Vacancy: Whoever wins Buellton’s upcoming special election will help decide what Parks Plaza will become

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In the final weeks of his first term as a Buellton City Council member, Dave King lost his 2012 re-election campaign and gained something he “wouldn’t have traded for anything.” It was a new job he couldn’t have accepted if he remained on the dais.

“That was kind of a godsend to me,” said King, who spent the following four years touring across the U.S. with Jeff Bridges and the Abiders. “Talk about adventures. That was something.”

The band hired King, a longtime California Highway Patrol officer who retired in 2008, as a security administrator. Before and after several concerts, he escorted Bridges from place to place as his bodyguard.

“I only had to push someone out of an elevator once,” King recalled with a laugh.

The tour brought King to “all but seven states in the country,” which made it easy for the 21-year Buellton resident to view losing his City Council seat as a “blessing in disguise.”

He was back on the council in 2016 and later won his race for mayor in 2022. Although he lost his mayoral re-election to former city councilmember David Silva in 2024, Silva’s win opened a different window for King.

Both Silva and King are residents of Buellton’s 4th District. When Silva became mayor, he left a mid-term vacancy for the 4th District seat. King threw his name in the hat when the council initially planned to appoint a new council member rather than elect one.

The four-person council changed its tune in January after reaching a stalemate. While 1st District Councilmember Hudson Hornick and 3rd District Councilmember John Sanchez supported King, Mayor Silva and 2nd District Councilmember Elysia Lewis vouched for applicant Carla Mead at the council’s Jan. 30 meeting.

By the end of the hearing, the council decided to hold a special mail-in election for 4th District residents as soon as possible: Aug. 26, city staff determined. Mead and King are the sole candidates listed on the upcoming ballot. 

“Everyone knows this is my first foray into politics,” Mead told the Sun. “I would never pretend that I’ve done this before.”

A former middle school teacher and current board chair of the Santa Ynez Valley Humane Society, Mead would be a newcomer to the council if she wins the August election. But she’s no stranger to interacting with Buellton officials.

In late 2023, she filed a formal appeal against an In-N-Out development approved by the Buellton Planning Commission and planned for the vacant Parks Plaza movie theater—shuttered since its 2020 closure.

“A lot of people think I’m against In-N-Out, and that’s not true at all,” Mead said. “It would be great financially for Buellton. I just did not think the location that they wanted was appropriate for the city, especially for this district, and especially for my neighborhood.”

Mead lives in Vineyard Village, a housing development across the street from Parks Plaza and other businesses along McMurray Road. In her appeal, she argued that the traffic at the intersection between McMurray Road and Highway 246 is already severely congested and a new In-N-Out drive-through would only worsen it.

When Mead’s appeal was brought before the City Council at its final meeting of 2023, some public speakers said they worried that overturning the In-N-Out project’s approval would give Buellton an anti-business reputation among developers.

During deliberations, King, who was mayor at the time, sided with Mead’s stance and was part of the 3-1 vote that upheld her appeal (Silva recused himself due to living within 500 feet of the project site, while Sanchez dissented).

“I love In-N-Out. I’m not going to deny that. … But every way that I have looked at this, this will make an absolute disastrous mess of the traffic on the 246 and McMurray,” King said at the council’s Dec. 21 meeting. “I’ve lived here for 20 years, and over the past five years, that intersection has become increasingly more difficult to traverse. … I wish this particular location and this particular spot were viable.”

Earlier this summer, the Buellton Planning Commission held a preliminary hearing for a new proposed project at Parks Plaza without any dinner rush traffic projections attached to it: a Cottage Health medical facility—“which, quite honestly, I think this town, this valley, this area needs more than another fast food chain,” Mead told the Sun.

Mead said she’s open to the idea of Buellton getting an In-N-Out somewhere else in the city where there’s less traffic concerns. 

One of her platforms while running for the City Council’s 4th District seat is focused on fostering economic growth by attracting new restaurants, shops, and other businesses to Buellton, especially in the Avenue of Flags area.

“I want businesses to feel like they’re lucky to be here. … That’s the shift that I’m going for,” said Mead, who plans to push for city-led public relations and social media campaigns that showcase Buellton’s small-town charm with engaging content aimed at locals, tourists, and potential investors.

“Making an identity for Buellton is going to be really important over the next couple of years. I’m not saying it’s going to happen overnight,” Mead continued. “It takes a lot of work to define what the vision of a city is. But I’m here for it. I’m here for the work.”

One mutual focus Mead and King share is to improve safety for pedestrians and bicyclists on Highway 246. While door knocking recently, Mead said one 4th District resident she spoke with complained about the lengthy process of coordinating projects with Caltrans.

“I said, ‘Well, nobody makes a better squeaky wheel than me, and squeaky wheels get the grease,’” Mead recalled, “‘and if I have to squeak up and down the 246, so be it.’ It got a really big chuckle out of him, and he was not the kind of guy who chuckles.”

Like Mead, King wants to see certain bike lanes in Buellton expanded to protect bicyclists and also reduce speeding in certain areas.

“We have had several incidents in crosswalks on the 246.” King told the Sun. “We get constant complaints about people speeding on the 246, … and I think a lot of bike riders don’t want to ride down the shoulder of the 246 because cars are going by 55, 60 miles an hour, and they [bicyclists] are on this little skinny shoulder.”

If elected as Buellton’s next 4th District representative, King said he’ll jump back into the discussions he was having with city staff, Caltrans, and the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments (SBCAG) to widen shoulder space by narrowing down and restriping some stretches of the highway.

“I know things can become buried at the bottom of the pile, and sometimes we need to remind people, ‘Hey, can you put that back at the top?’” King said. “I know how to talk to people; how to lobby people. … I’m very persistent.”

Reach Senior Staff Writer Caleb Wiseblood at cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.

This article appears in Jul 17-27, 2025.