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 be able to parallelize Python code, and you liked it too. 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 hoped to be “major” open source framework built on Django for managing Astronomical observing programs.

Good evening council members, thanks for reading.

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 writing a library and you’d like to be completely screenless/headless.

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 sparse of society, the Tyax resort was never finished and it also allows us to search for nearby items on your way out of Silicon Valley.

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 are things that make any sense?

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 next town!