As part of Noozhawk’s Nov. 2 Santa Barbara City Council election coverage, we are publishing Q&As with candidates running for mayor and City Council seats. Candidate answers may be lightly edited for spelling and formatting, but are otherwise presented as they were submitted.
For mayor, candidates include James Joyce III, Matt Kilrain, Cathy Murillo, Randy Rowse, Deborah Schwartz and Mark Whitehurst.
Two candidates are running for the District 4 seat: Barrett Reed and Kristen Sneddon. District 5 incumbent Eric Friedman is running unopposed.
There are four candidates on the ballot for the District 6 seat: Jason Carlton, Meagan Harmon, Nina Johnson and Zachary Pike.
City Council District 4 Candidate Kristen Sneddon
Noozhawk: Many residents responding to a Noozhawk survey said current City Council members have not been visible during the COVID-19 pandemic and are not always responsive to citizen concerns. If elected, how will you make yourself accessible to your constituents? Will you hold in-person office hours? Personally respond to emails and calls? Attend public community events?
Kristen Sneddon: I meet with people in their homes, in the community, and online. I try to be accessible — but I admit it has been challenging during the past year and a half as we all learned new tools for communication.
There has also been a sense of loss of access to council members with remote meetings, where we don’t see or communicate directly with public commenters.
Now that more members of our community are vaccinated, I am resuming outdoor office hours and meeting with neighborhood groups. (This last weekend, I met with a number of neighbors in a park to discuss concerns over a proposed project on Las Canoas Road; this weekend, I will meet with another group of neighbors at a pocket dog park.)
I attend public community events often, and I respond personally to emails and calls, the best I can. Anyone who calls the City Council office can make an appointment with me directly, usually with very little delay. I am looking forward to when we are back in chambers and able to see and interact directly with the community.
Noozhawk: What is your long-term vision for downtown State Street and live/work options in the downtown core? What is your plan for reducing the number of vacant storefronts in that area?
KS: I have a vision for a Downtown Promenade that is clean, safe and welcoming to locals, with a renewed dedication to public art, preservation of our historic resources and cultural heritage, and celebration of our paseos and architecture. In the long term, I envision a downtown that is well-designed to integrate De la Guerra Plaza and Library Plaza, outdoor dining and events, with opportunities for enjoyment of the space for all ages.
We have made an exciting, but temporary, start. It is now time to carefully plan, block by block, so that we don’t overdo and overrun what gives us our charm and appeal.
With careful planning and adaptive reuse of vacant spaces, we can incentivize housing in the downtown core without sacrificing our mountain views and solar access. There is no reason to raise building heights when the vacuous spaces left by Macy’s and Nordstrom (and Sears) are available, and should be converted to housing or mixed-use similar to Alma del Pueblo, with affordable units available.
We are now using our city parking lots for community benefit projects, and we likewise need to be careful in our planning for the use of these spaces. Once they are gone, they are gone, and we need to hold firm that it is the community that benefits.
The city needs to do our part to make it easy, predictable and inexpensive to open new businesses, which should not be held up by arbitrary processes.
This is also the time to hold property owners accountable who choose to leave their storefronts vacant. There are renters to rent these spaces, but rents are too high and out of line with what is offered in nearby locations. Property owners need to be more flexible in renting and not be holding out for years for the highest unrealistic rent.
These vacant storefronts are a burden on the whole community, and I believe it is time for there to be a community benefit fee to property owners who are choosing to leave vacancies. With property owners and the city each doing our part to expedite, we can be a vibrant downtown.
Noozhawk: Can you please define equity, and what your approach would be to make city government more diverse and more representative of the community it represents?
KS: Equity is the recognition that not everyone is coming from an equal field of opportunity, and the use of this knowledge to strive to reach an equal field of outcomes.
In city government, this would look like equal representation on all of our boards and commissions, as well as in positions of leadership. This takes active recruitment and diligence in making sure that decision-making bodies incorporate all who are affected by the decisions. We are not there yet.
It is a personal commitment of mine to actively recruit diversity to our boards and commissions, holding a position vacant if necessary, until a representative pool of applicants is achieved. It is also a personal commitment of mine to actively seek the input and direction of the local Chumash community. When we are designing De la Guerra Plaza and Ortega Park, for instance, BIPOC input needs to be part of the conversation early and consistently.
Actively seeking equity also requires celebration and visibility of our multicultural community. The (Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation this past year ran a series on Asian-American films, neighborhood celebration and local history, while the Historic Landmarks Commission recognized the significance of local black landmarks and the importance of Chicano muralism at Ortega Park. Equity requires actively seeking out the opportunities for community-wide representation and visibility.
Noozhawk: How will you reduce the number of homeless encampments, unhoused people and homeless-related nuisance crimes in Santa Barbara?
KS: For the first time, in a meaningful way, we are moving people from encampments to bridge housing, and on to permanent supportive housing. But we are far from done.
At the height of the pandemic, cities were prohibited from relocating encampments. Almost as soon as that restriction was lifted, Santa Barbara moved quickly to relocate camps in fire-prone areas (first) to temporary and on to permanent supportive housing. As we initially concentrated outreach to encampments, there was temporarily an increase downtown. Now we need to expand the number of beds available to be able to move more people into shelter.
Over 80% of our unhoused population are locals who grew up here, or went to school here, or worked here. The solution is housing.
There are currently hundreds of vouchers in the hands of homeless residents, and a lack of willingness to accept the vouchers. We need to work in partnership with our Housing Authority to provide 100% affordable housing to the greatest number of people, with services available to genuinely address root causes.
With state-mandated restrictions in place against booking for nuisance behaviors, we have to look for another way to address this issue. For years there have been discussions of a Restorative Homeless Court. This is a successful model in Santa Maria, and it would be extremely beneficial for the county to offer this opton in Santa Barbara.
In Restorative Court, someone with an infraction can choose to enter a sobering facility or work off the infraction in some way. There are consequences to illegal or nuisance behavior, rather than the revolving door of the County Jail, and those consequences may lead to rehabilitation.
For several years, I have advocated for the installation of a social worker at the downtown Public Library, and just this week this position was approved and ready to go. The embedded social worker will be able to bring services to the library and museum areas, to where people already are. This social worker can help with connecting to services and housing and getting document-ready, and their presence should alleviate some nuisance behaviors.
And we need bathrooms.
Noozhawk: How should Santa Barbara respond to state Senate Bill 9, which allows for duplex development (up to four units) in single-family-zoned neighborhoods?
KS: As a council member I led efforts to fight SB 9 and SB 10. I pushed our council to go on record in opposition. I helped convene a town hall meeting with council members and our local legislators — who ended up NOT supporting these pieces of legislation. I individually signed on with other cities who were more proactive sooner, and with the L.A. Times, and other lobbyists against SB 9 and SB 10.
This bill potentially quadruples densities away from our urban core and into hillsides and remote areas. We do not have the infrastructure to support the water supplies or waste or hazards this much increase to density on the outskirts would call for.
This added density also does nothing to increase our affordable housing stock as there is no inclusionary requirement. This will lead to denser neighborhoods, away from our urban core, at a higher cost and substantial environmental burden. No thanks.
I believe we need to fight this overreach into our local control and overriding our careful planning of where we incentivize inclusionary housing in our downtown core.
Noozhawk: What can Santa Barbara do, that it’s not already doing, to reduce climate-change-related hazards for its residents and move toward a more sustainable future in terms of energy and water resources?
KS: This has been an incredible four years, both in dealing with unprecedented impacts of climate change with historic drought, fires, debris flow, rising temperatures and pandemic, AND with progressive actions in long-range planning for sea-level rise, an enhanced urban water management plan, our Community Wildfire Protection Plan (addressing vegetation management and evacuation routes), and the recent rollout of Santa Barbara Clean Energy, all of which I was materially involved with.
I am also very proud of the city’s new Department of Sustainability & Resilience, with resources and staffing dedicated to meeting the ever-increasing challenges of climate change-related hazards.
In the next steps, I am proposing a pilot program in developing a “resilience hub” at a local school. This concept was born out of the Montecito debris flows, where an area school could be an emergency center, with enough solar-powered battery storage on a micro-grid to be self-sustaining in the event of emergency or disaster. With an industrial kitchen and room for sleeping, a resilience hub would also be a center for emergency information in English and Spanish, where families and community members can find shelter and a communication center.
In terms of water resources, Lake Cachuma is already at 50% capacity following our last historic seven-year drought. As liaison to the Water Commission, and board member of the Cachuma Operation and Maintenance Board as well as the Cachuma Conservation Release Board, I am actively working to secure our diversified water portfolio to ensure we have enough water supply, at our current population, well into the future.
Noozhawk: What is the most important issue specifically in your district that you plan to address if elected?
KS: Clearly, public health and safety are the most important issues specifically facing District 4, with overarching implications on so many issues. The majority of District 4 is in the High Fire or Extreme High Fire Hazard Zone. During the Thomas Fire, much of our district (including myself) had to evacuate several times and for many days. Our roadways are narrow and winding and sloped.
Increasing density in these areas stresses our infrastructure and increases the risk and difficulty of evacuation. This is one of the main reasons why I continue to fight SB 9 and SB 10. We are an island city, bound by water and mountains with one main artery in and out. As we experienced in the debris flows, our island city can become quickly isolated from services and emergency response.
I will continue to fight to fund fire and community safety, and fight overdevelopment in our fire-prone district. We don’t have the infrastructure to support increased demands in this district.
Aside from these protections, I am committed to improvements in our parks (Franceschi Park and others), protecting open spaces, and continuing to support the economic development of Coast Village Road and downtown.
Read all of the Noozhawk questionnaires with Santa Barbara City Council and mayoral candidates here.
— Noozhawk staff writer Jade Martinez-Pogue can be reached at jmartinez-pogue@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
