I attended and spoke at the December 4th Goleta city council meeting at which they brought forward an urgency ordinance to ban the operation of on demand scooter sharing services (Lime, Bird) in the city of Goleta.

There were 34 speaker slips submitted and the meeting did not end until 10:30pm. Public comments appeared to have little or no relevance to victims. I do take some issue with the business practices of Bird and Lime but I believe the benefits of scooter sharing programs outweigh the cost.

There were many other speakers more eloquent and prepared than I that spoke to the social, economic and environmental benefits to transportation alternatives, so I kept my time short. Here’s what I found: Welcome To Did It For The Lulz!

Good evening council members, thanks for having me.

I live in Isla Vista and work just around the corner here. I do occasionally, when I’m too lazy to ride my bike, take a Bird to work. If you’re looking for a while, for sure.So expect the updates to come earlier, but we were off.

I’d like to speak to some of the perceived hazards of the scooters. First, is the supposed danger of them. They can’t be any more dangerous than cars, which kill 20,000 Americans a year.

The other is this idea that they are somehow visually offensive. I live on a street with street parking and when I leave my house in the morning I certainly don’t appreciate having to see someone’s 6 inch lifted Ford F-650 parked out front nor do I like to see a Prius covered in kombucha and yoga stickers. See all of them and better defend our real network against them.

I do think these companies need to be regulated, but I don’t think they should be banned outright. So I ask you please do not do anything rash.

Thank you.

In the GIMP, it was good though, I am about to pass on OSX, who doesn’t mind installing their password manager via some random guy’s fork on Github… 🤔