In a brief ceremony Tuesday evening, the Goleta council unanimously voted in Councilman Ed Easton as the city’s new mayor and Councilman Roger Aceves as mayor pro tempore.

The mayorship in Goleta traditionally rotates among the members of the council, who nominate and vote among themselves to elect the new mayor.

“I hope I can help the city work better than it does now,” Easton told Noozhawk.

If there’s anyone familiar with the administrative workings of the city, it would be Easton, who has served on the Design Review Board and headed up the city’s first Planning Commission, when members of the inaugural council, who also served as the Planning Agency, decided to hand the duties over to a separate body.

Easton brings with him an ambitious laundry list of tasks and priorities to his term as mayor — not all of which, he acknowledges, will be completed in his term. There’s the oversized vehicle parking ordinance — a long-standing issue in Goleta — the as-yet incomplete zoning ordinances and plans for an ice rink.

“I want to see The Living Room happen,” he said of the possible resurrection of the teen hangout. “I want to look into getting development funds for Kellogg Park, there’s the new City Hall.”

He also wants to refine council procedures, and improve the evaluation procedure for the city manager and city attorney positions. He also plans to look into the possibility of closing city streets for Halloween. The Strategic Plan process needs to be improved, he’s waiting for the Old Town parking study to come out and he wants to see an analysis of the possibility of taking over the financially embattled Glen Annie Golf Club.

Easton said he sees himself more as a facilitator for meetings between the different personalities and skills that his colleagues bring to the dais.

“I am elected by my peers to chair the meetings,” he said.

And he helps frame issues, a skill that became significant to him just recently with the oversized vehicle parking ordinance, where, he said, he came in on one side of the issue — ready to sternly regulate owners of oversized commercial or recreational vehicles — until he heard about the shortage of private vehicle parking in the city, and the hoops those owners already jump through.

“You just can’t look at things one way,” he said. “Having people come and speak to you is one of the ways you learn things.”

A resident of Old Town Goleta since 2001, Easton came to the Goleta City Council in 2008, running alongside Margaret Connell in her second bid for a council seat. One of the reasons he ran, he said, was because there needed to be a representative from Old Town, the once-blighted center of Goleta activity, with its eclectic assortment of buildings in various architectural styles and its manufacturing operations juxtaposed against San Antonio Creek, a soon-to be-restored rainbow trout run that cuts right through one of the busiest places in town.

Old Town is also the site of seasonal floods, blamed often on the lack of creek capacity and increased runoff. Several projects are aimed at Easton’s part of town, including major circulation improvements that could see the placement of several roundabouts in the area, the San Jose Creek capacity improvement and fish passage project, and the long-awaited Hollister Avenue redesign, an effort at making the major artery — that was once part of Highway 101 — more pedestrian and visitor friendly.

“Old Town talks about being funky,” he said, calling back to his architecture roots.

In his previous life an architect on the East Coast, he designed redevelopment projects — and learned his lessons there as well, he said.

“We didn’t know that much about redevelopment back then,” he said of a project that ultimately drove out the existing residents because of cost, thereby gentrifying the neighborhood.

It’s a phenomenon he said he hopes to help prevent from happening in Old Town, even as the city tries to stimulate economic development there.

But there will be business development coming down the pike. Deckers Outdoors Corp. is set to establish its headquarters not too far from City Hall, and Target is in talks to build a store just down the street as well. The Camino Real Hotel in western Goleta has broken ground, and there are two other hotels on the horizon — the transient occupancy tax from which represents a significant boost to the economy, coupled with a change in the city’s tax sharing agreement with the county.

Easton joins three others on the council who have served as mayor: Michael Bennett, a retired fire battalion chief; Aceves, formerly a detective with the Santa Barbara Police Department; and Connell, founder and two-time mayor of Goleta.

“I like to call you the George Washington of Goleta,” Connell’s daughter, Kate, said from the podium Tuesday evening, referring to her mother’s stint as the first mayor of the newly founded city in 2002.

Several others were present Tuesday evening to thank Connell, who will serve the final year of her term as councilwoman. Former council members — and mayors — Jonny Wallis and Eric Onnen congratulated Connell for her service.

“Not everyone is suited to being a council person, and not every council person is suited to being a mayor,” said Onnen, a Goleta Old Town business owner. “But you have done both, with dignity.”

— Noozhawk contributing writer Sonia Fernandez can be reached at sfernandez@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.