The problem is, Santa Barbarians — we are way too nice. We really want to include everybody’s opinion when we make decisions about our city — even if you are left out, we don’t want you to feel left out. This means it takes a long time to do anything. Our city motto could be “Live Politely, Or Die.” If we want to speed things up, we have to cut back on the nice. So let’s roll up our sleeves, take off our Apple watches, and get to work solving our problems.
The problem is that our oil platforms are disasters waiting to happen. Of course we could just dump 100,000 barrels of oil into the ocean and get the disaster over with — or we could continue to pretend that it will never happen. But everyone knows that having even one oil platform offshore is like leaving a loaded gun on your kitchen counter. Inevitably, someone’s gonna pick it up and — it leaks! Okay, that’s a mixed metaphor, but the oil platforms have to go. One solution would be to disconnect them and decorate them with twinkly lights. Because, just with the lights they have now, the platforms look very pretty at night — that is, until you realize that you’re admiring bombs ready to explode. Whatever we do, we should at least cover them with solar panels.
The problem is that our new mayor is a man — can we cope? In the last 40 years — from 1981-2021 — we’ve had women as mayors, with the exception of one year when a guy named Hal got elected. But Hal was replaced, by a woman of course, after he was disqualified because he had been elected to the City Council for too many terms — though why being successful at one government job disqualifies you from having another government job is arcane Santa Barbara wisdom that I cannot decipher. The obvious solution is that we don’t disqualify Randy Rowse for being elected. Give him a chance. But how long do we give him? Considering the pace of today’s news cycle and social media, I don’t know, how about 48 hours? Sorry, Randy — time’s up.