Ostensibly, this week’s showdown over a new housing project, proposed by über developer Ed St. George, and a neighbor’s appeal, conducted by super-lawyer Barry Cappello, concerned a narrow question: Should the SB City Council allow construction of 19 new units at 425 Santa Barbara Street without provision of a single new parking space for tenants?
As a design, policy and political matter, however, it was much more than that.
On this week’s edition of Newsmakers TV, Nick Welsh and Josh Molina reprise their reporting on Tuesday’s big City Hall smackdown, and offer some broader analysis and insights about why this, of all development projects, may come to be seen as a milestone – the tipping point when the histrionic cries about an alleged “housing crisis” by build-build-build advocates of people-packing high density finally quashed decades of resource-sensitive, neighborhood preservation sensibilities that shaped Santa Barbara as one of the most sublime small cities in America.
In a conversation with the genial host, the region’s two top local journalists also break down the deal by which Sansum Clinic Healthcare is set to be taken over by Sutter Health, a Northern California hospital behemoth, and the latest political embarrassment for Supervisor Das Williams, in the form of a new court ruling ordering the county to carry out environmental studies before carving out dozens of new parking places in a scenic neighborhood on behalf of visitors pouring in to hike the Hot Springs Trail.
Plus: What’s up at SBCC, the SBPD and SBUSD. All that and more, right here, right on Newsmakers TV.
JR
Check out the new show via YouTube below, or by clicking through this link. The podcast version is here. TVSB, Cox Cable Channel 17, airs the program at 8 p.m., Monday-Friday, and at 9 am on Saturday and Sunday. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts it at 5:30 p.m. on Monday.
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