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 Barrett Reed
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?
Barrett Reed: When I walk the neighborhoods to introduce myself to voters, I often hear this frustration from so many. Throughout the Fourth District, residents tell me how many times they have tried to call, email and reach out to their current council member, NEVER to hear back. Their serious concerns are going unanswered, while others make the time to respond.
Santa Barbara deserves better.
How can one claim to represent the district without having an active conversation with people? It can’t be done. If your email is full of messages from people who care, you have to respond.
To be an effective city leader, you have to rely on the feedback of each person you answer to in order to improve. This is how to solve problems before they fester into expensive and complicated messes.
As a candidate, I have offered my personal cell phone number to each person who wants to share their voice with me. I will answer their calls as their representative in the city. When running a business, if you don’t answer the phone, you lose out, and it’s the same in City Hall.
I will proactively bring City Hall to our residents by continuing to walk neighborhoods, by holding in-person office hours in the district, and by attending community events. This is the job and what I want to do for my constituents.
Learn more at barrettreed.org.
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?
BR: Downtown revitalization and sustainable reuse projects have been my day-to-day work. Locals don’t want to go downtown anymore, and that’s been a real blow to downtown businesses.
We need to rebuild a clean and safe downtown by creating a Property Business Improvement District. I have been working in collaboration with the Downtown Santa Barbara organization, where I’m a board member, as well as the Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce to find out exactly what this will take.
Such a district will allow businesses, property owners and stakeholders to have more control over the daily maintenance and management of our downtown. When the city tries to do this alone, it ends in disaster.
We also need to bring more housing downtown. If more people were able to live in heart of our city, it would electrify our downtown like never before. The City Council should incentivize the reuse of our largest vacant spaces for housing and mixed-use, first by prioritizing an Adaptive Reuse Ordinance. The council has failed to realize this important solution, and it’s indefensible at such a critical moment.
We are seeing business owners on State Street fail and lose their life savings before they can even open their doors because of the costs and delays caused by our permitting process. I cannot bear to wait any longer for things to improve. We must act to fix our broken permitting system and to save our downtown businesses.
Finally, let’s wholeheartedly tackle our homelessness crisis. We must provide temporary housing with comprehensive services in strategic locations in our city. The funding is available, but our City Council has failed to act while also refusing to support equal enforcement of our basic ordinances.
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?
BR: I’ve had the privilege to grow up in this city. I have an amazing partner, Caitlin, a loving family, and a successful business that enables me to call Santa Barbara my home. Many of my friends and other residents do not have that same privilege. I’m running to make Santa Barbara a thriving community that lifts marginalized voices and values them more than ever.
Whether you own a business or work for one, I will be serving on City Council for you.
For more than a decade, I have fought for fair housing and employment opportunities for local inmates upon their release from jail. This has been one of the greatest honors of my life and continually gives me a new and honest perspective on how far we have to go to become a more inclusive and equitable community.
We need to work more closely with our local social justice nonprofit organizations. Idle discussions will not move us forward, but proactive prioritization of this issue will promote a city government that is diverse and more representative of the community that it represents.
I believe that we must reach further outside of ourselves, individually and as a city, to fully realize that depth and richness of understanding that diversity brings to the table.
Noozhawk: How will you reduce the number of homeless encampments, unhoused people and homeless-related nuisance crimes in Santa Barbara?
BR: Living without shelter is unsafe. We have the ability to provide clean and safe shelter that offers so many helpful services and aid within suitable and secure places throughout our city.
I’m concerned that we have not provided these spaces already. Renting 35 hotel rooms for four months at a cost of $2 million is not a sustainable solution. There are already so many sustainable and successful service resources in Santa Barbara.
Dignity Moves, for example, is a sustainable and effective resource for housing. It would help so many people meet their needs for the city to partner with Dignity Moves to build temporary and flexible bridge housing with comprehensive services. We have had so many opportunities to do this with groups like this, and we just don’t see it get done.
The Bridge Solution in Santa Maria is another great example of a successful group that tackles the underlying causes of criminal behaviors that so often result from chronic homelessness.
We currently have 274 open criminal cases related to homelessness in the City of Santa Barbara. The Bridge Solution was intended to launch in Santa Barbara, however our City Council failed to act on this great opportunity.
Let’s help fund these solutions with 2021 ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funding and from our allocation of the $12 billion coming from Sacramento. We currently are wasting millions of our city’s money on uncoordinated and desperate reactions to something that takes proactive leadership to solve.
Properly helping our homeless population in this way will also serve to improve the economy and efficiency of our law enforcement, medical services and fire department, but also our criminal justice, behavior wellness and public health departments.
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?
BR: SB 9 threatens the preservation of the very nature and beauty of our city. It is not a solution to creating affordable housing, but will actually end up making housing less affordable, while destroying the charm and character of our distinctive neighborhoods.
SB 9 makes housing more expensive. In allowing the single-family parcel to be divided, the state will pit developers against families to drive the prices sky high. Once our single-family homes have been leveled, the measure does not even require any of the new units to be affordable.
I’m dedicated to doing everything necessary to block and fight it. We much create new regulations, and take it to the courts as often as necessary. This issue cannot wait, or we will lose all our leverage. This is work I know how to do, and I’m prepared to do it with effectiveness, unlike the City Council during the last four years.
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?
BR: We need to reduce our costs for all sources of water: desalination, groundwater, reservoirs, recycled water and State Water Project water. We need to invest in sustainable and renewable infrastructure. Having wider sources of water allows us to buy water when it’s more economic in order to free up money that we can invest in sustainable infrastructure.
The way it is now, the county Board of Supervisors believes and acts as though they have authority over the city to make decisions regarding our water on our behalf. They need to be reminded that this is not the case.
Our City Council is too insulated from the real world that they represent. They don’t cultivate the relationships they need and they don’t take any action. I have proven myself as a leader who consistently prioritizes relationships above all else, and I have the courage to stand up to our county staff and supervisors on issues like these.
Noozhawk: What is the most important issue specifically in your district that you plan to address if elected?
BR: The most pressing and concerning issue in our district has to be the threat of overdevelopment in our single-family neighborhoods. If this is not defended against right away, we will never be able to go back and we will lose so many precious neighborhoods that our families and residents enjoy and rely on.
Our leadership in the city should be a model of proactive judgement and transparent relationships. SB 9 and so many other issues can be approached and dealt with before they become a threat to the integrity of our home when there is clear thought and strong action where it counts in City Hall.
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.
