District 4 Candidate Debate | Newsmakers with JR

0:00Hello everyone and welcome to a debate between the candidates for Santa Barbara's District 4 City Council C. I want to thank TV Santa Barbara for producing this video podcast and election series. I'm Josh Molina, founder of Santa Barbara Talks and co-sponsor of tonight's debate. The November 3rd election will decide the balance of power on Santa Barbara's 7-member City Council with the Citywide Office of Mayor and 3 District Neighborhood Seats up for grabs. Tonight we're speaking with the 4 candidates for City Council in District 4. District 4 includes the Riviera, Upper East, Other Neighborhoods and is currently represented by Kristen Snedden who is termed out. Here are the candidates running for

1:03District 4. Jason Dominguez, Genevieve Tafesquez, Devon Wardlow, Monty Wilson. To explain the format for tonight's debate, let me introduce my colleague, Jerry Roberts, he's my co-moderator and editor of Santa Barbara Newsmakers. Thanks Josh. The format for tonight's debate is simple and consists of three parts. First we'll hear 90 second opening statements from each of the candidates. We'll also have questions from the moderators for which the candidates will have two minutes each to respond. And we'll have some candidate to candidate engagement sessions in which each candidate will have a chance to question their opponents and open it up for discussion. With that we'll begin with opening statements going in alphabetical order.

2:09We will start with Jason Dominguez. Thank you Jerry and Josh for hosting this great event. I'm excited to be running for City Council again. I very much enjoyed my first term on the City Council. I was pleased to have several accomplishments in housing in the environment, particularly as finance committee chair, I was able to achieve a balanced budget and over the years I was the committee chair, our reserves actually went up. So it was a very successful experience. My colleagues appointed me to be the council liaison to the planning commission to single family design board, essentially all of our land use committees and it was a great responsibility that I was prepared for having been a city attorney and a county attorney here in Santa Barbara. So I really love my time and I'm looking forward to helping solve the great problems that the city has now including state street, the massive developments that are slated behind the mission and working on

3:14the e-bikes problem on state street as well as homelessness and other problems of city faces. Thank you for this opportunity to appear before you. Genevieve Tafasquez. Thank you Jerry and Josh for doing this and for doing it for all of the City Council races. Let's see at least once a day Santa Barbara takes my breath away and it might be a beautiful view like when I'm rounding the corner at the mission and I first glance at the ocean or it might be an amazing conversation with somebody and it is that balance of the natural beauty and the amazing strong community that I love about Santa Barbara. But let's be honest there are some very serious issues, critical issues that are facing district four and our city overall whether it's fiscal discipline, its state street, its revitalizing downtown, it's our coastline or it's mitigating wildfire risks. And to advance this we need proactive and practical leadership. For the past 15 years I have led ethical and sustainable sourcing at the Coca-Cola company where we had to address

4:18very complicated issues bringing together people of very different perspectives to achieve meaningful results always balancing what makes sense for business, people and the environment. I was born and raised in this district. I am raising my three kids in this district. I am a homeowner in this district. I care very deeply about this district and I am not going anywhere. I am running for City Council to make sure that the next generation including my kids have the opportunity to build their future here. I want to be the type of City Council resident representative to listen and be responsive to members. Next we'll go to Devon Wardlow. I grew up in this community. I care deeply about this community and I'm really focused on bringing people together to address the challenges that we face and working collaboratively to really address these challenges. I built my career working in public policy from serving in the Obama administration to working in public policy for private sector

5:24initiatives and to serving on the City's Planning Commission for the past five years, holding developers accountable, fighting for housing over hotels and really ensuring that City Hall does better to be an efficient local government. After five years serving on the City's Planning Commission, I understand what we have committed to, where we have fallen short and what it will take to really deliver meaningful results for the people of Santa Barbara. And to me, this means strengthening wildfire preparedness and climate resilience. It means protecting our environment and open spaces. It means ensuring that our neighborhoods are walkable and safe for traffic, pedestrians, and bikes. And it really means ensuring that City Hall is working for locals. But most importantly, it means ensuring that future generations have the same opportunities that we have all had to build our lives here in Santa Barbara. I'm proud to be a member of this community. I'm proud to have earned endorsements from respected leaders in this community, including Assembly Member Greg Hart,

6:25Council Member Mike Jordan, Council Member Oscar Gutierrez, and if organizations like the Sierra Club and the Denver Party. Okay, thank you. Next we'll move to Monty Wilson. Great. Thanks, Josh and Jerry, for putting this show together for us. It's very simple why I'm running for City Council. I love Santa Barbara. It's our forever home. And having said that, we're still talking about the same problems that we were talking about 10 years ago. So I figured I can either sit on the side lines and complain or I can roll out my sleeves and do something about it. So here I am. I'm not a career politician. You won't see me running for State Senate or any other jobs. I'm here to fix one problem, Santa Barbara. I, you know, we've lived here for 14 years in District 4. I've had my homeowners insurance canceled. I've been evacuated three times. I know the problems of living in District 4. Also, we own a business on State Street. So we've lived kind of the rollercoaster ride of State Street for the last, you know, 15, 16 years now and really understand what it takes to survive

7:28in downtown Santa Barbara. So just know my priorities are really around fiscal responsibility. I've run some very large organizations with large budgets and candidly if I didn't hit my budget, I would have been fired. And that's how I want to treat this job. I want to focus on revitalizing downtown, making it an economic powerhouse. I want it to be easier to operate a business downtown and I want public safety to be paramount. So I'm not here to make promises. I'm here to give results. Thank you guys. Great. Thank you. Let's move to our first moderator question. This year, the city fully drained its emergency reserves dipped nearly $6 million into the red and only balanced the budget by using one-time revenues that won't exist next year. Whose failure was this? And what is the first specific cut or revenue source you put on the table to make sure this doesn't happen again? And we will start with Genevieve Taf Vesquez.

8:34As you mentioned, the budget was balanced this year using a lot of one-time fixes, not structural fixes. And I think what we are seeing is that the costs are rising faster than the revenues here. And that is one of the key challenges that the city faces overall. Santa Barbara is not unique in this particular case. And a lot of that has to do with salaries benefits. It's a high cost of living place. So dealing with that and the pensions as well. And so I don't think that we're going to balance this budget going forward when we look at the structural issues in the coming years. We are looking at dipping further and further into the reserves, which is not acceptable. And to deal with that, I don't think that we can just do cost savings or just do revenue growth. I think we need to look at both of those things. And definitely in terms of cost savings, certainly as 70% of the general fund has to do with employee salaries and benefits. Like certainly when vacancies come up, we need to be looking at that. Can we use technology better

9:39to improve city services? So whether that needs to be those roles need to be higher again or can we use technology to replace some of that or ship those around and really catalyze services. On the revenue side, we need to get businesses downtown. We need to get them down whether it's let's build on the yard being down there and see what ancillary businesses we can have there to increase the sales tax and bring, they may be having people coming in downtown for business or lunches or client meetings. Those kinds of things where you're going to get more TOT revenue as well. So I think it's both on the bringing businesses downtown so we can drive revenue but also certainly looking at cost efficiencies as well. Great, thank you. Let's move now to same question. Devin Wurlow. So Santa Barbara's long term fiscal health really depends on two things. Generating revenue and ensuring that every dollar we spend is a dollar well spent.

10:42So I see this in two buckets. First is growing revenue and I want to be laser focused on economic development and that really means supporting our small businesses. Being on planning commission, I hear constantly that it is too hard for businesses to do business in our community. We need to work on streamlining the processes so it is easier for entrepreneurs to come to Santa Barbara and build businesses that thrive. Part of that ensures really making that we are supporting this through an economic development manager. We've talked about hiring one. I think we need to do this so that we can bring in new businesses and we can support the businesses that we have today. I also really want to be focused on supporting the organizations that are doing great work in our community today, like the DSPIA and like the Coast Village Association. These are organizations that are doing the hard work on the ground today that are making a difference in the vitality and vitality is how we continue to grow revenue as a city. When it comes to the second piece of being fiscally responsible, I think we need to look at every dollar we spend and we need to have ongoing monthly

11:42check-ins with our department heads to ensure that we are staying on track to meet our budget goals. Part of that means really evaluating our consultants. I think we're all tired of how much money the city has spent on consultants and we need to take a hard look so that that stops. The second piece is also really looking at best practices from other cities. The city has conducted a study for a hotel linkage fee. That is something that I would support bringing back because I think that is a way that hotel developments are creating meaningful revenue to the city to offset the impact that they're having on our housing and our community. Lastly, I think it's really important that we do utilize technology to not take away from staff but to maximize staff and specifically within the building and planning department. I think that technology can be a good tool to help us increase our efficiency across all of city hall. Most importantly, it's really ensuring that we never dip into our reserves again and that fiscal responsibility is the top priority for all of us. Thank you. Okay. Want you Wilson? Great. Thank you. Now, I think, you know,

12:43to me, the key is really, you know, I don't think it's productive to blame anybody. I don't think anybody deliberately set out that I'm going to throw the budget off. But I think what we got to do is come in and look at those sort of fresh set of eyes. And one of the things that I always like to do is kind of the notion of zero-based budgeting and really understand, all right, if we have to start this department from zero and move up, is the budget there because many times in government budgets, things just roll over. I need 5% increase in my budget because, you know, consumer price index went on by 5%. I think instead what I'd like to do is really examine what do we need to operate that. The second thing I think is process improvement because when you look at some of the process, I've actually witnessed in our business where I had two departments arguing over who had the authority to make a decision on our business on state street. Those kind of things shouldn't really happen. So I think there's some redundancy that's there. I think that we need to look at efficiencies. You know, I come from a technology background and know what kind of efficiencies we

13:44can gain from that. And then lastly, I think around economic development, I've met with the CFOs of several of the companies that used to be on state street, like Sonos and Umbra and those people. They love to be in downtown. They like to take their employees out for lunch. They like to go to happy hours and things like that, but it was simply too hard. And I think we've got to just knock down some of those barriers and make it easy for them to operate in the city and see if we can get them to come back. Great. Thank you. Thank you. I've had the luxury of having led the city's finance committee. And as it's chair, we balance the budget and each year we increased our reserves to repeat what I said in my opening. The three things that I mentioned on Jerry Robert's show that I would do to deal with this budget scenario is ask every department to produce a budget scenario with a 10% cost reduction. I would also stop using expensive out of town consultants. They're draining our budget and they're not tied into what our community really needs or wants. And I would do no more of these one year salary payouts that are baked into our baked into our executives

14:49contracts when we hire from out of town. That's the exact kind of severance bloat that we don't need in our city. What I'd also say is city finance is complex. It's not a learn on the job situation because you've got state law that interferes with what you would normally have in the free market, the private sector. You've got union contracts. There's a whole set of legislative tools that you have and there's a whole set of legislative obstacles that counterbalance those. So you really need to have experience. What I'd use to promote our finance and economy is I'd create more healthcare industry jobs in Santa Barbara to bring in higher salaries, more investment in the arts and education. These are techniques that have worked in major cities around the country. Pittsburgh is a great example of that. It was a city that was in decline and they invested in those three areas and it really helped the economy. So I would do that. I would support our SBI and our Coast Village, which I have when I was on the council. I attended their meetings. I would continue to do that.

15:49I'd go to the annual conference in Nevada every year. We're leading businesses from around the country gathered to decide where to invest and I would promote Santa Barbara. This is the way we're going to get out of this cycle. I talked to Keith D. Martini, our finance department head and I would go beyond a monthly check-in on our budget. I would do continual real-time check-in and he's developing the technology right now with OpenGov which was started when I was on council. And so we'll have real-time updating for our budgets and I'd want it to come back to council every quarter. Thank you. Thank you. Well thank you all for those very substantive answers. Monty, I appreciate your sensibility saying it's not productive to blame anybody but if that were true Josh and I would absolutely have no work at all. So all right we're going to move to the first of several segments in which we're going to encourage the candidates to talk to each other and to have an open discussion among the four of you and we're going to begin that by asking each candidate

16:50in turn to pose a question to one or more of your opponents and going in reverse alphabetical order now. We'll start with Monty. We'll send you as 30 seconds to pose a question to another candidate. Great. Thank you. So this is in context to state, straight and downtown revitalization. What specific metric should we be using to measure success and name number one? So I think one specific metric could be looking at the numbers from 2014 that I think that our city is really striving to get back to. So right now we're about $300,000 short per quarter from those numbers and so I think that if we can get back to that number I think that would show that we've really done the work to really help revitalize and bring vitality back to San Barbara. Let's see. There are so many numbers to use. I know. Gosh. Okay. Well, if you're looking at the business you're definitely going to want to look at sales tax but I know you're going to say that

17:53it's been soft but that's across the board. Personally I would like to say you know if we could look at overall numbers of people downtown and personally I would look at that in terms of our programming. I would like to see more programming downtown so if there's a way to measure the number of attendees downtown going to that programming I think that's going to have a ripple effect on the economic vitality as well. I would say new permits and housing starts downtown. The entire city for the past six years has been focused on adaptive reuse downtown and until we can get some actual substantive growth downtown we're failing in that area and that's the one tool to revitalize our downtown and our commercial areas to get housing down there. That's the main thing everyone's been pointed at. I don't agree that adding new businesses is the path because when we've studied that all of our data has shown we've got too many businesses and that's part of the reason they're failing at such numbers as we have too much retail space on state street. We need to have more housing more housing and more housing. Manny did you want to take a whack at it too? Sure. To me it's kind of

18:59just the overall downtown population of business people in citizens living down there. My vision of successful revitalized downtown is a vibrant downtown where people are working, eating, shopping, dining, living their lives downtown and I think that's going to stimulate the economy that generates sales tax. It's going to improve where people come into visit for TOT and it just creates a higher level of energy. So that's the metric I'd want to see on a dashboard. Fair enough. All right. I want to ask you each about rent stabilization which is one of the longer running debates we've had at City Hall and Devon Ward will start with you this time. Rent stabilization has been a hotly debated issue for a long time and it'll be coming for a council later this month when it is widely expected to pass. I'd like to ask each of you to give

20:01us your vision of what impacts you think it'll have as we look at the city's housing market five years from now. What effects will it have on rents, production, and new housing and homelessness? Thank you for this question. I think this has been obviously one of the most hotly debated topics. I'm first I want to say you know I am supportive of a tailored approach to rent stabilization. I have expressed support but I haven't dug into the details because this was supposed to come to planning commission which would have been the appropriate venue for me to express my thoughts on this but since it's no longer coming to planning commission I really want to share that you know the details on this ordinance really matter and that is what will dictate what the housing market looks like five years from now. So when you look at this rent stabilization ordinance and others around the state we are pursuing one of the strictest ordinances in the state in terms of 60% of CPI and there are impacts of that. So part of that is the fair rate of return petitions and our city's ability to really process these. By pursuing a stricter cap there is the potential

21:02that we get more fair rate of return petitions which then the city doesn't have the ability to regulate that cost down to the tenant if they are successful and on the administration side there is some concern around our ability to process the fair rate of return petitions if there are a significant amount of them. So what I'm really focused on is ensuring that we're moving forward with an ordinance that is a tailored approach to Santa Barbara that pursues a cap that our city can process from an administration perspective and that successfully stabilizes rents because I think we all can acknowledge that the rents are too high and that rents going up nearly 8% because 5% plus CPI last year is almost 8% per year cumulatively over three years this is not sustainable for working families and so to me moving forward with a tailored moderate approach to rent stabilization is really important to ensuring the long-term success of our community. How we do that partly I do support the motion that council member Megan Harmon made around exempting mom and pop property owners that are renting below market rate because I believe we should start with a moderate program that ensures that we can do this

22:05successfully and that that is coupled on the supply side we must support and really move forward with the policy work to ensure that we're delivering housing downtown both affordable housing to ensure that we're really building workforce housing for the people that make our community run. Thank you. Thank you. Um, Monty Wilson same question. Sure, sure. So I would agree that it is just simply too expensive. Tell you a little story. My son, his wife and my two grandchildren just left in December because it's too expensive to live here. That hits home. So I'm the first one to empathize it. We've got to fix this problem. I will say this the proposed ordinance does go way too far. We already had rent control in one aspect but there's some things in there that we don't talk about enough. One is the staff themselves came back and said it's going to cost two million a year. That's not in the budget. It's you know we've got to put together this registry. I would love to see some type of program where it included something to encourage or incentivize additional housing.

23:11It's not even in the conversation. And so I think it's intent is good to address costs but I think it's missing the target and can't it let I think it's addressing the wrong problem. We've got to get more housing to be able to get the supply up. All right. Station Benga. Thank you. My story is I've been a renter most of my time here in Santa Barbara and rent is definitely too high and it's demanded by how beautiful a place this is to live. So the way we can supply relief potentially to our workforce is through increasing supply and adding in affordability. And that's exactly what I pushed for when I was on council when I joined the city council in 2016 that a program called the average unit density that was before my time but was still in place. And the goal there was to have housing built smaller with less amenities less parking less open space and landlords would hopefully rent it for less. Well as you can guess what happened they built it smaller with fewer amenities

24:16and rented it for the same price or more. And people said well it will filter down to lower rent in in the future but when you look at our oldest housing stock in Santa Barbara it still goes at a premium. So I pushed for a program we created a housing task force and we added in an affordability number for our large developments that are built since then. And so that was what I did and I'll continue to support programs that create supply for the workforce not just luxury housing. Rent stabilization I would say it's less the doubles in the details than just the concept is flawed. I haven't seen it work in a city like ours nationwide. So I'm curious why we've embarked upon this plan. Galita's not even looking at it and they're very similar to us in terms of high rents. To me it's a distraction we should really focus on increasing the supply, increasing salaries that people earn here so they can afford the rents the way they are. We're not going to move the needle with rent stabilization. I went to Berkeley you see Berkeley for law school and I lived at Oakland

25:18because there was no supply in Berkeley because people just stayed in their apartments. They were working in San Francisco people were working in San Francisco. People were living in San Francisco working in Berkeley they didn't move because they had this rent control department. Thank you. Genevieve. All right I think we can all agree as we talk about the affordability is a serious issue here. When my parents first moved here they bought their house for $32,000 that's not a reality anymore and nobody wants tenants to face unfair evictions or huge increases in rent at any time. That said the ordinance as it's written I think has is challenging to implement and I think one thing that would be helpful is if we take a five-year clause that says we're going to reevaluate whether this actually has done what it was intended to do. What does the supply look like? Is the housing supply going up or has it been taken off the market for those in scope? Are

26:21they putting it more towards vacation rentals? Are they turning them into condos? Things like that. What are the maintenance complaints? Are they going up? Are people not taking care of their properties because of rent control or rent stabilization or is that an issue or not? These are the types of metrics and then what happens when somebody moves out and property owner can increase the rent? Are they going to go all the way up to the maximum because they're scared of the ordinance? I think these are really key things to be looking at and I would definitely suggest saying let's take another look within five years I understand that this is going to be done before the next city council takes Bruton January. Has it created the intended outcome that we want? Is it serving the people who we intended it to do or is it creating market distortions that are having unintended consequences? Great, thank you. We're going to go back to our candidate to candidate segment and we're going

27:25in reverse alphabetical order so Devon Ordo can you give you an opportunity to ask a question one or all of the candidates? Go ahead. Sure. So my question is to everyone. I think that we can all see that in recent years things have gotten really divisive on the city council and so I would just love to hear from all of you on kind of how what your plan is so that we can work better together and have less divisiveness and really move the ball forward for Santa Barbara. This is in a got you catch. This is just genuinely I want us to really understand what we all think of how we can collaboratively work together to have a more productive public dialogue and work better together. It's for all of you so do you want to start Jason? Sure. When I was on council we went out as a group socially twice and they were both at my invitation we had particularly grueling meetings and I said hey why not we all go out and have a refreshment and celebrate the fact that we've had some successes. So I'm a social person and I would continue to do that. I reached out to a few of my opponents here

28:28to say hey let's meet up and grab a coffee. So I think really just recognizing the humanity in your colleagues when I joined the city council I was the youngest biologically and the only new person out of the seven and I managed to get a pretty fairly aggressive agenda through city council in those four years so it's it's a matter of meeting each other where you are understanding what you're trying to get done and being respectful. Can I be? Yeah I think that this is important really you know to to set out a vision I think you can see we all care about the future of Santa Barbara. Like nobody here is doing this because we don't care about it we all want the best for Santa Barbara and so really it's saying we all have this common vision and so how are we going to work together to go towards that rather than saying it's my way or your way it's let's set out that common vision how do we get there and I would say that's a core strength of mine and it's something that I have

29:28worked in my business background on is working with people with very different opinions to get things done and you're not going to agree on everything and that's totally fine and compromise is important but having that shared vision and then having kind of a commitment to working towards that is important. Thank you Marty you know I think leadership starts at the top and I've talked to both of you individually about this this divisiveness is not limited to city council it's pervasive throughout the city and I think this is where we've really got to you know start as a leadership team and set the example of yeah we may not agree but we can still be cordial we can still talk through things and find that middle ground that we both agree on and then let's work out the differences but let's at least find a common ground that we can start discussion on and it's show that by example and communicated effectively so people say hey maybe it's not so divisive you know I see it with state street I see it with ring control I mean e-bikes I mean talk

30:28about polarizing topics and we just got to show leadership and get through those and set an example for the rest of the city great Devin do you want to answer that? Well I really appreciate the comments from everyone because I definitely agree because I think the most important thing is really doing the work to work with those that disagree with you and really identifying the shared priorities and understanding we may not agree on this but there are things in this that we do agree on and really working together to move the pieces that we do agree on forward you know in my work I've always had the job of really working with folks that may not agree with you on everything and I feel like that is really important in a policy making process because people that disagree with you represent an entire constituency and it's important that when we're making policy that those views are reflected as well and so to me that is really something that is very important to high with govern and when I think about you know the people that you work with you work with folks that do agree with you and then you try and find a colleague that really disagrees with you so that you understand that perspective and you inner wine that into the policy making process because I

31:32feel that that is really critical for our community especially on a number of the challenges that we face today great thank you okay let's go back to moderator questions the state street master plan has been approved by the current city council but big questions remain I'd like to ask each of you to address two main issues first how is the $100 million price tag going to be paid for and second what would you do to address the widespread complaints about ebikes on state street so we're going back to our order in a Genevieve tafasca is Europe all right so I think the master plan sets out a good vision I think that we really need to execute better I think we're all sick of how long this is taken and and really the sense of it feeling temporary has been really devastating for the businesses on state street for the people going down there it's just made everybody not not happy so in terms of

32:40obviously the housing is I'm just going to say there are three things that I think that we do need to have to improve the situation in addition to the master plan so we need to have more housing down there we do need to have more jobs I would say good jobs not necessarily retail but jobs down at like on the shapala side where you have businesses down there and then I think that we need to have more arts programming more programming like I mentioned I want to make it easy to have events going forward obviously the ebikes are a serious concern for a lot of people and I'm going to talk about those in two different ways so one I am a biker I really appreciate and I appreciate that my kids are able to bike down there obviously it is not safe the way it is I think that we need to address that through a couple of different ways one is slow just literally physically making it harder to go that fast down state street there's no signage necessarily talking about a restriction there's no physical barriers in a sense to make it harder and also it's not really clear to be

33:43honest where the lines are and people are kind of walking all over the place so there are three kind of easy things that I think we can address on that I'd also like to say on the flip side that I'd like to have the community overall not just dates we'd be safer for cyclists and pedestrians I'd like to see more bike lanes as well so I don't know if I'm at time but I just want to follow up I didn't hear an answer to how you would pay for it oh sorry yes okay ping that's an important thing a hundred million dollar price tag yeah sure all right so I I think we should think about it as in twofold so one is it's a hundred million dollars which is a lot especially given that we're facing the fiscal you know issues that we are I think one is the infrastructure half at that is the infrastructure underneath the under the street and that is something that needs to happen if we want to have more housing downtown if we want to have more businesses like that infrastructure needs to happen on the storm and the sewer and everything so you kind of have to think of it as almost like a fifty million dollar project not necessarily a hundred million dollar project

34:45and I think that we can pay for that in terms of a mix of you know bonds state grants hopefully and then look at impact fees okay thank you Jason DeBingers so I would say even when we start implementing the master plan we should start slow with it with the first four blocks and learn some lessons and tweak it as we go and protect our costs along the way but because it's a master plan I want to make this clear it's really several different unique budget sources and budget costs and you have to approach each of them differently so you have the main cost is the infrastructure costs and that's street work storm water water mains all of this is very expensive work it has to get done regardless of whether we have cars or no cars bikes or no bikes on state street so the source of funding for that would be measure C once we're finished with the police station because that's a very large expense that's using most of those funds now the street scape more of the

35:49aesthetic more of the entertaining that bring people to the street to the street we can apply for grants we can apply for special funds that can be done more slowly over time as the money comes in but you need to have a plan in place when you're applying for these grants and funds one of the more expensive costs that we can really focus on is the $18 million plus in construction management and the city is notoriously bad at large scale construction like this that's why I mentioned earlier we really need to get this open gove online so we can we can watch our costs we should have an independent audit at every phase we should have a hard cap on the management fee structure there should be no staff only change orders anything over three percent of the budget or over $100,000 should come back to council for a public vote so that we're held accountable we should fold the oversight into the existing measure C committee rather than creating a new one and that committee has been doing a great job at watching where money goes do I still have time left

36:51yeah and can you address the issue of e-bikes e-bikes again having done community prosecuting we just need more enforcement I think the idea of a promenade is inconsistent with with e-bikes so we might have to look about look at moving them off of the promenade the promenade as the name implies is for people walking around enjoying those three blocks so strong enforcement plenty of outreach I work with sb bike now move son of our remove in the past and I think that's a great organization they go into the schools they teach kids how to ride bikes and they can teach them the rules and the parents have to be the one who ultimately enforce those rules great thank you multi Wilson same questions yeah it's a great question of how we're going to pay for this I am concerned about us deceiving the voters on measure C so measure C if you look at the first five years that were committed for measure C police station was part of that but also were two fire stations made a station three and station seven those were part of the first five years

37:52of measure C were well past that we don't have two new fire stations and to compound the problem those are on high fire districts so I'm very concerned about taking money from that I looked into the bonds that they're looking at to try and help cover this gap and some of those we've taken such a large disproportionate amount out of those grants that it's very unlikely we're going to get paid it's too late now but what I would have preferred to see is that the council should have pushed back and said all right what can we afford mr. Keith the martini is one of the best finance directors we could ask for and ask Keith is like Keith give us a range of what we can afford if we get some state funding or federal funding what can we afford if we can't and then build a plan around that versus create a grandiose plan I'd like to have a big yacht or something too but I can't afford it right so you got to live within your budget in your means and so that that's that's one thing that it would have done so I think measure C can be used for the

38:53these the storm drains some of the systems that they want to build on state street because that fits within the original measure C but only after we've fulfilled our obligations of what we told the voters when measure C was first passed on the subject e-bikes everybody's going to get tired of me talking about my scooter but I used to have a like a little vest like scooter and I had to have a license I had to wear a helmet I had to have insurance and it had to be registered with a license plate on it my e-bike which I also have one too like Genevieve it has the same power envelope is what that vest but what it had but I don't need any of that I don't even need to be 16 so I think you know this is where we need to go to Sacramento say Sacramento time to step up and pass some legislation to put these they're not bikes they're you know electric motorcycles is how I characterize them put some restrictions around that and then you really make sure that they're insured and that they're registered properly within the city by a pro-age appropriate writers great thank you Devon Wardlow so I am very excited and supportive of the state street master plan

39:59we have been working on this for far too long and it is really ready time to move forward in terms of how we're going to pay for it this was one of the main questions that I asked at the planning commission hearing when we reviewed this and what staff has said is they are very confident that we will have the grant funding to support this partially because half of the cost of this plan is for essential infrastructure the storm water management piece and the storm water management there is no debate that we must do this it is the critical foundation for us to be able to deliver housing which is the foundation of the vitality of the state street master plan so these components must move forward and staff has expressed extreme support that this will happen in terms of the funding that we have the other portion of the budget for this plan is really going to be a phased approach so we're doing three different sections of state street over time and so given that this is a major priority for our community is the heart and soul of our community I am confident that we can get bonds that grants from the state and federal level to revitalize the core of Santa Barbara because this is something that matters to our community

41:01just in the way that you know the big trace reservoir that's we are approved 170 million dollars for the revitalization of that this is something that's really important and we're talking about you know 50 million that's not in the essential infrastructure and so I believe that by building the plan this is the first step of then going out and getting the grants and funding to support it and so I'm looking forward to moving forward with this and then on the e-bike issue so I feel that e-bikes are exciting in that it is a good transportation tool and we need to ensure that we're integrating it appropriately into our broader community now I agree with Monty about you know there are some e-bikes that are not really e-bikes they're like mini motor cycles those from a state level I'm looking forward to the state really regulating on that because that is something that is you know I think mischaracterized as an e-bike that should be something else but in terms of state street and how we really regulate this there's two big parts one we have to enforce on reckless behavior reckless behavior should not be tolerated at all and a lot of this is coming from kids and for kids I think that we need to impound the bikes and make their parents

42:03pick up the bikes and then in terms of the infrastructure itself that is also where we can really ensure that e-bikes are appropriately being integrated based on the grading of the street and how we design the street and so I'm confident that when we move forward with this plan we will be able to sensitively and appropriately integrate e-bikes into the broader transportation ecosystem great thank you all right geno v taft of vaska's it's your turn you have 30 seconds to ask a pose a question to one or more of the other candidates right well this can be for everybody I would say I think everybody thinks housing is a challenge here but the people who are building the housing often times are developers big developers so I am wondering how you think developers benefit the city and particularly would you want to see the height restriction lifted in order to accommodate more housing I think this is a great question so thank you geno v so in terms of developers you know I think that when we're looking at the housing crisis we all acknowledge that

43:05supply is a crucial component of this and we must use all tools in the tool chest to address this so one there are you know the housing authority and the great work that they're doing and supporting the local housing trust fund and identifying an ongoing funding stream for that that is something I find really important for developers I'm hopeful that they're going to be excited about the better buildings initiative that the city council and the planning commission just had a joint hearing on because I think this is a way in which developers can implement significant community benefits like ensuring that we're building child care facilities downtown in exchange for more density and you know streamlined processes because we have to ensure that we're actually creating a process and system that supports development because today I do not feel that the processes that we have are resulting in the output of housing right I think all developers are telling us over and over again that your current process doesn't work and so it's really important that we do the policy work necessary to make housing viable and I think part of many of those policies are laid out in

44:05the state street master plan so obviously ensuring adaptive reuse is a priority and that it really works especially in state street with long retail corridors where we could hit could I be building in half and build up and then also in terms of density and when you're talking about the height limit specifically my perspective on this is when we're looking at community benefit projects right now we will approve community benefit projects up to 65 feet the height limit in the city is 45 feet per housing but in the downtown core specifically where I think we need to focus housing because having approved many housing projects on the planning commission many of which do not even come to fruition focusing downtown is how we're going to deliver more housing and so downtown I think going up to 65 feet would be appropriate because it's part of benefiting our community to bring that vitality which is foundational to the success of downtown thank you mine Wilson thank you so I agree that we need to focus on the central business district now actually it's funny that you asked this question because I actually researched it just today and if my numbers are correct we can build 2,448 units downtown

45:07without exceeding the height limit so it's high number and but we need to also think about you know some of these have to support families they have to support more than just a studio footprint so we've got to look at that but the thing too that I really want us to consider is how do we maintain some semblance of control on this because to your point there's good developers out there that want to do the right thing but then there are some bad actors we have a lot of land that's owned by the city and how can we create some public private partnerships where we can guide this to a solution that benefits and allows us to have places for healthcare workers for school teachers for policemen for firemen to live in the city and have kind of a cooperative effort but maintaining some semblance of control in that. Station Abengas. Thank you Jerry, Jerry Roberts. Developers benefit the system by building our housing, our schools, our childcare facilities. The way we encourage them is by staying out of the way in terms of needless red tape, needless regulations by being responsive

46:14when they come to city hall, when they come to the permit desk and they have a question it shouldn't take six weeks. I know of a restaurant owner. He was remodeling his restaurant and the city wanted him to put five bathrooms in and after they reread the law together it turns out they really didn't need five bathrooms they only needed two but this took many months of wasted time and energy so the city should stay out of the way when it comes to this red tape. They should have a customer service, service ethic where they work with the owner, they bring them within the building code, the city building code and the state building code but they provide pathways to reach a common goal. I'd like to return local controls to city, Sacramento has just gone nuts in terms of what it's forcing cities and counties to do so I hope that our state legislators can work to bring local control back to cities like Santa Barbara which are bounded by the ocean on one side and foothills and mountains on the other. Thank you Jerry. What about the height limit? I think if you have

47:15buildings that are scaled back from the street they can go a little bit higher than they currently are. Okay fair enough. I want to ask you about fire safety and I think Jason you lead off on this one. Santa Barbara faces increasing wildfire risk from hotter drier conditions stronger winds and prolonged drought. What are three actions you would support to make the city more fire safe and climate resilient and how would you pay for them? Thanks for leading with this question with me Jerry. I've been endorsed by former fire chief Warner McGrew and I feel privileged and honor that someone who knows as much about fire safety and is still working in fire safety to endorse me. I would focus on evacuation routes and that's something that our departments are already working on so it's not something that would increase costs. I would try to avoid errors like the county when they purchased a bunch of ambulance equipment for a contract they thought they were going to have

48:15and didn't have it. So I'd say first another idea would be do no harm. I would oppose mammoth out of scale projects like the builders builders remedy projects behind the mission which don't add any evacuation capacity they use it up. I would push with outreach for residents to do fire safe zones around their homes. I would work with the state insurance commissioner right now we have a problem with insurance rates particularly the California Fair plan are going to go up 29% in October and I would make sure this wouldn't increase funding but I'd make sure that our fire stations and personnel are fully funded. Thank you. Monning year up next. Great. So this is something near and dear to my heart as I mentioned I've been evacuated three times and currently of California Fair plan customer. It's a real problem one of the things that I have seen when I've been out walking through the neighborhoods and talking to people there's certain parts of our committee are really doing a good

49:16job with the fire wise program and things like that and no one in Sacramento that I can tell is really paying attention and so this is something you know where I'm also endorsed by Pat McAroy of our former fire chief and we've kind of brainstormed on this on how can we carry this story up to Sacramento within the fire commissioner and show them what we're doing so as an example you clipped this hill in the San Roe Carey they're doing a really nice job with the fire wise program. The other thing that I would really like to see is that most of our fire engines have the capacity to carry four firemen on it. We're funded for three. I would love to find it's need to work through the budget work through the details but love to figure out a way that we can get that fourth fireman on the trucks because that makes a difference in their responsiveness how they handle emergencies when they're out there and how we work through the situations. I went out on a ride along with the fire department last week and I was like a kid in a candy store on there but these are really

50:19talented individuals that really care about Santa Barbara and I want to give them all the support we can. Fair enough Devon Wardlaw. So wildfire preparedness is one of the most urgent priorities for district four and I really see this in three buckets. One is we strengthen the fire department. As we've all discussed today we have fire stations that we committed to 10 years ago to rebuild and their two of them are in district four. We need to move forward with investing into that and make good on the promises that we've made almost over a decade ago. We have received funding for that through measure i measure c there has been multiple ballot initiatives that the firefighters themselves went out and pushed for so that they could receive this funding and we have not delivered and so that is a priority number one is to ensure we have the right infrastructure. Partying number two as Monti said is really ensuring we're using best practices as it comes to staffing so currently we're at a four zero staffing plan or we're at a three zero staffing plan and we need to move to a four zero staffing plan. That will probably be needing to be a sphased approach

51:24but one of the ways in which we could potentially pay for it is if we are able to finally secure the ambulance contract. Now that is something that's being handled at the county level but it's something that the city needs to be actively involved in in order to help assist in a paying for this. The second big component of this is preparing our neighborhoods so zone zero requirements are coming and we as a city have the responsibility to really ensure that our residents understand what the requirements are which zones have different requirements and when those are going to hit and so I think it's really important that we as a city proactively send mailers educate all the property owners to ensure that people are doing what they can to really do the work to make sure that their homes are protected and then another piece of this is the firewise community so we have an amazing program and I think many folks on the Rivera and throughout district four are aware of it but a lot of folks aren't and so really educating the benefits that the firewise community is gives in terms of insurance and then also being a leader on the state level and saying right now if you get dropped

52:25from your insurance and you are in a firewise community the state can go to bat for you but what we should be doing and other cities are pushing for this is saying that if you're in a firewise community and your entire neighborhood has done the work to harden their home then the state should go to bat on behalf of the whole community so not every individual property owners fighting it out there's a whole bunch more that we still need to do on firewise thank you thank you Genevieve all right well clearly fire risk in our district is a huge issue and it's a matter of life and death literally and so I think there are three things that we should continue to do or focus on and continue to build one is on the structural piece definitely talking about the measure see I think that the funding once the police station is is completed I think it needs to go back and focus on fire on the fire stations I think we need to get a paramedic on fire trucks so that in case of life and death situations or taking care of people that that is it's also there and what's working well in terms of the county and the city working together obviously district four is

53:28right by the county so that relationship is also really important I think the second thing is around what's working well and what's working well is this shared responsibility that a neighbors really care about whether it's a fire wise communities or I just recently heard about the map your neighborhood program and it's that way where you're looking out for each other and for the zone zero requirements that are coming up this is like an example where we could use AI tools to say okay you know map out what your thing is your your house is here here are the plant the number of plants you should get the number of you know how the home hardening around and here go give it to a landscape architect to implement I think that's a very clear ways that we can do it and then finally is around let's let's not build in high fire zones that that cause public safety I mean that's just absurd I just heard recently that it can take up to four hours to evacuate through down Los Alivos for Mission Canyon in an emergency like that's unexusable and we cannot be having

54:29more people living there in in that particular high fire zone that would cause other issues in terms of life and death great thank you we are back to our candidate to candidate segment this is our final section Jason Dominguez you have an opportunity to ask one candidate or all the candidates a question I would I would fall back then on what are your greatest what is your greatest strength in your greatest weakness as a future council member all right we'll start with Monte Wilson my greatest strength is probably you know throughout my career has been getting results in collaborating with teams all too often people think when you're in private sector and corporate leadership that you make the final call it's far from that you have to collaborate across different organizations you have to work with the budget guys there's a lot of people involved and it's it's sometimes hurting cats a little bit but you have to do that and I think that's

55:34always been something that I've relied on and the thing I'm really proud of is that the things that we were able to accomplish but the second part of that is the people that I've worked with I've probably worked with for twenty twenty five years because we know each other strengths and weaknesses and able to work with that my greatest weakness is probably I would characterize it as impatience I always want to go faster than maybe what the system can do I'm willing to live with that problem because it usually keeps things moving along but you know I do probably push harder than what we need but you know not in a mean way it's just let's get some things done great Devon Wardlow yes thanks for this question Jason I'd say that my biggest strengths are that I really know this community and I know the policy work that we've all been trying to achieve where we have fallen short and what we really need to do to move forward so having served five years on the planning commission I understand where we are in housing policy and the significant work that needs to be done to

56:37really move the ball forward I understand the implications in terms of state law and how we need to ensure that as we develop and as we move forward with policy work that we work to balance that against the threats that are coming from the state level I think that I have a very holistic perspective on a number of the policy issues that our community faces ranging from wildfire preparedness to climate resiliency to water reservoir water processes to how we're going to revitalize the waterfront and then definitely on development policy and really doing the work to ensure that we are getting the uses that we want we have very limited amount of land and so every project that comes forward we need to ensure that we've done the policy work in advance to get the right projects and that's something that I'm really focused on and something that I think that I can really help deliver results around because through my entire career I've worked with different sides of folks to really make sure that we're identifying shared priorities and coming up with a shared solution and vision because part of what I've heard from staff of why things have struggled to

57:39move forward is because of a lack of shared vision and so what I really want to do is work with my colleagues to identify those shared priorities of which I think there's many a much much agreement around. Okay so much. Thank you. Okay. Jennifer. I would say my greatest strengths are my ability to work with a diverse set of people and get things done and be responsive so making sure that I'm listening and being responsive to people to qualities that I think are important in this role and greatest weakness. Maybe that I care too much might be. Well Jason I'm going to say my greatest weakness is my excessive modesty but I want to go ahead and take this one. Apparently my greatest weakness is stepping on the moderator's toes and this and many other events. I think it's probably my strength which might be my weaknesses balance as as I approached my first term on the City Council. I think I try to please everyone at

58:40the same time and I try to be in the middle of the road and sometimes when you're in the middle of the road you get run over. I'm not to the right I'm not to the left I'm pretty much in the center and and sometimes it's hard to be in that position because a lot of people who share those positions aren't as passionate as the people on the far left or far right or in a fringe group. So really trying to represent everyone is very difficult and I'm not sure if I've always achieved but I think it's a strength and sometimes a weakness. Fair enough. All right well that concludes tonight's debate with the candidates for Santa Barbara City Council's district four. Thanks to our candidates Jason Dominguez, Genevieve Taft Fazquez, Devon Wardlaw and Monty Wilson. Thanks to my co-moderator Josh Molina our director JP Montavo and his crew at TV Santa Barbara and thanks to all of you for watching. The election is November 3rd. Bell to be mailed out in a few weeks. Don't forget to vote. Good night.