When Jennifer Smith was a student at UC Santa Barbara, she watched Goleta officially become a city. Now, 22 years later, she’s joining the City Council.
Smith has served on the Goleta Planning Commission since 2017 and is the executive director of the Legal Aid Foundation of Santa Barbara County. In the recent city election, she earned 64% of the vote and defeated local resident Ethan Woodill for the District 3 City Council seat.
“I’m just honored to have the vote of District 3 residents, and I’m really excited for the next step,” Smith said.
District 3 is in the northwest/Winchester Canyon area of Goleta from Glen Annie Road to Farren Road. The district primarily contains residential neighborhoods, Dos Pueblos High School, the El Encanto Heights neighborhood and Bella Vista Park.
One of the main issues Smith said she wants to tackle is improving safety at the Highway 101 crossings. With the city essentially split in half by Highway 101, and the increasing popularity of e-bikes, residents and city officials have raised concerns over pedestrian safety.
The Stroke Road overpass is particularly worrisome as many Dos Pueblos High School students travel across the overpass to get to school.
“Anybody who lives or drives around the Storke overpass, you see all kinds of crazy things happening,” Smith said. “It appears that our city will be growing, and we’ll probably have more people and students crossing. I think that needs to stay an important part of the discussion.”
Smith also wants to take a close look at the city’s Revenue Neutrality Agreement with the County of Santa Barbara. As a condition of Goleta’s incorporation in 2002, it entered a tax-sharing agreement: The city sends the county 30% of its sales tax and half of its property tax revenues.
“A lot of our money, even after 20 years has passed, is still going to the County of Santa Barbara as a result of our incorporation as a city,” Smith said. “I do hope we’re maybe able to find some sort of leverage to try to chip away at that.”
After graduating from UCSB, Smith went on to get her law degree at UC Davis and started her career in legal aid in Sacramento. During that time, Smith and her husband always wanted to find themselves back in Goleta. They officially made the move in 2012 and purchased a home in District 3 at the beginning of the year.
“For people that live in Goleta, there’s this unspoken thing that we all love about this area,” Smith said. “You still have some of the perks that smaller cities offer, but it’s not quite as hectic and crazy as a big city.”
Smith has a long history of public service in her family, with her grandfather serving as a naval officer in World War II and her grandmother serving with WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service).
“Service for them was how they got their ticket out of poverty,” Smith said. “I think anybody that grows up in a military family, even with the one generation gap, the patriotism and the importance of serving your country, it really gets instilled in you, even indirectly.”
Her grandparents were not the only ones who inspired her to get into public service. Growing up, Smith’s mother worked as a social worker and her father as a county attorney.
“I’m sort of the perfect mix. I have a father who’s an attorney and a mother who was a social worker, and I came out a legal aid attorney,” Smith said. “It makes a lot of sense. It’s hard to deny that influence.”
As the executive director of the Legal Aid Foundation, Smith doesn’t have to make court appearances, which gave her the time to serve on the Goleta Planning Commission.
As part of the commission, she played a role in approving the Heritage Ridge apartment development and helped ensure the use of story poles for large pending projects.
Robert Miller, a former city planning commissioner and outgoing Santa Barbara City College trustee, was appointed to the Planning Commission at the same time as Smith in 2017.
“Jennifer is a smart, dedicated and committed public servant,” Miller said. “She listens carefully to all the proposals and public comment before voting.”
Miller said he and Smith worked together on passing the first zoning code for the city in 2019. The zoning code outlines permitting procedures and design standards for the city’s residential, industrial and business zones.
As a former lawyer himself, Miller said he thought Smith could have pursued a more lucrative legal career and admired that she instead focused on public service.
“I just admire people that choose to spend their time devoted to public service, which often doesn’t pay well,” Miller said. “I think Jennifer is a great example of that.”
Having had the experience on the Planning Commission is partly what inspired Smith to run for the City Council.
“I really enjoyed the work and thought I could build on that experience and work on a wider array of issues,” Smith said. “Fundamentally, I just love Goleta.”
Smith is scheduled to take her oath of office and officially join the council at Tuesday’s meeting. She will be sworn in for a four-year term, and so will returning Councilman Stuart Kasdin, representing District 4, and Mayor Paula Perotte, who also won seats in the Nov. 5 election.
“I’m looking forward to working with Jennifer,” Perotte said. “Jennifer has a wealth of knowledge of land use from being on the Planning Commission for so many years, so I think she’s going to be able to offer a lot. I think she’ll fit right in with the current council.”
It will be the first time that District 3 will have representation on the council since the city implemented the district election map in February 2022. Before now, members were elected at-large, by all city voters.
Because of the district map, Councilman Kyle Richards is essentially losing his seat. He resides in District 2, which is represented by James Kyriaco and was not up for election this year.
However, Richards did win a seat on the Santa Barbara City College Board of Trustees.
“We’ll really miss Kyle Richards. He has been such a great council member for eight years now,” Perotte said. “He’s gone on to other adventures, but I know that he and I will always be friends.”
The City Council meeting is set to start at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at 130 Cremona Drive in Goleta. Elected members will take oaths of office, and the new council will select a mayor pro tempore.
Goleta is recruiting for multiple Planning Commission positions, including Smith’s replacement. City spokeswoman Kelly Hoover said the City Council expects to appoint new members in February.
