What is your position on the issue of district elections in Santa Barbara?
Sharon Byrne, candidate for Santa Barbara City Council
“I am in favor. The current general election is a high bar for candidates to scale, and requires a lot of fundraising and work to win the neighborhoods that ring the city from the Mesa through the Foothill Rd area to the upper Eastside and over into the Coast Village Rd area. These are the high-propensity voter districts, and this is where most of our current council lives. That leads to a council not really reflective of the people that live and work here, especially those living below Canon Perdido St. It also means that only those with significant time and resources can run, or those backed by party machinery, which creates partisan politics in an non-partisan position.
Read the rest of Sharon’s answer…
The effect of an outer-rink council can be seen in zoning decisions, where controversial land uses are put below Canon Perdido, and over on the Eastside. These are low voter-turnout areas, that can’t turn an offending council out of office for these affronts, even though they are also high-density neighborhoods. Therefore, with no voter penalty, councils are free to make one-off decisions that over time bring these areas down. District elections would stop that because neighborhood representatives would be accountable to their voters. It also means there is someone on council that represents you. District elections would also lower the barriers to entry, which would help ease the partisan politics present today in council races. Candidates would only have to meet voters in their district, and raise enough funds to win their district. They wouldn’t be relying on party machinery to get them across the finish line in the wider city. The only downside is tendencies towards districts fighting to get their way, at the expense of the wider city. A solution to that is a hybrid approach, recommended by the Grand Jury in 2006, that gives four district reps, a mayor elected at large, and 2 at-large council members.”
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She makes very good point about controversial projects, such as the proposed high density being proposed for the lower east side. Who from that area will protest?!
But the reason that campaigns now are so expensive is because of the voter initiative 5 or so years ago increasing the salaries, making the job much desirable. Santa Barbara councilmembers are the highest paid and salaries increase annually per CPI, not by voter or council initiative. Monthly salaries: In the larger city, Santa Maria, council members get $1,050 with the mayor collecting and additional $250. San Luis Obispo city: $1,000 and the mayor $1,200; Ventura $700 and the mayor $800; larger (126,000 pop.) Simi Valley $1,250. Santa Barbara pays (per ballot measure) approx. $3,000/month – plus substantial benefits, PERS, health insurance, car allowance, travel allowance and, maybe least, free parking. (The other cities also have benefits.) This makes the — part time — job very valuable and as a result campaigning for it is expensive.
If, in fact, council members worked for the entire city, full time, such a high salary/benefits might be worth it; if there are district elections on the ballot, there should be a companion measure seriously chopping the salary so as to be similar to other area ones and recognizing that the represented area is smaller.
…Only two answers: Do the other candidates not bother to answer these questions?
So much for keeping Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara! I wonder how long it took Sharon’s new developer friends to move her into this terrible idea.. If she thinks the Eastside is isolated now, imagine what will happen when council-members start partaking in district over district vote trading and developers start buying elections by picking off low hanging fruit districts. District elections represent the Los Angelization of Santa Barbara. Byrne is proving to be the devleoper’s dream candidate. One of the worst things that happens in Santa Barbara is when people move here from a big city – say Atlanta – and decry how we are losing our small town appeal and then propose solving problems with “ideas” that drove people from those very cities here in the first place. It is time for locals to stand up against this out of towner engineering and stand up for the values that created God’s Country. Low propensity voter areas get stepped on by higher voting areas, she says. As if he council member elected by tiny number of voters will somehow bring more power to that area? No, they are stepped on, over, through and around in bigger cities with district elections. District election have always been rejected by the vast majority of Santa Barbaran’s who want to keep Sasnta Barbara, Santa Barbara. Yet another reason to vote for Falcone.. Curious, how come only three candidates are responding to these questions?
NOT a reason to vote for Falcone who, while opposing district elections, supports high density housing which is most definitely the love-your-developer answer!
District elections are just what we need to ensure neighborhoods aren’t ignored and the residents know who to hold accountable. The way it works now, no one has responsibility for any neighborhood or any solution. Believe me, the Milpas Street corridor would never have been the target for failed social policy and experimentation if there were an elected city councilmember who came from the neighborhood and who could be held accountable for failing to fight for it’s quality of life.
Pedro is right on. In the past, when people were staring down a 7-0 council determined to put some ugly land-use in a neighborhood, who could you go to in order to make your case? They were all party-aligned, not neighborhood-aligned, so they didn’t care if they trashed your area. As long as it wasn’t theirs…District elections stops that, and inhibits the party machinery from taking over general elections. There are 2 candidates in this race from the Mesa, and Iya is one of them. Should they both win, you can bet the Mesa will get the goodies, and some other poor neighborhood(s) will get the shaft.
If Falcone and Rowse, both from the Mesa, win, the reason the Mesa will get the “goodies,” if it does, will be because neighborhood people there come out and ask for them. Lower east side residents, otoh, do not go to council meetings and ask/demand/beg or whatever. …I say that as a Lower East Side resident, unlike either Sharon Byrne or Pedro Nava.
And even if there were a representative from this area, it’s very unlikely that people would go and protest. The woman demanding the removal of the ficus on Milpas was there this afternoon and the vote was 7-0 against the removals; no one spoke on her side. Apparently, Sharon Byrne had turned in a speaker slip, she was called, but she left before speaking.
A major argument, the major argument in favor of raising the council salaries on the ballot was to broaden range of the council applicants by making it more than a living wage. What it did was the predictable: it made the position that much more valuable and therefore expensive to campaign. There’s no reason to think it would be any different with district elections. Those in the specific districts would be unable to vote for (or against) council members they don’t like or like and would be limited to only their area representatives. I think it is a bad idea, promising representation but liable to have only good ol’ neighborhood types selected, those without concern for the city as a whole.
Well, duh, the council member job pays a salary to attract a bigger pool of candidates, especially candidates who are not retired and rich and can afford the time instead of working another job. Small L local is utterly flabbergasting. Sure, with no salaries, few candidates will emerge, and thus the price to run a competitive campaign will drop, duh. Would fewer choices be better for democracy?
But what I really want to know is how would Sharon Byrne decide which council candidates get the districts and which get to be at large? And which becomes the vice mayor, whatever that is.
But, duh, the best outcome here is how a district-based council member can be elected by one area of the city and then on the council vote on decisions that affect people who never did or ever could elect that same council member.