Category: <span>Uncategorized</span>

COAST’s list of accomplishments

  • Our Safe Routes to School project: this year expanding to even more schools in Goleta and Carpinteria, we provide education and fun activities to promote walking and biking to schools. We regularly distribute free to low-cost helmets at elementary schools, provide bike education workshops (“bike rodeos”), pedestrian safety workshops, and advocate for improved infrastructure around schools. We also promote Walk and Bike to School Day, where teachers, parents, and students walk, bike, scooter, and skateboard to school! Our Safe Routes to School program has reminded parents and kids: it’s cool to walk and bike to school!
  • Our Eastside Walks project is a grassroots movement to empower the Eastside community to make lasting changes to make their neighborhood a safer place to walk. We’ve been campaigning heavily for improvements to Milpas, bringing the issues to the  Eastside community and encouraging them to speak up for their needs in the political process. We’ve also worked to improve lighting throughout the Eastside, with new streetlights to be installed soon. We are also campaigning for improvements on Salinas St.
  • Our ASERT program works to improve public transportation options for commuters in between Oxnard, Ventura, and Santa Barbara. This has been very successful, connecting bus riders with Gold Coast, VCTC, and Ventura officials to speak up for their needs and to encourage them to provide consistent, reliable transportation.
  • Happy Hours and informative General Meetings with timely and informative guests speakers downtown each month. Happy Hours are the second Thursday of every month at 5pm at El Paseo Restaurant, General Meetings are the second Wednesday of every month from 12pm-1:15pm at 15 E. Carrillo
  • COAST’s Walking Wednesdays tours is how COAST promotes fun and safe walking in Santa Barbara! COAST is kicking off its Walking Wednesday tours starting on March 28. These monthly walking tours, free and open to the public, are the fourth Wednesday every month and feature a different theme and speaker every month. On Wednesday, March 28th we will be meeting at the Santa Barbara Courthouse at 5:30 for a tour of Downtown Santa Barbara architecture, with noted Harrison Design Associates architect, Anthony Grumbine. In the past Walking Wednesdays has had a number of different themed walks; from botany to creeks to green architecture and public art. This year the program plans to explore more aspects of Santa Barbara that have not been discovered: affordable housing, great gardens and landscape projects, sustainability projects, and more! For a full calendar of Walking Wednesday events, please visit www.coast-santabarbara.org and check often for updates!

City Council Candidates on Transportation

The Community Environmental Council, the Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition, and COAST have teamed up to develop a questionnaire for candidates running for Santa Barbara City Council. The questionnaire focused on current transportation issues, such as the attractiveness of alternative transportation and the jobs vs. housing imbalance.

We asked the following questions:

  1. Do you agree with the City’s Circulation Element vision statement, “Santa Barbara should be a city in which alternative forms of transportation and mobility are so available and so attractive that use of an automobile is a choice, not a necessity”? If not, how would you improve it?
  2. Given that dangerous walking conditions that exist in Santa Barbara’s Eastside, what might you do to make the Eastside a safer place to walk – more lighting, re-pavement of crosswalks, speed bumps, more police enforcement, or something else?
  3. Is it the City’s duty to improve the jobs/housing imbalance in Santa Barbara? If so, what would you have the City do to accomplish this? If not, how can this imbalance be best addressed?
  4. Please list three specific things you would prioritize to improve our regional transportation. How would you pay for them? How long would it take to accomplish them?
  5. Do you support the State of California’s goals for new and retrofitted “net zero energy” buildings that generate as much energy as they use? If so, how can the City be a leader and help its citizens meet this challenge? If not, why?
  6. Given projections of increased traffic levels in Santa Barbara, how would you best mitigate our upcoming street congestion?

And here are their responses, by candidate:

Sharon Byrne
Iya Falcone
Dale Francisco
Jerry Matteo
Cathy Murrillo
Randy Rowse
Deborah Schwartz
Michael Self

Remember to register to vote if you haven’t already. This election is also entirely vote-by-mail. Here upcoming dates of interest:

Monday, October 10: Voter Information packets mailed including pre-paid postage for returned ballots
Monday, October 10: Vote-by-mail period begins
Monday, October 24: Last day to register to vote
Tuesday, November 8: Election Day – Last day City Clerk’s Office can receive vote-by-mail ballots. There will be also be five drop-off centers throughout the City, allowing voters the option to vote in person
Three City Councilmember seats are on the ballot.

For more information, visit www.SBCityVote.org.