I support keeping State Street car-free and moving the Master Plan from planning into implementation. My vision is a downtown where people live, work, shop, and gather throughout the day, with housing, thriving local businesses, public art, shade, and welcoming public spaces.

We should begin with practical improvements: clear and accessible paths, safer intersections, trees and seating, and regular programming that gives people reasons to be downtown. We also need reliable access for deliveries, emergency services, and people with disabilities.

I would push for a phased implementation schedule with clear funding, milestones, and public accountability. State Street’s success depends on creating a place people want to spend time, supported by more downtown residents and better connections to surrounding neighborhoods.

We need to build more homes while protecting the residents who already live here. I support rent stabilization and strong tenant protections, alongside reforms that make housing easier to build.

I would establish a clear, by-right approval process using objective standards, reduce unnecessary hearings, and prioritize expedited review for affordable housing. I would work toward a 180-day approval target for 100% affordable projects.

Downtown, I support converting underused commercial space into housing and allowing greater height and density where appropriate.

I would also pursue city-owned land for affordable housing partnering with the City Housing Authority, and expand the revenue sources for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. We need homes affordable to working people, families, and seniors.

Safe streets should work for children, older adults, people with disabilities, and everyone traveling without a car. I would prioritize closing gaps in sidewalks and protected bike routes, especially connections to schools, parks, downtown, and transit.

At dangerous intersections, I support shorter crossing distances, curb extensions, better lighting, raised crossings where appropriate, and signals that give people enough time to cross. Street design should encourage safe speeds.

For transit, I would work with MTD on bus priority at congested intersections, accessible stops, shade and seating, and better walking connections. Reliable service makes transit a practical choice.

Maintaining what we already own should be a core budget priority. Delaying street, sidewalk, drainage, and facility repairs often creates larger bills later. I would support a transparent maintenance schedule that identifies needs, costs, and funding before problems become emergencies.

New projects should be evaluated by their full lifecycle costs, including future maintenance, and their benefits to residents. We should pursue grants while ensuring we can afford the ongoing obligations they create.

Investments worth making include safer streets, stormwater management improvements, shade trees, and infrastructure that supports housing in existing neighborhoods. These can improve daily life and reduce future costs.

I would prioritize projects that serve multiple needs. Our budget should have measurable public benefit.

I want a “culture of yes” at City Hall: clear rules, predictable timelines, and staff who help small businesses navigate the process. I would support a single point of contact for business owners, simpler permits, and faster approvals for routine improvements and changes of use.

We should make it easier to divide oversized storefronts into smaller, more affordable spaces and support outdoor dining, pop-ups, and community events that bring customers downtown.

A resilient economy also depends on housing and childcare that workers and business owners can afford. I would pursue partnerships to expand both, helping people stay in Santa Barbara.

I would support businesses serving year-round residents alongside tourism, strengthen connections with local entrepreneurs and arts organizations, and measure success through business retention, storefront occupancy, and the ability of locally owned businesses to thrive.

State Street should surprise you every day.

After a morning workout class, you grab coffee with a friend and ride the trolley. Decorations are going up in the Entertainment District for Saturday’s festival. In the Arts District, a new gallery just opened, so you hop off to check it out.

The owner says she opened faster than expected, with a launch kit that showed her local demand and put her grand opening on the downtown calendar. Before heading home, you make plans to come back tonight for a film screening, then dinner and drinks to talk it over.

Every block has something you haven’t seen yet. Miss a week, miss a new experience.

Both sides of the car debate want a State Street that thrives. The adopted plan’s flex lane can serve both. Fill it with the trolley, deliveries, emergency vehicles, and festival parades, and start testing it now.

I rent in District 6. I came here for UCSB and found a way to stay. Too many people don’t get that chance.

Our city needs to open its doors again. When it does, the teacher hired in March finds an apartment before school starts. The nurse and the line cook live ten minutes from work. Lights glow in the windows above State Street because people live there now.

We need homes at every scale across the city, from apartments near jobs and transit to backyard cottages and empty lots built on. The biggest barriers are ones we built ourselves. Density caps, inclusionary rules with unintended consequences, and long subjective reviews keep sending good projects away. Make room where it fits. Keep what we love.

A clear path to yes. Public land put to work. Every approved home counted until someone moves in, because we can’t live in approvals.

A great street makes room for everyone moving through it.

Santa Barbara should be a city where parents feel comfortable letting their eight-year-old ride the bus, and an eighty-year-old crosses the street without anxiety.

That starts with design. On State Street, bike lanes with clear physical boundaries and textured pavement that slows riders where people walk. On neighborhood streets like Bath and De La Vina, slow the drivers racing past kids and dogs with stop signs and proven traffic calming. High-visibility crosswalks and better lighting at crossings everywhere. Bus stops that are shaded, well lit, and easy to reach on foot. And more bike parking where racks already overflow.

I’d push to fund these fixes in the next budget, starting at the crossings where people have been hurt. Design each one so fire trucks and ambulances get through, and report back each year on what changed.

Generations before us built paseos and plazas that still welcome us today.

Our job is to take care of what we have first, and hand the next generation a city that’s paid for.

A street is a promise. Pave it, and you’ve promised to repave it. That means publishing the condition of our streets and pipes so residents can see the cost of waiting, rebuilding our reserves, and keeping one-time money for one-time needs.

New investments should earn their place, and these do. A trolley that makes downtown easier to enjoy. Storm drains that clear the way for downtown homes. Lights on dark streets, so neighbors feel safe walking home. Solar and battery backup at City facilities, so community services keep running in an outage.

Each one comes with a fiscal note before the vote. My plan does not depend on a new or higher City tax rate.

The best way to attract new businesses downtown is to help the ones already here thrive. The next owner opens where customers already are.

Downtown comes alive when businesses work together. A fitness studio hosts a morning class, and the café next door opens early for it. A block plans a night market, and the shops along it stay open late.

I’d work with downtown partners on one well-promoted calendar that residents and visitors actually check, and give owners early notice of what’s coming so they can plan special hours together. I’d also push to fund year-round programming and simplify event permits so a block can host something within weeks.

When the next owner is ready, give them a clear path to opening, predictable costs, a launch kit, and a clock the City commits to meeting.

A downtown full of local owners working together keeps us steady when one industry slows.

I love our downtown, and I want State Street to feel alive again. A place where families want to spend an afternoon, where seniors feel comfortable walking, where our local businesses can thrive, and where people can bike, eat outside, shop, gather and enjoy what makes Santa Barbara special.

I support moving forward with the State Street Master Plan, but I also believe in compromise. I don’t think this has to be an all-or-nothing decision between permanently closing State Street to cars or simply returning it to what it was before.

I support using retractable bollards to give us the best of both ideas. We can prioritize pedestrians, outdoor dining, bicycling and community events while still having the flexibility to open individual blocks when appropriate for accessibility, deliveries, transit, emergencies or other needs.

I would start with the heart of downtown and move forward in thoughtful phases. Let’s see what works. Let’s listen to the businesses, residents and people actually using State Street. Let’s measure pedestrian activity, business performance and safety before spending millions more.

I also believe bicycles and e-bikes need clearly defined areas wherever possible. If we create a beautiful pedestrian space but people are constantly worried about fast-moving bikes and e-bikes, we haven’t completely solved the problem.

For me, the goal isn’t winning the argument over cars versus no cars. The goal is making State Street successful again.

This issue is personal for so many Santa Barbara families. I grew up here, raised my family here, and I see how difficult it has become for ordinary working people to imagine being able to stay here.

We need more housing, especially housing that teachers, nurses, firefighters, service workers, young families and our other local workforce can realistically afford.

I would streamline permitting and establish clearer, more predictable timelines for housing projects. Time and uncertainty add significant costs to construction, and ultimately, we all pay for those inefficiencies through higher housing costs and through our tax dollars.

Downtown is one of our greatest opportunities. People living downtown can walk to restaurants, businesses, services and transit instead of having to drive for every trip. I support adaptive reuse of underused commercial buildings, mixed-use development and appropriately designed infill housing where infrastructure already exists.

I also support workforce and middle-income housing, ADUs and partnerships with the Housing Authority, the County, our schools and other public landowners. At the same time, we need to be thoughtful about where we build. I don’t support simply pushing significant density into high-fire or debris-flow areas when there are safer locations with existing infrastructure.

And while we absolutely need to build more housing, we cannot forget the people struggling to stay in the homes they already have. I support reasonable tenant protections, strong enforcement of habitability standards, mediation and better access to legal assistance.

Housing isn’t just about units on a spreadsheet. It’s about whether our children, our workforce and our families can continue calling Santa Barbara home.

I want our streets to work for everyone. The child riding a bicycle, the senior crossing the street, the person using a wheelchair, the worker taking the bus, the pedestrian walking home and, yes, the person who needs to drive.

I would prioritize safer intersections, clearly marked and protected bicycle routes where feasible, improved crosswalk visibility, better lighting, ADA accessibility and street designs that naturally slow traffic in areas with a lot of pedestrian activity.

I also think we need to acknowledge the growing issue of e-bikes. They are an important transportation option, but pedestrians shouldn’t have to feel unsafe walking through an area that is supposed to be designed for them. On State Street especially, I would work toward clearly separating bicycle and e-bike movement from pedestrian areas wherever possible.

Transit has to be part of this conversation too. If we want people to drive less, we have to give them realistic alternatives. That means reliable service and good connections between our neighborhoods, downtown and the waterfront.

And I believe in measuring what we do. If we redesign a street, let’s look at collision data, usage and accessibility afterward. If something isn’t working as intended, we should be willing to adjust it rather than defending a decision simply because we’ve already made it.

This is one of the biggest reasons I decided to run for City Council.

We have to take care of what we already own before continually adding things that future taxpayers will have to maintain.

That doesn’t mean we stop investing in Santa Barbara. It means we invest carefully.

Our streets, sidewalks, water and sewer systems, public safety facilities and other basic infrastructure aren’t glamorous, but they are what allow a city to function. Maintaining them has to remain a priority.

For large projects like State Street, I support phased implementation. Before committing tens of millions of dollars, I want to know what each phase will cost, where the money is coming from, what it will cost to maintain, what we are trying to accomplish and how we will know whether it worked.

I would aggressively pursue state and federal grants and partnerships whenever appropriate instead of automatically expecting our General Fund and local taxpayers to carry the entire burden.

I support investments in safer streets and intersections, sidewalks, bicycle infrastructure, water and sewer reliability, accessibility improvements, housing-supporting infrastructure and downtown improvements that help generate economic activity.

Fiscal responsibility isn’t about saying no to everything. It’s about remembering that every dollar belongs to the public and treating it that way.

This is another issue that is very personal to me. I have been a small-business owner for much of my adult life, and I understand what it feels like when every additional expense matters.

Sometimes the biggest thing government can do for a small business is simply stop making things unnecessarily difficult.

I want City Hall to be easier to navigate, with faster and more predictable permitting, clearer communication between departments and applicants, and accountability for how long approvals take. Someone opening a restaurant, shop or small business shouldn’t spend months trying to figure out which department they need to talk to next.

We also need people downtown. More residents living downtown means customers walking to coffee shops in the morning, eating at restaurants, shopping locally and supporting businesses throughout the week, not just during tourist season.

That’s why I see housing, transportation and economic vitality as connected.

I support adaptive reuse and mixed-use projects that can turn vacant or underused buildings into homes and productive commercial spaces. I also want us to make it easier to activate empty storefronts and support locally owned businesses, outdoor dining, markets, arts, entertainment and community events that bring people together.

And I want to hear directly from our business owners, not only when something is going wrong. I would regularly sit down with small businesses and look at what the numbers are telling us: vacancies, permitting times, business openings and closures, pedestrian activity and the actual economic health of downtown.

I like the infrastructure part of the plan, the rest although nice I think is premature.  The city is running through emergency reserves with a debt on top of it.  The money is just not there.  I think the council wasted 5 years on consultants and not choosing a path forward. This is a knee jerk reaction at the end of their terms.  There should be some tests before implementing a design with no proven outcome.  I think a hybrid test in the interam should happen first.  For example, open the street to cars Monday-Friday.  Then close the  street from Canon Perdido to Haley on Friday from maybe 4PM-1 AM.  Keep it closed Saturday 8AM to 1AM and again Sunday 10AM-10PM. We close it for parades, and maybe some Sundays we open it for cars to do a cruise event. What we create is flexibility, which is what we don't have now.

I would like to see the impact of the UCSB 3500 units they are building and its effect on our inventory.  I think public/private partnerships would work great in the areas east of Anacapa and Milpas turning the R-1 and R-2 commercial real-estate into mid to large scale housing.  We can get some of that money by encouraging builders to build units on State Street and using the in-lieu fees from ADA and low income requirements to bridge some of the financial hurdles.

I grew up in Davis where there are bike paths everywhere. Bike lanes need to be thoughtfully implemented.  Bike lanes for safety of the rider make sense on thoroughfares. Like De la Vina, Chapala, Anacapa, Santa Barbara, Carrillo, Micheltorena, Los Positas, etc.  They don't make sense on Castillo, Sola, etc. I have personally observed the confusion at some of these intersections like Sola and De La Vina.  The bike lanes need to go with the flow of traffic, and where people need them.  There is no bike lane on lower De La Vina, however bikes ride down the middle of the road every day. A bike lane there would make sense.  We need to simplify the traffic flow to make sense to the end user.

Order of operation! The city's order of operation of conducting their construction projects is costing the public between 40-50 million annually with sub-par installations.  This needs to stop.

I think extending parking downtown Monday-Friday from 75 minutes to 2 hours is a good start, furthermore if you are a property tax payer in Santa Barbara you should receive a parking exempt pass.  Everyone and I mean everyone I know that lives here chooses not to go down town (if they drive) because of parking.  If we look at the Mesa, Coast Village, San Roque, Five Points have see upticks in sales because of the free parking.