Beaver Free Says Stop the Blue Line!
This from the Taxpayers Association....it seems Jerry Beaver wants Santa Barbara to be blue line rather than Beaver Free! Gosh, do you have to be practically a native to get that pun?
August 22, 2007 - Honorable Council members: This appeal is filed on behalf of Jerry Beaver and Stop the Blue Line, a group citizens interested in this issue pursuant to Chapter 22.22.170 of the Santa Barbara Municipal Code. Mr. Beaver is an interested party adversely affected by the Historic Landmarks Commission's Aug. 8 approval of the Light Blue Line project because Mr. Beaver owns real property within the project area and attended the HLC meeting. Mr. Beaver's properties will be directly impacted by the proposal for the reasons described herein. Visit the sbcta web site for full appeal (PDF of Appeal).
Labels: Blue Line, Taxpayers Association
posted by Sara De la Guerra | 8/22/2007 07:43:00 PM
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51 Comments:
The light blue line is a divisive ploy to help the know-nothing incumbents get reelected; shame on them!
NewsPress did a darn good job with this story, with the full text from Beaver right there on the editorial page. Local news at its best. Can we back off a bit in our hatred of the NewsPress?
Rednick! Don't people know the threat Global Warming is having on ALL life on this planet. This is almost criminal!
Seems to me he's got every right to appeal the decision.
I've not published a recent anon as they called a few people names which isn't necessary here.
Jerry does have every right to appeal but is being in the flood/tsunami zone been a big fat family secret in Santa Barbara for too long?
8:39 PM -- did the News-Press offer an alternative opinion? I haven't even read the story but doubt it...that would make a darn good story that was fair. If they did, kudos to them but I doubt it.
7:59 PM -- As for ploys to be re-elected --- I could think of ten more things that would work better than the light blue line, can't you? It was a gutsy move that speaks to their commitment rather than their desire to be reelected. I wouldn't have advised it --- why would you?
Since the city council is serious about the blue line, how can they approve any development in the former lower State Street Levy project area?
Time for eminent domain to confiscate all property below the blue line to protect lives and property.
We don't need to be another New Orleans. City council show your stuff and stop the development of lower state street NOW!
Sara,
The Light Blue Line vote was "gutsy"? I would guess they figured it was an easy, low profile way to slip something in and later claim to be fighting global warming. I can't imagine they figured the public would react as they have.
Therein lies the rub Horatio! The law of unintended consequences -- or is everyone generally so asleep that it won't really matter?
The problem here is that the way the News-Mess reports an appeal of a conspicuous Commission decision is through an editorial, not a news article. Accordingly, information supposedly for the community readers first is revealed through the filter of the Opinion page and Opinion editor, not what should be an objective news report, such as they are lately.
The Vanity Press has just skipped the pro-forma exercise of pretending to pubish news any more and goes straight (pardon the pun) to having some real-world event debut as an editorial.
In Wendy World, objective news and editorial opinion are all the same, obviously again.
"I've got some people from the university who've mapped out what will happen when the ocean rises. They're gonna draw a blue line in the city where the ocean's gonna come up to. The real estate agents aren't thrilled." - Marty Blum (Esquire Magazine)
"That was a big misquote, I never said that. The reporter asked me what my greatest challenge was. It was just labeled wrong. It should have been labeled the most controversial thing happening in Santa Barbara right now." - Marty Blum (SB News-press)
Knowing what she knows now, does the mayor think it's time to rethink lightblueline?
"I don't have a position on that, it's gone through the hoops it has to go through. An appeal has been filed. That's a normal course of events." - Marty Blum (SB News-press)
I feel another "I voted for the blue line before I voted against it" coming...
Can this get any better?
Several comments seem to be getting under your skin Sara. Those of us who consider the blue line "groupthink" to be a diversion from dealing with gangs, etc. will just shut up and nod from now on.
I just think it's hilarious that they quoted the mayor with not one, but two "gonna"s. That sounds intelligent.
Doesn't the blue line project really show the problem with the global warming debate in general? ... People are concerned about it, but they don't want to take any action if it adversely affects them in any way. In this case, it's just the "idea" of global warming's effect on SB that has these people up in arms. Shouldn't they (and all of us) be more worried about the real effects? This liberal loves the blue line project!
Even her new spin is wrong. In June the blue line wasn't controversial. Very few people, except insiders, even knew about it. And her position is that she voted to approve it. Of is she now flip-flopping like Iya? Not mayor material. either of them.
Or, look at it this way for the "groupthink" critic:
The Light Blue Line project is a minor temporary public art project that does not even require any City funds because a private donor stepped up. Thus, it was worth thinking about for no more than a couple of days until after it was installed.
Therefore, the only DIVERSION is by those wackos who are seeking out something, anything as a divisive issue of crocadile tears as an excuse to bash on the city council instead of recognizing that the city just may be doing a thing or ten good about gangs, youth services, etc.
The coin has two sides for you obsessed critics who just cannot understand why all the manufactured outraged about this art project just that.
The blueline project is a waste of money. Those of us that live near the ocean know that we will be toast in the event of rising waters. We don't need a line painted on the street to show us. Will anyone care to "walk the blueline" to see the potential for devastation? Do you think tourists will do this much less locals? Will anyone care? Lastly, like painted curbs, the paint will wear off and large sections will go missing and no one will remember what the hell that blue paint in the street was for.
Has Marty ever taken responsility for any of her of the wall quotes? Going back to the Janeway's and Dawn Hobbs, "poor" Marty never gets a break. She babbles on, takes the side of whoever she is in the room with and denies it later. Get ready Mr Caron, you are about to get dropped.
According to the NP today, the Blue Line project has been withdrawn by the artist
Lightblueline withdrawn!!!
So now what? Wasn't our local government supposed to save us from this catastrophe? It's New Orleans all over again! They've abandoned us. :(
Anon. 7:27 AM, I am growing a bit weary of the trope about the blue line somehow being a distraction from "dealing with gangs." There are two (and only two) ways to deal with gangs, neither of which is within the direct control of any city council. We can either treat gangs as a criminal enterprize and set loose the police power of the state on them. Or we can address the underlying social and economic issues that produce the perception in young men that they are excluded from status within the dominant economic and political paradigm. Each of these choices carries its own distasteful side effects (the first raises the spectre of facism, the second wakes the boogy man of socialism, government interference in the economy and trade). As an issue, the blue line is a silly one. Let them paint the damn thing and soon all this will be forgotten and as faded as the line will ultimately become.
Attention: City Council haters, News-Press supporters, real estate agents, and developers--
I hate to spoil the party and inject some rationality into this post, but does the concept of science mean anything to those of you who are so against this project? Does it mean anything to you that vast majority of scientists agree that climate change is being caused by human activity? Yes, I know it’s not unanimous, but I’ll take the prevailing scientific opinion over Rush Limbaugh and local ideologues who dislike the City Council this term.
The Blue Line project is a way of showing what could happen if global warming continues unabated. Its purpose is to show people the possible consequences, not to declare that everything on one side of the line will be flooded. It’s a warning—get it? It says that if people continue to ignore the scientific evidence of the effect of billions of people on the environment, there will be consequences. It’s actually a concept more important than land values in Santa Barbara or the role of the Landmark’s Commission or petty politics. The News-Press, with its usual myopic view, is doing whatever it can to turn this into a political issue. Science is fine to the News-Press when it argues for whales or endangered species, but the paper seems to be ignorant of science when it has a chance to stick it to politicians it doesn’t like.
Can one of you opponents to this art project tell me what the liberal plot is behind global warming? Did a bunch of Nobel Laureates get together to sabotage property values in Santa Barbara? Where does this hysteria come from?
I like the Thin Blue Line!
Denial of the appeal is a slam dunk...that is if enough councilmembers back up the HLC vote. I hope that each councilmember will affirm the HLC action and state that on Mr Beaver's listed issues that:
A. The Thin Blue Line is very pleasing and not discussed as Mr Beaver expected because there were no objections to the artist's rendering of the project.
B. The project is compatible with and will help preserve and "enhance" the el Pueblo Viejo district as well as "Elsewhere."
C. Given the relied on known peer reviewed science that "global warming" is accepted as fact and the results of the warming will be detrimental to the property values citywide (both sides of the blue line,) the project has been has been analyzed to death and action is now required. The Project is art and is intended to promote discussion of the facts. The appealant's property value concerns are valid in as much as the appeallant, given current projections, should probably consider full "disclosure" to prospective buyers regardless. Hopefully the art project will actually bring a concerted effort to protect the entire city's property values.
D. Generally, the appealants last argument contains several objections all of which are discretionary. The HLC and Council approval on appeal has the authority to allow this art and educational exhibition. The question of needing a coastal developement permit contains no basis or argument and therefore would not require a rebutal.
And the "political Play of the Week" goes to:
1. _____________________
2. _____________________
3. _____________________
I can't believe a painted line a symbolic warning about something that may or may not happen in our lifetimes would stop someone from buying in Santa Barbara and paying a pretty penny to do so. Love of location hasn’t stopped people from buying in flood zones, hurricane belts, on earthquake fault lines, mudslide zones, near volcanoes or any other potential natural disaster areas…but we’re to believe buyers might be scared off by some blue paint?
The paint hasn’t even made it out of the can and look at all the whoha it's stirred up. Too bad it’s not more about global warming and less about politics and real estate.
Just wait a couple of days for the new Political Play of the Week to be published, but seems like the overall topic already has identified itself suddenly this afternoon.
Will the Play be a fumble or a field goal? That depends upon whose action had the most effect from which side of this farce.
Armedaris, Beaver and Blum! In that order and for different reasons. Armedaris framed the issue in such a way that the public suddenly understood what was at stake, Beaver acted on that information and pounced and Blum proceeded to step on her own shoes over and over and over again.
anon 2:56...so true. So very true.
Um...I think the Blue Line is dead. Word on the street is the project is being pulled, thereby saving the city council from an embarrassing appeal hearing.
Isn't anyone embarrassed that this blue line is an issue at all?
Especially when we've only recently escaped our own small city version of a new orleans disaster thanks to the winds & those fighting this fire. There but for the grace of whatever god you pray to go we.
Show some gratitude.
Oh good grief. The light blue line project is dead. It's being reported by Keyt on the 11:00pm news. They interviewed two people one pro and one con. Funny or not so funny the person voicing the con view was a realtor. If as the realtor stated it was ridicules to think the water level would (or did he say could?) raise 23 feet…what was all of property value flap about?
Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead!
Everybody Happy?
Now how about the REAL work needed to be done in SB by Mayor and Council? If they did their jobs and stayed out of NP business and controversial projects, maybe there could be such a thing as LESS CRIME? I still "see" the blood on the sidewalk in front of SAKS!
While I do appreciate uninvited nominations about "Armedaris, Beaver and Blum!" as potential Political Play(er)s of the Week, at least I would spell their names correctly.
However, the Play of the Week is about poltical effect, not wishful spin someone hopes will gain traction by simply repeating it enough times.
As for "anon o roma" above, the two people interviewed in the KEYT news story tonight were two candidates in the ongoing city council election campaign.
The "pro" person is Barnwell the incumbent who half the time is right on with his positions and policies. The "con" person, Hotchkiss, not only is a realtor but a council candidate challenger who has had nothing to say about why he should be elected except that the Blue Line project is stupid and that global warming is a myth.
With the end of the Line, Hotchkiss now has bupkis to talk about in his amusing attempt to get elected to City Council.
Silly Season just got a whole lot sillier today.
Is this the same Hotchkiss who insisted that the Basketball hoops be removed daily at Marymount School? Apparently he lives across the street and does not want the sound of the little people playing intruding on his privacy. Check it out. Drive by and see if the hoops are up are night or on the weekends. Just what we need, another anti-kid point of view in our town. Let's give kids less to do and wonder why gangs start to appeal to them.
On Global Warming:
While human activity may be exacerbating and/or accelerating this condition, there is absolutely nothing (and I do mean NOTHING) that any of us can do to change the nature of the future outcome. That's not to say I don't use my recycling bin and green waste container.
BUT, consider, as but one example among many, a billion Chinese who long to "advance" from an agrarian society to an affluent, industrial one. The "Chinese Dream," like the American dream before it, now includes as an important first goal the acquisition of the quintessential upwardly mobile status symbol - the automobile. My bicycle be damned!
I doubt that the typical consumer will have the means to afford a new Prius. Rather, that first "new" car is likely to be a 1956 Ford Fairlane belching soot and guzzling fossil fuel. Get my point?
Thus, no matter how many CFLs we install in our "green" homes, they will matter not a whit against the countervailing forces at play in the larger world.
De-forestation. Cut down forests to plant corn for ethanol. Remember your physics, "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." Trees absorb CO2 and produce oxygen, possibly helping thwart the acceleration of global warming. We live in a "closed system." Again, from your physics class, "matter is neither created nor destroyed but simply changed from one form to another." Extrapolate from there. Get my point?
Global warming, global shwarming. Or, for those on the other side of the debate, new ice age, new shmice age.
Conclusion: Enjoy what you can, while you can. Do a little good if you can while riding on the great mandala. Don't sweat the BIG stuff. Que sera, sera!
Especially when we've only recently escaped our own small city version of a new orleans disaster thanks to the winds & those fighting this fire.
Surely you can't believe that there's any connection between our having the driest year in recorded history and the ice sheets melting ...
Observer -- c'mon, you know better:
-------------------------------
jqb wrote: "Surely you can't believe that there's any connection between our having the driest year in recorded history and the ice sheets melting ..."
Please,YABBADABBA, spare us the sarcasm and hystrionics! Driest year? By whose statistical evidence and measurement? In recorded history? Sources, please.
Surely you, among the very few on this site, should be most able (given your background) to make use of "critical thinking" and the "scientific method."
As a literary aside, John Steinbeck wrote, in the opening chapter of "East of Eden:"
"The water came in a thirty year cycle... And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way."
Just wishing to stir the pot a little. I remain an interested...
OBSERVER
Painting the blue line does not make or break the potentials of global warming - Iceland is looking forward to a longer, warmer growing season also has to be on the table for discussion too.
If all it did was polarize and create hostility and name calling, then it failed ab initio. If there is truth to human activity contributing to global warming, we are well past just painting blue lines on the sidewalk. And that is what was SO offensive about this hollow gesture.
If we are in peril by our activities and choices right now, then we damn well better all start doing things other than art projects.
The blue line supporters including the city council still do not get it. The triviality and junk science of the blue line undermined anyone taking this topic seriously.
Yet conserving resources, recycling, caring about environmenal pollution was never at peril with or without the blue line. And that is the business we need to get back to ASAP.
Pandering to some wacko-quackos for one more misguided feel-good project with no consideration of the consequences to the city as a whole is what is wrong with the sitting incumbents.
Knee-jerking opposition without consideration of the entire community which does hold a large number of "progressives" will be a fatal flaw of any opponent to the incumbents.
This is not a one-trick pony town -we are not ultra-liberal and we are not ultra-conservative.
Indeed, the "terrorists" win if they get us to fall on our own swords instead of letting them have the privilege of doing it for us. Our own rot from within is our greatest peril.
And junk science is one of the many serious rots this country spends too much time and money supporting. The blue line is junk science at its most offensive. And it is not nor ever was art. That was the final public insult.
jqb,
You read something into my post that was not even suggested- my entire point was how it appears that few seem to realize that our town narrowly escaped a monumental disaster.
If the wind had picked up & changed direction the entire front country could have burned. Just take a moment to consider this & then be very very grateful that it didn't.
Yet, in this wake, it appears there is just more petty bickering about a public art project which are always controversial.
BTW, I do know global warming is real its just that this wasn't part of my point.
It is to their continued discredit the blue line organizers blame the NewsPress for its failure in Santa Barbara.
Blame Blogabarbara if you want because people here started complaining, with great reason and detail, long before the NewsPress tagged along.
This sort of factual distortion from the blue line people magnifies the concern about their playing fast and loose with the truth and reason number one I do not want this group making public statements in my city on my behalf.
Stop blaming you blue line people, and read blogabarbara to understand the full range of opinions about this thoroughly misguided project.
Junk science inflicted on us by junk people is not what this city stands for. Remember which city council incumbents voted for this insult to our city: Barnwell, Williams and Schneider. Take that information in to the voting booth with you.
You read something into my post that was not even suggested
I can't tell one anonymous from another so I can't be sure which was "my post". But if you mean my "Surely you can't believe ...", what I wrote is something that should be read into it, whether you intended it or not -- there is a connection between global warming and the Zaca fire, despite what ignorant denialists like "observer" have to say. S/he might want to read
http://www.santabarbaranewsroom.com/news/environment/extreme-dry-year-ushers-in-dangerous-fire-season.html :
Friday, May 25 2007
One of the driest years on record in Santa Barbara County — a year so dry that some areas got no more rain than the Sahara Desert — is headed into a dangerous fire season, officials said Thursday.
Fire chiefs from around the county gathered at a press conference at Hans Christian Andersen Park in Solvang to sound the alarm that tinder-dry brush, high winds and high temperatures could spell disaster this summer.
“It’s going to be real hot out there and the fires are going to be real extreme,” said Brad Joos, deputy forest fire management officer for the Los Padres National Forest.
Already, Joos said, Los Padres crews have responded to 15 small fires this spring from Monterey to Ventura, compared to just two fires by this time, on average. The brush is very crispy, very early, officials said: it doesn't normally get so dry until August.
“This is as bad as I’ve ever seen it,” said Craig Thomas, operations chief for the Santa Barbara Fire Department. “The entire county — it’s all bad.”
...
Observer asks "Driest year? By whose statistical evidence and measurement? In recorded history? Sources, please." rather than doing a simple google search, which quickly turns up
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/lox/media/getprodplus.php?wfo=lox&prod=LAXPNSLOX
"PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LOS ANGELES/OXNARD CA
450 PM PDT FRI JUL 20 2007
...SOUTHWESTERN CALIFORNIA WEATHER REVIEW FOR THE 2006-2007 RAIN
SEASON...
THE 2006-2007 RAIN SEASON...WHICH BEGAN ON JULY 1 2006 AND ENDED ON
JUNE 30 2007 WAS THE DRIEST EVER IN DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES SINCE
RECORDS BEGAN 130 YEARS AGO IN 1877....
MANY OTHER STATIONS AROUND SOUTHWESTERN CALIFORNIA RECORDED THEIR
DRIEST SEASON EVER. THOSE THAT DID NOT HAVE THEIR DRIEST SEASON
FINISHED IN SECOND OR THIRD PLACE. MOST STATIONS IN VENTURA AND LOS
ANGELES COUNTIES ENDED THE SEASON WITH LESS THAN 25% OF NORMAL
RAINFALL...WHILE LOCATIONS IN SANTA BARBARA AND SAN LUIS OBISPO
COUNTIES ENDED THE SEASON WITH BETWEEN 30 AND 45 PERCENT.
"
But I suppose the National Weather Service is part of the cabalistic conspiracy that Observer can see through based on quotes from Steinbeck's fiction.
"This sort of factual distortion from the blue line people ... junk science ..."
A lot of anonymouses make such claims without backing them up with facts. Blogabarbara is beginning to resemble the whisper box in Medici Venice where people would drop notes accusing their neighbors of all sorts of horrid crimes.
jqb: Blogabarbara is an open forum. Myths are quickly dispelled and competing viewpoints are quickly vetted. All Hail Blogabarbara.
Kudos to SDLG for monitoring this forum with intelligence, fairness and grace. Which she too may require the cloak of anonymity to accomplish.
jqb: the Medici were not in Venice. They were in Florence. Please, your public ignorance and name calling is embarassing. It was the Doges Council in Venice.
Are you the same one who claimed the Sprekels (San Diego family) fouled the Santa Barbara harbor?
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Time for you to go back to school, jqb and get your facts straight if you want credibility writing here.
The whisper box was in Venice. You're right that it was the Doges Palace, not the Medicis, but your making a big deal of this and inferring anything about my credibility from it is transparently dishonest, and discrediting. Any such mistake obviously has no bearing on, say, reports from the National Weather Service. And no, I wasn't the one who said that about Sprekels -- a silly mistake of your own. And no "anonymous" has any inherent credibility, so you're in no position to speak of mine.
"Which she too may require the cloak of anonymity to accomplish."
I didn't refer to anonymity, but rather to posting as "anonymous" -- such refusal to create even a virtual identity that one is responsible for speaks for itself.
jqb, it is all about content here, not personality. Do your homework better before you attempt to post your overly-cute illustrations. When you err, you undermine your content. Thank you.
Because calling yourself "JQB" is sooooo responsible. "JQB" is as anonymous as "sara de la guerra" or "mcconfrontation", or even "anonymous." Give us a break lady.
mcconfrontation illustrates yet again his inability to comprehend. The problem with "anonymous" is that it isn't unique -- there's no way to connect one post with another.
As for 12:05, as I said, making a big deal of one minor mistake is transparently dishonest. If it's about content, not personality, then a minor error in an offhand comment can't undermine other content from the same poster, which stands on its own merits -- like that statement from the National Weather Service.
jqb, Gheesh. Work a little bit on your defensiveness. It is ruining your passion. Stick to content, not personality. And your personality is getting in the way of your content.
What a joke! The Blue Line was in illegal concept from the beginning, violating Federal law for traffic control standards.
The stupidity of it all is that there is no proof that it would have been an accurate measurement of anything, much less the expected sea level rise. The science behind this is very inconclusive for a great many reasons. The volume of sea level rise, even if all glacial ice melts is still unknown. Changes in sea temperature are likely to have a greater effect, yet this too is poorly understood and unknown. Perhaps the chicken littles need to stop and look at the science.
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