••• “Prior to the 1850s, not a single eucalyptus grew in California, which raises the question: how did this tree, an invader from an alien botanical world, come to tower over so much of the region’s streets and green spaces? Who eucalyptized Southern California?” —KCET (via Edible Santa Barbara)
••• Santa Barbara city councilmembers Kristen Sneddon and Meagan Harmon have come up with a rent-control plan: “If acted upon, their initiative would allow landlords to increase their rents by no more than 2 percent per year on their existing tenants. Once those tenants move out—voluntarily—they added, landlords would be allowed to raise the rents to whatever the market would bear, but with a few provisos. In no event, the councilmembers suggested, could rents be allowed to be raised by more than 10 percent in any 12-month period, nor could they be increased by more than 30 percent over any five-year period.” With inflation extremely likely, given the amount of money the government is pumping into the economy, this has the potential to be brutal on landlords. —Independent
••• An argument against the proposed renaming of San Andres Street. “The proponents of the name change apparently know very little of Don Andrés, presenting their complete list of qualifications for the dismissal of this historic street name as follows: ‘André [sic] Pico was neither a saint nor resident of Santa Barbara.’ Their two benchmarks for testing the validity of a street name’s importance would easily call for the renaming of more than a dozen streets in our community including Calle Cesar Chavez.” —Edhat
••• “Street musicians get amped up over health order denying live tunes.” —KEYT
••• The tree of the month is the water gum, “as close as you can get to a ‘perfect tree’ for ornamental purposes in Santa Barbara. It has beautiful green foliage all year long, has attractive fragrant flowers, is tolerant of both dry and wet conditions, grows in almost any type of soil, is essentially insect- and disease-free, tolerates pollution and, perhaps most importantly, is almost maintenance-free.” —Edhat
••• Another Edhat classic: “Male subject in a vehicle passed out in the drive-through at Jack in the Box on Milpas.”
Comment: