Tracy Lehr
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (KEYT) The City of Santa Barbara is preparing to update its massage ordinance.
Before changes are made, a longtime massage therapist is sharing her concerns.
Kathy Gruver is worried the effort to crack down on criminal activity will harm legitimate businesses.
“It is really unfair, I mean we are healers, we are helping people in the community. I’ve got cancer patients, I’ve got motorcycle accident [survivors] I have pregnant women, and to be put into a category of people doing really illicit and illegal things that is harmful to he community. I want to see those gone, too, but this is not the way to go about it,” said Gruver.
Gruver owns Healing Circle and has a doctorate in natural health with an emphasis on mind-body medicine.
The proposal calls for random inspections, raising the current $25 fee by hundreds of dollars, and doubling the 250-hour licensing requirement.
“They are targeting us who are doing healing work. It is offensive and it is demeaning to the industry to those us that are really working hard to help the community be better.”
The city hasn’t updated its ordinance since the mid 1970s and the police department sent a letter about the updates proposed to massage therapist professionals last month.
Gruver said there is a problem, but she is concerned about the way the city wants to address it.
“I’d love to see some new things adopted, but I read what they want to update and the first paragraph is just offensive to us, it is like I’m sure there are some nice people doing this, but they are talking about staph infections and trafficking, destroying the fabric of the community.”
Her business on upper State Street is booked until the New Year.
“You are looking at my office, I am not destroying the fabric of anything, we are really doing the best we can, we are just trying to run our businesses as legit as possible and it is hard when we are having regulations thrown at us that are going to undermine what we are doing.”
Even so, she knows the problem exists.
“In the city of Santa Barbara there’s tons, I can point to 5 within a 2 block radius of here, it is obvious where they are, they are listed on websites, I want to get rid of these places, it is not good for our business, not good for our community, the families in our community,” said Gruver,” I’d love to see them go away. I can help you, put me in the car and I will drive down the street and go that one, that one and that one. It is really hard to get rid of, It is going to take a lot of time, a lot of money, that is why they have upped our fees, because they expect us to pay for the inspections, there has got to be a different way for them to do that.”
She is worried clients will be traumatized by inspections.
“I can’t be in the middle of massage or someone who has had trauma and have the police banging on the door to be let in, It just can’t work that way,” said Gruver.
She believes the city will listen when they take up the issue again at an ordinance committee meeting on Dec. 16 at 1 p.m.
“There has to be some kind of compromise and they seem to be open to a compromise so we will see what happens,” said Gruver.
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