2nd District Forum 1/18/2006
[ Excerpt from article by Nick Welsh in the SBI, 1/26/2006 ]
... Some 350 community activists, interested citizens, and political spectators crammed into Goleta Valley Community Center last Wednesday night to hear what the four candidates vying for Supervisor Susan Rose’s soon-to-be-vacant 2nd District seat had to say on matters of growth, development, and congestion. In turn, Das Williams, Janet Wolf, Dan Secord, and Joe Guzzardi played to the fears of a markedly slow-growth crowd worried that California’s affordable-housing mandates might cramp their quality of life.
Santa Barbara City Councilmember Das Williams presented himself as a fighter who, if elected, would not go quietly into the pro-growth night of the sitting board majority; Wolf touted her record of constructive engagement during her 11 years on the Goleta School Board; Secord, who recently stepped down from the Santa Barbara City Council, argued his strong relations with the board’s Republican majority would enable him to most effectively represent the needs of the district; and Guzzardi — a longtime neighborhood advocate — offered himself as the citizen politician who would try to keep politics out of government.
Though the candidates differed on details, all agreed that Goleta’s community plan needed to be updated before any land was rezoned to accommodate the increased housing densities necessary to build affordable housing. None of the candidates sought to champion the issue of “workforce housing,” which until recently had been all the rage among South Coast politicians. That fact reflected both the region’s shifting political winds as well as the agenda of the groups sponsoring the forum: the Homeowners Defense Fund, the Coalition for Sensible Planning, and the Santa Barbara News-Press.
newsoftheweek
... Some 350 community activists, interested citizens, and political spectators crammed into Goleta Valley Community Center last Wednesday night to hear what the four candidates vying for Supervisor Susan Rose’s soon-to-be-vacant 2nd District seat had to say on matters of growth, development, and congestion. In turn, Das Williams, Janet Wolf, Dan Secord, and Joe Guzzardi played to the fears of a markedly slow-growth crowd worried that California’s affordable-housing mandates might cramp their quality of life.
Santa Barbara City Councilmember Das Williams presented himself as a fighter who, if elected, would not go quietly into the pro-growth night of the sitting board majority; Wolf touted her record of constructive engagement during her 11 years on the Goleta School Board; Secord, who recently stepped down from the Santa Barbara City Council, argued his strong relations with the board’s Republican majority would enable him to most effectively represent the needs of the district; and Guzzardi — a longtime neighborhood advocate — offered himself as the citizen politician who would try to keep politics out of government.
Though the candidates differed on details, all agreed that Goleta’s community plan needed to be updated before any land was rezoned to accommodate the increased housing densities necessary to build affordable housing. None of the candidates sought to champion the issue of “workforce housing,” which until recently had been all the rage among South Coast politicians. That fact reflected both the region’s shifting political winds as well as the agenda of the groups sponsoring the forum: the Homeowners Defense Fund, the Coalition for Sensible Planning, and the Santa Barbara News-Press.
newsoftheweek
Posted by Malcolm on
1/27/2006
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