Editor’s note: This article is the second of a two-part series highlighting Santa Maria’s three mayoral candidates. The first part, “Incumbent upon us,” published on Oct. 1.
Alberto Ugalde, lifelong Santa Marian and business owner, and Will Smith, a former educator and preacher, are each hoping to win the Santa Maria mayorship this November.
Born and raised in Santa Maria, Ugalde is a barber by trade and has owned his own shop, Landmark Barbers Shaving Parlor and Lounge, for the last five years. His career and community involvement, he said, have allowed him to “talk to different people with different points of view about the issues that are going on within our city.”
This “open mindset,” he believes, is what makes him the right candidate for mayor.
“I believe that we the residents need to have a better relationship with our city officials,” he said. “We need to close the gap between us.”
One way Ugalde proposed doing this is through more accessible City Council meetings. He said something as simple as pushing the City Council meeting to start an hour later in the evening would allow people who get off work after 5:30 p.m. to still tune in.
Another tenet of the first-time candidate’s platform is public safety. Ugalde said it’s about more than just policing.
“It can be putting a few extra street lights in the neighborhoods that are way too dark at night,” he said. “It can be putting stop signs in our neighborhoods that have cars flying down the street. It could be putting ramps on every sidewalk, so our residents with disabilities can enjoy going out.”
Ugalde said that during local police brutality protests earlier this year, he believes “our police did a great job.” But he wishes there had been better communication between city officials and protest leaders.
“The protesters had announced that they were going to come and protest,” he said. “I feel like local officials should have reached out to the organizations and maybe give them a platform where they could go and do their protest, and maybe that way we would have avoided the riot that happened afterwards.”
Ugalde believes the city needs to find ways to increase its budget and expand public services, particularly for people experiencing homelessness.
“There’s a lot of programs out there for the homeless, but the only problem is, they have to be sober to get the help,” he said. “Some of these people have been battling addiction for a long time, so I feel like we need to implement some type of a mental health service so we can help them be sober, and so they can get the help that they need.”
Ugalde is also focused on planning and development. He said he loves to see his hometown growing, but wants to make sure that existing parts of the city get the care and attention they need.
“I feel that we also need to focus on the neighborhoods we already have,” Ugalde said. “There’s a lot of commercial buildings that are empty, especially in our downtown, so I feel that should get the same attention as growing our city.”
Ugalde believes he can make Santa Maria into the county role model that he envisions.
“Santa Maria is the largest city in Santa Barbara County,” he said. “I believe that our city should be the one setting the standards for the rest of the cities in our county.”
Smith, who’s making his second run for mayor after an attempt in 2016, was born and raised in Savannah, Georgia, where he spent his formative years attending Benedictine Military School, a Catholic high school for boys.
He said it’s where he learned to “stand up for what he believed in.”
Eventually Smith joined the Air Force, and he said he was stationed at Vandenberg Air Force Base for five years. He’s now been a Santa Maria local for more than 30 years. Smith also spent time as a correctional officer at the Lompoc penitentiary, has been a preacher for more than 25 years, and taught at the Santa Maria-Bonita School District from 2000 to 2009 before being elected to the district’s school board in 2010.
But during his time as a teacher, he said, “the school district and I fell out for some years.” Smith’s teaching evaluations from 2004 to 2008, which he shared with the Sun, met or exceeded standards. However, during the 2008-09 school year, he was suspended eight times for alleged misconduct, including physically and verbally assaulting students and misusing a computer. Smith resigned in July 2010, and his teaching license was revoked in October 2013.
Smith denies these allegations, arguing, “If I had done that I would be in jail.”
When Smith was elected to the school board in 2010, he said, the environment was “antagonistic” right off the bat.
“While I was there, I got wind that the brand new [two-story] buildings were supposed to be retrofitting according to the Field Act,” he said.
The Field Act mandates earthquake-resistant construction in California.
“I fought with the state for six years to prove that these buildings were not right,” he said.
The buildings were eventually retrofitted after Smith was no longer on the board—he lost reelection in 2014.
Now six years since being in elected office, Smith hopes to put his strife with Santa Maria-Bonita School District in the past and represent people once again as the mayor of Santa Maria.
“The school district stuff is behind me,” he said. “It was a hard-fought learning experience, and it will help me in my political endeavors.”
Under his slogan, “The possibility of us,” Smith said his goal is “to meet the people and listen to what they have to say.”
Smith also supports Santa Maria’s growth, especially the addition of community spaces.
“We might go a little into debt, but the expansions would fund themselves,” he said. “If we had an area where we could do car shows and use them for soccer fields, we could get enough revenue to pay for the project and make money for the city.”
Also important to Smith is the local economy. He believes the city should contract with small businesses “to help stabilize them.”
“If we’re depending on small businesses to pay revenues and taxes, we have a responsibility to find out how we can intervene with them and swing some revenues their way,” he said.
In the wake of national unrest and racial justice protests across the country, Smith also emphasized “a need to attack racial issues.”
“If you look at the city of Santa Maria, the diversity we have in government offices is almost nonexistent,” he said. “We need to create more diversity in the country and more equal opportunity.”
Highlight
• During October, CARE4Paws and Santa Barbara County Animal Services are partnering to put on a $5 microchip campaign. “A microchip is a permanent form of identification that can reduce a pet’s shelter stay dramatically or prevent animals from ending up homeless altogether,” a press release stated. The agencies will co-host four Sunday events throughout the county to provide the microchips. CARE4Paws will also offer affordable spays and neuters, medical services, and vaccines for pets in the organization’s mobile clinic. Additionally, from Oct. 5 to 11, CARE4Paws is hosting a virtual Wags ’n’ Whiskers Festival, where the organization will promote pet adoption from shelters and rescues along the Central Coast. For more information about adoption, visit care4paws.org/adopt.
Staff Writer Malea Martin wrote this week’s Spotlight. Send news tips to spotlight@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 8-15, 2020.