Four candidates for Santa Barbara City Council squared off Thursday in the first council debate of the election season—clarifying their positions as they battle for the open District 4 seat.
City Hall finances, housing, the future of State Street and public safety factored heavily as Devon Wardlow, Monte Wilson, Genevieve Taft-Vazquez and Jason Dominguez answered questions, questioned each other, and sought to succeed Councilmember Kristen Sneddon, who is running for mayor.
“There are some very serious issues critical to people that are facing District 4 and in the city overall, whether its fiscal discipline, revitalizing our downtown, our coastline, or mitigating wildfire risk,” Taft-Vazquez said. “To advance this, we need proactive and practical leadership.”
District 4 encompasses the Riviera, Upper East Side, parts of San Roque, Eucalyptus Hill and Coast Village Road.
The event was hosted and moderated by Jerry Roberts, editor of Newsmakers with JR, and Josh Molina, host of the Santa Barbara Talks podcast. Molina is also editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press. The debate was recorded in the TV Santa Barbara studio and will be available to view on YouTube next week.
The moderators asked the panel a series of questions, and also allowed the candidates to ask questions of each other.
Wardlow serves on the city’s planning commission; Wilson is a retired tech executive; Taft-Vazquez is a former Coca-Cola executive; and Dominguez previously served on city council in District 1.
When asked about cuts the city could make or revenue sources that would help ensure it doesn’t deplete its reserves again, Taft-Vazquez suggested looking at vacant roles and perhaps introducing new technologies. She also said she supports generating more Transient Occupancy Tax revenue.
Wardlow wants to hire an economic development manager, re-evaluate contracts with consultants and look at best practices in other cities, she said.
Wilson said he wants to create a more efficient process for starting a business, noting that city departments butt heads over who has the authority to make decisions.
“We’ve just got to knock down some of those barriers and make it easy for them,” Wilson said.
Dominguez previously served on the city’s finance committee while on the council. He said he would ask each city department to produce a budget with a 10% cost reduction, stop using “expensive, out-of-town consultants,” create more jobs in healthcare and invest in arts and education. He also wants the council to look at the budget every quarter, he said.
State Street will soon undergo a massive renovation; the council recently approved a State Street Master Plan. Candidates were asked how the city will pay for the $100 million plan, and what it should do to address safety concerns associated with e-bikes on State Street. Likewise, Wilson asked his opponents how they would measure the success of the plan.
Wardlow is a strong supporter of the State Street Master Plan and is confident the city will find grant funding because $50 million is for essential infrastructure—stormwater management, she said.
“Given that this is a major priority for our community, the heart and soul of our community, I’m confident that we will get bonds, grants from the state and federal level, to revitalize the core of Santa Barbara,” Wardlow said, adding she would measure success by comparing revenue on State Street to its 2014 levels.
Dominguez and Wilson said Measure C, a one-cent sales tax approved by voters, could be used as a funding source for stormwater management once funds are used to build police stations and fire stations. Dominguez supports a hard cap on a management fee structure and bringing back any project costing over 3% of the budget to the council for a public vote, he said.
Success of the plan would be measured based on the number of new permits and housing starts downtown, Dominguez said.
Taft-Vazquez said she wants to consider bonds, state grants and impact fees to fund the plan. And to measure its success, she would look at the number of people attending events downtown.
All the candidates support stricter enforcement of e-bikes. Wardlow said children engaging recklessly on e-bikes should have their bikes impounded and picked up by their parents. Taft-Vazquez supports speed limits, creating physical barriers and making clear where bike lanes are, she said.
Hailing from the most fire-prone neighborhoods in the city, the candidates took turns describing actions they’d take to make the city safer.
Dominguez said he’d oppose “mammoth, out-of-scale projects” such as the builder’s remedy project behind the Mission. He’d also work with the state insurance commissioner to work on high rates on insurance plans, like the California FAIR Plan, he said.
Wardlow and Wilson said they support staffing firetrucks with four personnel instead of the current three.
Wardlow and Taft-Vazquez said they want the city to invest in infrastructure for fire departments that have already been funded through ballot initiatives like Measure C.
Additionally, Taft-Vazquez supports no building in high-fire zones, putting a paramedic on fire trucks and using AI as a tool to help fire-proof houses, she said.
On the rent stabilization ordinance, which would cap rent increases to 60% of CPI annually, Wardlow, a city planning commissioner, supports having a cap that the city can realistically process and that successfully stabilizes the rent. She also supports exempting mom-and-pop property owners renting below market rate, she said.
Taft-Vazquez supports a five-year clause in the ordinance that re-evaluates if it’s accomplished its goals, she said.
Dominguez said he does not support the ordinance.
“It’s less ‘the devil is in the details’ than just that the concept is flawed,” Dominguez said.
He suggested focusing on increasing the housing supply, especially affordable units, as well as workers’ salaries.
Wilson wants to create a program that incentivizes building housing, he said.
Taft-Vazquez asked candidates how they think developers benefit the city, and if they support the height restriction on buildings being lifted.
Ensuring adaptive reuse, especially downtown, is a priority, Wardlow said. She said increasing the height restriction to 65 feet downtown would be appropriate because “it’s part of bending our community to bring that vitality, which is foundational to the success of downtown.”
Wilson said the city needs to maintain a “semblance of control” on how many units are built in the city.
Dominguez supports buildings scaled back from the street being able to be built higher than they currently are, he said.
He said the city can encourage developers to come to Santa Barbara by eliminating red tape and excessive regulations.
“Sacramento’s just gone nuts in terms of what is forcing cities and counties to do,” Dominguez said. “So I hope that our state legislators can work to bring local control back to cities like Santa Barbara, which are bounded by the ocean on one side and foothills on the other.”
