LETTERS (Continued from page 22)
in taxpayer monies for the county, schools, and special districts. She is a first-time office-seeker, and has no political ambitions beyond county supervisor. She will be here for the long term. County issues like the jail and 101 span supervisorial terms: wouldn’t we prefer someone to stay vigilant on those issues, rather than darting back to Sacramento for their next move to higher office? The choice really couldn’t be clearer. I’ll take the finance professional over the professional politician, please. With her in that seat, we the taxpayers are the real winners. Dan Eidelson Montecito (Editor’s note: Dan is a former president of the Montecito Association.)
Channel Drive Campers As a resident of Montecito for over 20 years, I have recently noticed many campers whose owners park their vehicles on Channel Drive and spend their time smoking and drinking throughout the day and night. There is a traffic sign restricting delivery trucks beyond Hill Road to Channel Drive; however, none exists for campers and or trailers in tow. With a very short distance between the Biltmore and Butterfly Lane, parking and access to this street should be restricted to pedestrians, bicycles, and normal cars. It is most dangerous when on a hot summer day kids are running around, and all of a sudden a big, long, and wide camper or a truck with a trailer in tow shows up on this narrow street and parks. Restricting access and endangering pedestrians and bicycles makes a dangerous situation for all. There is no bicycle or pedestrian lane on the street. Allowing this to continue will, first of all, compromise the safety of the pedestrians. Secondly, the very limited parking spaces on the road are taken by a few campers, each equivalent to a few cars in length. Third, once cars are parked on either side of the small stretch, the camper parked on the opposite side takes away the pedestrian passage and bicycle lane, as well as the line of sight for the drivers going through. Fourth, I have noticed many times the next day, leftover cups, bottles of booze, and many cigarette butts
dropped in the same exact spot where the camper was during the day. These cigarette butts flow into the ocean. Recently, the place has become a daily parking spot for a few very old campers, almost dangerously dilapidating, often wrapped up with unsightly messages, oil dripping; regulars calling it daily home, until very late at night, leaving right before the no-parking 2-5 am sign kicks in. Often CHP is called in for suspicious activities. Some of our friends have stopped their daily walk and or early evening stroll through the area due to fear of harassment or danger of accidentally getting hit. There are plenty of places for campers to enjoy the ocean. Carpinteria Beach Road is a great example, with all the facilities necessary for them. The short length of Butterfly Beach and Channel Drive should be reserved for cars, with no trailers in tow, pedestrians, and bicycles. Michael Livingstone Montecito
Call 9-1-1
I appreciated Bob Hazard’s piece regarding the problems in calling 9-1-1 on a cellphone in Montecito (Guest Editorial, MJ #22/20). As a community service, I suggest the Journal print the best local numbers to call for fire, medical and police emergencies so we can program them into our cell phones, and that you include this information in every issue. It might save someone’s life. Thanks! Bob Gale Montecito (Editor’s note: Montecito Fire chief Chip Hickman, via administrative assistant Joyce Reed, responds: “We do not support reporting emergencies being reported via our 7-digit direct line. Call 911, state your emergency, and give them your location and that you are in Montecito. The 911 system has emergency step-by-step medical assistance instructions to the reporting party that should not be bypassed. Additionally, the sheriff’s dispatch center is the primary PSAP with the jurisdictional responsibility and authority to receive all emergency 911 calls, and it would be inappropriate for Montecito fire to support anything otherwise. The caller should just emphasize the town they’re in to expedite the transfer correctly.”)
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The Biggest Disappointment of 2016
While Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton fight, the real battle is right here in our very own 24th Congressional District. It’s unusual for a party to step in before primaries to endorse candidates, but the Democrat establishment early on snubbed the more qualified candidate – Santa Barbara mayor Helene Schneider – in favor of supervisor Salud Carbajal who will not question the party’s rank-and-file members. After dumping over $1 million into Carbajal’s race, he has been a huge disappointment, consistently coming behind the more popular and polished Schneider in polls. This has prompted the DCCC and PACs to release a bunch of attacks on Schneider and Republican Katcho Achadjian. Carbajal is the Hillary Clinton of Santa Barbara: entitled, backed by establishment money, and not very likeable. Just like Hillary, Carbajal is a career politician looking for a promotion, one he’s wanted for a while. His weakness as a candidate was magnified at the last congressional debate when Bill Ostrander grilled Carbajal for claiming he’s for campaign finance reform while accepting tons of PAC money. Carbajal could not hold his own against Ostrander, who had him on the hook (like the Christie and Rubio debacle). I wish Democrats picked a better candidate, Schneider or even Ostrander. Douglas Johnston Santa Barbara
Nattering Nabobs
Usually, I write to you about water issues. But reading your endorsement of Justin Fareed made me decide to vote for Salud Carbajal. Justin is both against raising the minimum wage, and against providing health insurance to those who need it. A double whammy. But his healthcare position alone cost him my vote. It shows a basic ignorance of ObamaCare, which, in fact, is a market-driven reform with competitive products sold by private insurance companies on health insurance exchanges in all 50 states. Some 15,000,0000 people and counting have been covered under ObamaCare’s market-based solution. (Sorry, it is working.) The problem with ObamaCare is that it has been so successful, it has
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He’s for Jen
The First District includes Carpinteria, Summerland, Montecito, and (roughly) the eastern part of the City of Santa Barbara. There are two candidates for this open seat on the board of supervisors (the incumbent is giving it up to run for Congress). One of the candidates has high name recognition due, in no small part, to the fact that he has run for a number of positions over the years. The other candidate is Jennifer Christensen, an independent, who is running for office for the first time. In this particular race, the candidate with the lesser name recognition is the more highly qualified one. Jennifer Christensen is a person of integrity, intelligence, and accomplishment. She has an MBA, and she currently serves as the county’s investment officer.
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attracted lots of very sick folk. Pent-up market demand. This has resulted in big losses (read market-based) for private insurers like UnitedHealthcare, Cigna, and Aetna, offering products on the exchanges. This has, in turn, resulted in commercial insurers charging sharply higher premiums to millions of working families covered by employer sponsored plans as the insurers struggle to recover their losses and protect themselves against future contingencies. Ouch! for the middle class and our kids. A single-payer solution based on an expansion of the Medicare program – not a market solution at all – would save billions in overhead and waste, and could extend coverage to the 12% of Americans who are still uninsured. And there would be plenty of room for supplemental, wrap-around private insurance like in the UK, Germany, and Switzerland, for people wanting Cadillac coverage. Get creative Justin. Republicans, as William Safire might say, need to be more than “nattering nabobs of negativism.” Dudley Morris Santa Barbara (Editor’s note: Thank you for your letter, but as far as we can tell, no one is “against providing health insurance to those who need it,” not even those evil Republicans. As for calling ObamaCare a “market-based solution,” that must be some kind of joke, but we don’t get it. – J.B.)
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2 – 9 June 2016