After serving for six years on the board of the Riviera Association, Santa Barbara City Council candidate Dianne Channing is joining the race for an open seat in November.
Channing is an Orange County native who has lived in Santa Barbara for 20 years, a move she said has helped her appreciate what’s special about Santa Barbara.
Most know Channing from her work with Riviera neighborhoods. Although she’s no longer on the association board, Channing remains active as a member.
She’s confident in her track record of bringing people together and emphasizing mediation. One of the big issues she dealt with was mediation between neighbors about view preservation. She worked with the city to create an ordinance dealing with view disputes, which was adopted in 2002.
“It’s geared towards mediation and talking it out,” she said. “Too often, I believe we get away from the issues and get personal.”
Channing also was instrumental in helping the city update its neighborhood preservation ordinance, when she chaired 30 public meetings and worked closely with the city.
The group ran headlong into contentious issues as it sought to reign in huge homes on small lots. Making those tough choices become a regular event for Channing during the two-year process.
“Not everybody’s going to be happy with it, but you have to make those choices in order to go through with what the community needs,” she said.
The process also resulted in new single-family design guidelines, which Channing said she’s very proud of. She’s also a steering committee member for Save El Pueblo Viejo, a group seeking to cap downtown building heights.
“Scale is so important, in our neighborhoods and downtown,” she said.
Preserving the character of the city is beneficial to residents and tourists, Channing said, adding that she doesn’t believe that taller buildings would result in affordable housing. El Carrillo and Garden Court are prime examples of affordable housing in a sensible footprint, she said.
She has been a renter in Santa Barbara as well as a homeowner, and said watching development go up in Orange County years ago gave Channing and her husband hope they would be able to buy a home in the area.
“We thought, ‘Oh great, they’re building like crazy here, now we’ll be able to afford a home,’” she said. “Nothing could’ve been further from the truth.”
Prices kept climbing as people poured in from all over the country, she said.
Building more rental housing in areas such as the Milpas corridor makes more sense than placing it downtown, among “the most expensive land in the tri-county area,” she said.
Enhanced pedestrian and bike ways are important to Channing, but she said she’s against making driving more difficult as an incentive for people to travel car free. She’s also a fan of commuter rail for those traveling from out of town, and more shuttle access for locals.
Channing said she also hopes to address some of the city’s financial woes with smart business savvy; she’s been the business manager of her husband’s photography business for 23 years.
“Everything’s on the table when you’re talking about this dire of an emergency,” she said, and trimming the size of city government would be key, though police and fire would be last in line for cuts.
“Our charter says we have to live within our resources,” she said. “I consider money a finite resource.”
According to her Web site, Channing has the support of many community leaders, including Santa Barbara Mayor Marty Blum and Santa Barbara Councilman Das Williams. Other supporters include Goleta city leaders, the Santa Barbara County Democratic Party and the Santa Barbara County Young Democrats.
— Noozhawk staff writer Lara Cooper can be reached at lcooper@noozhawk.com.
