The one Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors seat contested in November’s general election not only represents the largest geographic swath of the county, but a seat that is often the swing vote on divided board decisions.
Running to fill the Third District seat held by retiring the Doreen Farr are Joan Hartmann and Bruce Porter, who finished at the top of June’s five-candidate primary race.
The Third District — which stretches from Isla Vista and Goleta in the south, up to the Santa Ynez Valley, out to Vandenberg Village in the west and around to Guadalupe in the north — is more politically diverse than the other districts, and closest in political makeup to the county as a whole.
Although the office technically is nonpartisan, Hartmann, a former planning commissioner, draws support mainly from liberal and Democratic quarters, while Porter, a board trustee with the Santa Ynez Valley Union High School District, is backed primarily by conservative and Republican constituencies.
In June, Hartmann won 43 percent of the primary election vote to Porter’s 34.9 percent.
For that race, 41.2 percent of the district’s voters were registered Democrats, while 27.3 percent were Republicans. Another 27 percent were not registered with a party.
The Third District is often the swing vote between the traditionally more conservative North County district representatives — currently Peter Adam and Steve Lavagnino — and the traditionally more liberal South County representatives — Janet Wolf and Salud Carbajal.
Farr has tended to side with her southern counterparts.
“In think in general — both at the Board of Supervisors level and the Planning Commission level — voting on too many issues has been grossly unbalanced, and needs to be brought back into some semblance of balance,” Porter told Noozhawk.
He says that has led to irresponsible and unwise decisions on the county level.
At the top of Porter’s to-do list as supervisor would be addressing the county’s pressing water needs with a county-wide planning effort, improved conservation and an embrace of desalination.
“The county is not a purveyor, but the county needs to provide leadership,” he said. “We need to examine our entire portfolio of water and see where we can have the biggest impact for our money in making a difference.”
Another of Porter’s priorities would be working with the Sheriff’s Department to determine what factors have kept potential deputies from joining its understaffed force.
Personnel shortages mean “that coverage for public safety is extremely thin, especially in huge portions of the Third District,” he said.
A catch-up plan to completely meet the county’s infrastructure backlog in the next decade, he said, requires new sources of revenues.
“We can’t just keep slicing the pie differently,” he said. “I think the way to do that is to quit chasing business out of Santa Barbara County.”
Hartmann cited economic development and jobs as top priorities, especially in North County cities, where median income is typically much lower than that of South County cities.
“The county itself shouldn’t be a job creator — that’s private sector,” she told Noozhawk. “But what the county can do is provide what’s necessary for businesses to thrive. For me, it’s water and renewable energy.”
The best employers, she said, are increasingly looking to locate their businesses in places where they won’t have as large an environmental footprint.
Hartmann said she would pursue securing more locally produced, affordable and reliable sources of water, and move the county away from oil-based energy toward renewables-based energy.
She said she would work to expand workforce housing and improve transit systems by coordinating local agencies and organizations.
Also among her top priorities is “protecting the character of our county” by preserving its open spaces, agriculture, water, air and distinctive urban designs.
The two candidates take starkly different views of how well the current Board of Supervisors has done its job and handled its finances.
Porter has said that “feel-good projects” funded by the board, as well as a quickness by that body and the Planning Commission to say “no” to development, have restricted and tied up revenues.
“It’s all about priorities and reshuffling and being very focused on really what are the main things we should be working on,” he said. “Where should be the really important places that we decide to put our money where we are going to get maximum advantage out of that money?”
Hartmann, on the other hand, has lauded the board’s work since the recession, citing the size of the county’s rainy day fund, its high bond rating, decreasing unemployment, and its paying down its pension obligations faster.
“They have to, from the other perspective, say that everything is bad, because if everything is good, then maybe we should just keep on,” she said.
“We have a stable platform now to build from.”
Hartmann said Porter has a view of local government that focuses too narrowly on only “safety, infrastructure and services to the very needy,” which she said ignores its role in “helping us as a community create the quality of life that we want and the quality of the communities that we want.”
Hartmann and Porter’s candidacies are bolstered by lengthy resumes, and both tout their experience when making their cases to voters.
From 2012 to 2015, Hartmann was Farr’s appointed Third District planning commissioner.
The Buellton resident has taught at Claremont Graduate University and Oberlin College, and has work experience in legal and budget offices for governmental agencies and environmental nonprofits.
With the amount of land-use issues the Board of Supervisors deals with, Hartmann said, her experience on the Planning Commission is directly related to the job she is seeking.
“Having a law degree, having been a college professor, having worked as a budget, legal and policy analyst — those are the kinds of skills that you need in a bureaucracy,” she said.
Porter, who resides in Santa Ynez, served for over 25 years in the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers before becoming a financial advisor and a board trustee with the Santa Ynez Valley Union High School District. He is a former chair of the Santa Barbara chapter of the Red Cross.
“I think Joan Hartmann has a very thin resume. She’s never done anything in her life but environmental policy work,” he said.
Porter said his years of on-the-ground experience building infrastructure, developing and negotiating budgets, preparing for natural disasters and addressing environmental issues “would paint a picture that I have a much deeper, broader and richer background in what I would bring to the Board of Supervisors.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Sam Goldman can be reached at sgoldman@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.