has passed and hopefully Dale's will soon as well. Wouldn't it be more productive to spend your time issuing proclamations about the war and such from your new post at SBCC where they will have just as much impact?
Remember that time you didn't want to negotiate a raise for SBPD because, in YOUR words "they have guns & are in your face!"? I remember.
Remember all those "progressive" policies you enacted that drew more BUMNS (not homeless), increased gang crime & pretty much detiriorated the City of Santa Barbara? I remember.
You beef w/ the so-called "conservative imcumbents" has more to do w/ that you're playing party politics over the good of the people of the City of Santa Barbara. We all know who's pocket you're in.
So please, go do something about plastic bags or bird poop on the beaches, your input in the political arena is useless because it is useless.
I thank you for your civic leadership though, it is a tough job to lead a city & make decisions, but it is even tougher to realize the fact that many of those decisions were behind many of the failures we have today. Sorry, just how it is :) henry
This is twilight zone stuff. Marty Blum lecturing anyone on anything is laughable. After doing her best as mayor to destroy Santa Barbara by blowing our reserves, encouraging homelessness and ignoring a festering gang problem, she's now doing her best to destroy City College and blow all of their reserves.
I don't know how it's possible to be wrong about just about everything but she manages to do it. Anyone she's against, I'm for!
While I disagree with her on some key issues former Mayor Blum has the guts to stand up to the Bush Iraq war machine and lead protests against them back in 03. Back when many of her critics here we're cowering in fear over WMDs which even at that time were known not to exist in Iraq. Amongst many other examples.
No I don't always agree with her, but I think these differences may be purely generational. When it comes down to the wire, she does the right thing and puts herself on the line. And without hiding behind a pseudonym I might add.
She does the right thing? How about the predictable "left" thing. Between her and Lois Capps I'm not sure who would win a "most vacuous contest". KV-if you were here during her tenure you surely have not forgotten how she depleted all of our reserves in the name of social programs. Or, maybe you rather conveniently have. Why doesn't she just fade away and be honored as Mayor Emeritus and let the rest of us clean up the bums, gangs, bankrupt treasury, lousy public schools etc.
We all watched the city go down the tubes with you in charge, Marty. Try not to ruin SBCC too.
>>"Maybe the police know when people are telling the truth and when they are not."<<
Or maybe they know who will give them big fat contracts that the city can't afford.
KenV: "While I disagree with her on some key issues former Mayor Blum has the guts to stand up to the Bush Iraq war machine and lead protests against them back in 03. Back when many of her critics here we're cowering in fear over WMDs which even at that time were known not to exist in Iraq. Amongst many other examples."
So, & this helped the City of Santa Barbara how? :) henry
Ken I was against the war and have had no problem with her protesting as a private citizen, however wasting a day of city time which had no impact was a useless exercise. The reality is the opinion of a Mayor of a medium sized California city and its council makes no difference in most national matters but they self important grandstanding on matters outside of her realm were a distraction from doing her actual job.
She also spent a bunch of time railing against nuclear power. Another pressing local issue for our little suburban town.
RE: Pointsouth: The protests were on Saturdays, which i think we can assume is off time during nonemergencies. And yes I lived here during her tenure, oh those nightmare years of small local businesses on State St. and a healthy community with its safety net of social and educational programs.
RE: Italian, I think the evidence in Japan supports the statement that it is lunacy to build nuke plants on earthquake faults. Lois Capps is a hardworking honorable Rep., one would hope any mayor would work with her.
Where do I find fault with Ms. Blum, her antiquarian stance against medicinal cannabis dispensaries.
Marty Blum indeed has correctly observed that Francisco and Friends have flipped lately to sound like moderate Democrats, as a tactic to be more appealing to regular folks and voters.
At the candidate forums lately, Francisco was sounding like a mild moderate Roger Horton from 2005. But we all know better.
Curiouser and curiouser, and I had to pinch _myself_ at seeing Marty and Iya bosom buddies, after so much public bitterness and nastiness between the two of them. Oh, well, people and positions evolve and yesterday's enemy is today's friend, especially when the Party calls.
Seems to me in following the campaign that positions of the incumbents on the issues are reasoned, thoughtful and evolved, consistent with their statements as councilmembers. I would have hoped that Marty, with her long experience in SB city affairs, including efforts for campaign finance reform, would have expressed dismay at how expensive is campaigning, how partisan has become the council, and that she would have expressed sadness that she's now at odds with her Measure "B"/height limit friend, Dale Francisco.
Instead, she pinches herself. Well, it may be no consolation, but her wounds are self-inflicted. And so it will be ours, self-inflicted, if we elect the turn-the-clock back slate of three she favors. There is a clear choice of fiscal responsibility or not.
Ken if you noticed I made a distinction between private citizen and Mayor. I know when the marches were I participated in some of them, her grandstanding on the issue from the bench was in 2007 , previous to that she spent city time on trying to impeach Bush, hanging out with wackjob and racist former Rep Cynthia Mckinney to chat 9/11 in 2004, etc, etc.
The good old days of social safety net and educational programs you speak of, do you mean the time of overspending when the council assumed even houses in "bad neighborhoods" were worth a million or more? As for small business those left/gave up on downtown during the years Marty was Mayor and busy confronting national issues over local ones. Marty termed out in early 2010, it's not Helene's fault she inherited the empty storefronts from Marty.
S.B.C.C.C. The place where COMMON SENSE never goes out of style!
November 4, 2011 at 2:21 p.m. (Suggest removal)