Gary Earle, President of the Coalition for Sensible Planning, an organization which sounds like, and probably is, run out of a Goleta PO Box, brings to mind an image of a slick, smarmy, slippery, slimy used-car huckster, willing to employ any means necessary to sell a twice-wrecked, cosmetically-restored Plymouth with an Earl Scheib paint job to an unsuspecting sucker for top dollar.
Ever since the Santa Barbara School Districts announced it was conducting a feasibility study of options for making sorely needed cash from two unused parcels (Hidden Valley & Tatum) of land it owns, a study that included the idea of building affordable housing for teachers and staff, Earle and others of his sort have come out of the woodwork, the shadows, out from behind adobe walls and from under goosedown comforters, to protest, bray, sputter, smear, and malign the study, the School Board, and the District Administration.
Before the ink on the contact with UniDev LLC – a firm with expertise in building “workforce” housing for non-profits – had time to soak in, before any projections on the number of homes was released, before a stitch of research had been accomplished, Earle’s posse of NIMBYs were standing outside Vons on Turnpike, passing out home-made fliers decrying the District’s intent to erect some four hundred homes, smack in the heart of their precious suburban “neighborhood.” Where Earle’s Coalition got that number is anybody’s guess, but it’s not even in the same area code with the number proposed in UniDev’s final report.
From the outset, Earle called UniDev’s motives into question, claiming the company was steering the study toward the workforce housing option so it could make major league money as the ultimate project developer, a claim not tethered to the reality of the UniDev contract, but what the hell, who’s paying close attention to meddlesome facts? Taking his cue from modern masters of mendacity like Limbaugh, O’Reilly and Hannity, Earle stretched and kneaded the truth to suit his own ends, which are, apparently, to keep anybody else from calling this Promised Land home, especially teachers and school workers, who, to be sure, carry meaningful water for the community, but must accept their impoverished servitude and move to Lompoc, Oxnard or the shitty end of Salinas Street.
After the final UniDev report was presented to the school board on November 28, Earle, decked out in a pin-striped suit, hair coiffed and tanning booth glow in place, got face time on KEYT, where he was quoted as saying that the District hasn’t cooperated with the Tatum community, and that, “the District just wants to make as much money as possible.”
The first statement is flat wrong and the second just plain stupid. The District held a number of public meetings about the feasibility study, accepted public comment for a month, gave community members ad naseum opportunity to speak at school board meetings, and so on. Claiming the District has been uncooperative with the local community is like claiming the U.S. Army never tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib. We got digital photos, dude!
As to the money angle, well, Duh! Mr. Earle, squeezing these vacant assets for every dime they will surrender is THE POINT! What’s wrong with the school district exploring every revenue-enhancing option at its disposal? People like Gary Earle don’t piss and wail when a private individual seeks to earn obscene amounts of coin, so why get your Grigioperla boxers in a wad when a school district seeks to exercise the very same capitalist imperative? Good old American money-grubbing, baby! The school district’s got something that’s as good as gold in these parts, and its anemic financial condition demands that the school board do whatever it takes to bring more coin into the coffers. It would be a colossal failure of the school board’s fiduciary responsibility not to seek the biggest score it can haul to the bank. The taxpayers from whom the prized booty came in the first place should expect no less.
No comments:
Post a Comment