ISLA VISTA: 'MORE MONEY, PLEASE' MEASURE HITS BALLOT, SHOCKER!

Your humble Whipping Post has acquired the latest dispatch from the front lines of fiscal sanity, courtesy of what the Santa Barbara Independent optimistically refers to as the 'news.' It seems the unelected potentates of the Isla Vista Community Services District (IVCSD) have blessed voters with another opportunity to open their wallets, approving a 'Municipal Infrastructure & Services Measure' for the November ballot. We're told this will pay for things like, well, 'infrastructure and services.' Riveting, truly. One might think a 'community service' district would, you know, *provide* community services and infrastructure with the taxes they already collect, but apparently, such quaint notions are for lesser municipal bodies.

Indeed, the IVCSD, an entity cooked up in the progressive laboratory and funded by endless feasting on property taxes, now wants even more. It’s a classic move: create a solution to a problem no one quite remembers having, then demand more money for said 'solution.' We’re sure their tireless work on bike paths to nowhere and 'community engagement' — which mostly involves telling college students how to vote — is absolutely vital. What the Independent conveniently forgets to mention, of course, is that the IVCSD's main 'service' appears to be inventing new ways to dip into the public's purse, rather than actually solving Isla Vista’s perennial problems, which mostly stem from being, well, Isla Vista.

Now, armed with this fresh mandate to pilfer further, the IVCSD can continue its noble mission of ensuring Isla Vista remains a progressive petri dish, complete with regulations for everything and accountability for nothing. Expect the usual sky-is-falling rhetoric about crumbling sidewalks and existential threats if this generous handout isn't approved. And if it passes, expect absolutely nothing to change, except your tax bill. Meanwhile, the residents, largely transient students or their long-suffering landlords, will once again be asked to fund a bureaucracy that seems to exist primarily to perpetuate itself.

So, as the Independent dutifully reports this non-development as 'news,' we at The Whipping Post merely shake our heads. Another day, another tax hike masquerading as a benevolent act from our civic betters. Perhaps if the IVCSD started by, say, cleaning up actual trash rather than filling bureaucratic wastebaskets, they might find a bit more public goodwill. But then again, where's the fun in that when you can simply demand more money?