In Isla Vista, six candidates are facing off for three seats on the Isla Vista Recreation and Park District Board of Directors. 

The district focuses on maintaining parks and open space and providing resources and activities to the community

Isla Vista residents will choose three of the six candidates to serve on the board. The board directs the district policy, priorities, and oversees the budget. 

This year, the candidates include two incumbents, a UC Santa Barbara student, recent graduates, and a housing commissioner. 

The Incumbents 

Ash Valenti is running for their second term on the board after four years. They study restoration ecology at Santa Barbara City College, which gives them a better understanding of native plants. 

Valenti is proud of their work on the food forest at Estero Park and helping to get more restrooms available in the parks.

If re-elected, Valenti wants to get honest about the reality unhoused people are facing. 

“It’s really important that everyone is welcomed in the parks, whether you’re housed or unhoused,” Valenti said. “Everyone’s welcome to this space, to be here in the parks and if you’re unhoused it’s even more important to have that refuge.”

Valenti said that the parks district has sent outreach workers to park to help the unhoused people staying in the parks but that those efforts aren’t always successful. 

“It can sound good, but when you talk to the people about how they’re really affected, a lot of times, they’re in a much worse situation. They’re traumatized, they were not helped by that,” Valenti said. “So I want to be more honest and not just kind of sugarcoat it, it’s better to try than to not try, but also to be honest about the impact it has.”

Also running for a second term is Kim DuFore, an Isla Vista resident since 2011 and a customer service representative for Santa Barbara Airbus. 

DuFore said she was drawn to the role because she thought it was important to have a long-term resident on the board. Dufore said she was excited about the work being done at Children’s Park and Pardall Gardens.

Pardall Gardens at 6514 Pardall Road will be renovated to include wooden decks, benches, picnic tables, giving residents a place to hang out and eat right by Isla Vista’s commercial district. The project is set to be completed by June 2028. 

Dufore said she’s been thinking about this space since she first moved to Isla Vista and it was one of the projects she brought up when the board discussed renovations.

“There was something about Pardall Gardens, it’s almost like a pocket park, and it just just bugged me that it was just sitting there wasting,” Dufore said. “That’s one I’m really excited about. I think that’s gonna be super popular.”

If re-elected, Dufore said she’d like to work with the Isla Vista Community Services District to have more community events and live entertainment.

“I think people love to gather and realistically, people just need an excuse to gather,” Dufore said. “After the pandemic, everybody wanted to come out and reconnect.”

First-time Candidates

While there are two incumbents on the ballot, there are four newcomers hoping to join the board of directors.

Greg Ortiz has been an Isla Vista housing commissioner for the past five years and has lived in Isla Vista off and on throughout his life. As a commissioner, Ortiz oversees policies to make sure they’re fair and legal. 

Ortiz said he got into public service and volunteering after having a heart attack five years ago. 

“I made an agreement with God or myself that if I could walk out of this hospital, whatever years I have left, I’m going to give it to someone else, not me,” Ortiz said. 

He was drawn to the position on the Board of Directors to help keep the parks well maintained and get resources to the unhoused people relying on the parks. 

Ortiz has worked closely with the homeless community, and if elected, wants to help get unhoused individuals into housing and help those affected by recent state laws banning camping in parks and on sidewalks. 

“There’s these groups of people that are trained to help in any way that they can with any social issues you might have, whether it’s a mental issue, a drug addiction or housing issue, or just want to talk to or a ride or something,” Ortiz said. “These are the things that we can do while they’re in the park, while they’re in the community.”

Ortiz said he’d also like to focus on safety by educating residents about the dangers of the bluffs. He’d also like to see more social and educational programs for the youth and elderly. 

Recent UCSB graduate Robbin May Dominguez Balagtas is running to support small businesses, protect the local wildlife, and improve communication between the district and the community.

Balagtas was motivated after she found out people couldn’t sell items in the parks, unless they had a permit, in order to preserve the grass from heavy foot traffic. Balagtas had previously helped a friend struggling with homelessness sell their items at a park to make some money. 

“My thing is that if you’re going to enforce permits, you might as well educate everyone about it, because otherwise, it’s not fair for us to figure out how to navigate this by ourselves, and it’s been hard,” Balagtas said.

Balagtas has her own small business where she sells thrifted clothing and jewelry. 

“I got inspired by thrifters around me to start thrifting,” Balagtas said. “I love the element that there’s sustainable shopping, you revive clothing from ending up in landfill. I’m all about that, we’re teaching Isla Vista residents how to shop sustainably.”

One her ideas for the district is to establish warning signs for ducks to prevent them from getting run over.

“I do want to remind drivers to slow down, this is not the freeway, this is a residential area,” Balagtas said.  “We need to be mindful of animals who live here, Isla Vista is also a wildlife area, humans are not the only ones living here.”

Balagtas also wants to find ways to support unhoused people in the parks.

Demi Cain is also a UCSB graduate and has lived in Isla Vista for five years. She’s running to get more involved in the community and to preserve the area’s parks and open spaces. 

“I am a huge proponent, a very big advocate, on the idea of parks as a means of just improving the quality of life for an entire community,” Cain said. “I think in Isla Vista specifically, that is very true, because, as everybody knows, Isla Vista is extremely densely populated. There’s so many people packed into housing here.”

Cain is a development coordinator for the physics department at UCSB and was previously a program coordinator at the St. George Youth Center. 

Cain said those roles have given her an understanding of responsibly maintaining a budget and partnering with community partners for events and programs. If elected, she wants to focus on supporting the youth and families in Isla Vista.

“That’s just always been a community that is so easily marginalized here,” Cain said. “Everyone treats Isla Vista as just a college town, and very easily forgets about all of our families here.”

Cain said she’d like to increase attendance in youth programs by educating residents about the programs and how they can get involved. 

Cain said she’s really excited about the work going into Children’s Park and wants to help with the funding deficit in that project. She’d also like to see improvements at Tierra De Fortuna Park, which is another park that families go to. 

The youngest candidate on this list is Finn Zilles, a second-year UCSB economics major from Ventura. 

“I want to do something to help my community,” Zilles said. “It seems interesting to me to get more experience and some government work, and I can apply a little bit of economics to the finance side of the board.”

If elected, Zilles said he wants to focus on supporting district staff, increasing the amount of murals and artwork around Isla Vista, and building more community in the parks. 

“I think there’s a lot of people, especially those who go to UCSB, who aren’t completely aware of the board and what we do,” Zilles said. “I think reaching out to them can be a good thing to see exactly what they want but I just want to build more communities within the parks.”

As for providing services to the homeless community, Zilles said they should be focusing on connecting with people at an individual level. 

“We don’t have a super large population of unhoused people so I think it’s possible for us to work with people on an individual level and see what each person needs and see what we can do to help them out,” Zilles said. 

Isla Vista residents will vote on Nov. 5 for three of the six candidates to serve on the board of directors for the next four years.

Learn more about the district and its parks here.

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