It’s that time of year again — when all our elders gather around in a circle, watch the sun rise precisely over the wood henges of our pier, and ceremoniously announce … our city’s budget. And how we pay for it.
I don’t know about you other Barbarians, but I was shocked last year when the cost of parking in Santa Barbara suddenly went up from $1.50 to $2.50 an hour. The only other thing that I know of in this town that can go up 66 percent in price overnight is the “shipping and handling” charge on a ticket to the Santa Barbara Bowl — a term and cost they cleverly retained from sales in the past. “Shipping and handling” is now all digital — they don’t pay for postage today — they don’t even touch the tickets! So why do we pay them to print our tickets at home?
I have the same curiosity and suspicions about parking rate hikes: besides being allowed to park our cars on a rectangular oil-stained space for an hour — what else do we get for our $2.50? Obviously, the city raises revenues to pay for the services it provides and to pay for the salaries of the people who run them. But what are these jobs — and what do they pay? We Barbarians live in a small town — our budget can’t be that big … can it?