He’s one of the youngest candidates in the race for Santa Barbara City Council, second only to 24-year-old Olivia Uribe, but 26-year-old Justin Tevis says supporters of all ages and walks of life are behind his run.
“I’m not trying to ride the youth vote by any means,” he says.
Tevis is somewhat of a mysterious figure, and had been less visible in the past than some of his other competitors, who have cut their teeth speaking at council meetings and organizing for community causes.
He contends he has plenty of experience in the private sector, an outlook he maintains is desperately needed in whoever wins seats in November. He’s a manager and works in purchasing at the Territory Ahead. He also worked for a production home builder, and helped in sales at a company called Polymer Logistics, where he helped set up a 65,000-square-foot distribution center in Riverside.
Tevis sees his lack of formal city experience as an advantage and is using a different approach than his more experienced candidate counterparts. “I truly have an outsider’s perspective,” he said. “I’m not going to vote for pay raises for my friends if it’s not in the budget of the city.”
After getting degrees in international relations and history at Claremont McKenna in 2005, Tevis said he’s always had a passion for politics, but never thought he’d be running for office. After seeing so much news coverage of the economic crisis, he said he felt that workers in the private sector were being underrepresented.
“I felt like citizens were being overburdened and having agendas pushed down their throats,” he said. “I feel that the way the economic crisis has been handled by all levels of government, federal, state and local, has really shown that the politicians in office are out of touch with reality.
“Instead of balancing the budget responsibly, they’re turning it back on the citizens and looking at our pocketbooks to make up for the mistakes that they’ve made.”
He has a few suggestions for Santa Barbara’s budget shortfalls, one of which would be holding city workers to the same levels of accountability as those in the private sector. “For example, a $35,000 administrative job in the private sector is getting paid over $90,000 at the city,” he said.
He said there are too many lifelong politicians at work in City Hall, and more people are needed in office, he said, representing “hardworking, private-sector citizens at large.”
“This is a pivotal time in our history,” he said, “and good people need to step up, or our city could become insolvent.”
Tevis was born at Cottage Hospital and grew up Santa Ynez. Preserving Santa Barbara’s “small-town cultural identity” is important, and he said he doesn’t feel that character should be compromised in the name of affordable housing or big projects.
Cherishing that small-town character was a sentiment Tevis saw in his parents, who still live in the Santa Ynez Valley. “We’ve seen what can happen with overdevelopment,” he said, and is supportive of limiting heights in downtown Santa Barbara.
Instead of fighting for more affordable housing, Tevis said he’d like to see the focus shift to maintaining basic infrastructure, such as upkeep for roads and bike lanes.
He’s in favor of neighborhood task forces working with police task force units to try to quell gangs in Santa Barbara, but said he’s not in favor of any type of gang injunction.
“I don’t think we need to live a big-brother, lock-down type of society,” he said. “I think that anything we do in regards to gangs needs to be taken with a grain of salt, and taking civil liberties and privacy and respect of human beings into account.”
As for homelessness, Tevis believes the problem is worse than it’s been since he’s lived in the area, and though he supports private charities and churches helping the homeless, he doesn’t support tax dollars going toward building shelters.
“I don’t think that we need to have a city council or a planning commission where their No. 1 priority is building free housing for the homeless,” he said.
— Noozhawk staff writer Lara Cooper can be reached at lcooper@noozhawk.com.
