After living in Santa Maria for 38 years and serving as an elected city official for eight, Etta Waterfield’s stepping down from from her seat on the Santa Maria City Council to retire and move to Montana.
City Planning Commissioner Maribel Aguilera-Hernandez is running to take her place as a candidate for the 4th District seat in the upcoming November elections, Waterfield said.
“Maribel is a very commonsense planning commissioner who understands the issues of Santa Maria, and she will be an excellent replacement,” she added.
Aguilera-Hernandez said she’s spent her entire professional career serving Santa Maria. Prior to her eight years as a planning commissioner, she worked for the North County Rape Crisis Center, Future Leaders of America, and the Legal Aid Foundation—where she worked as an attorney later in her career.
“Through my various positions, I just became more interested in the local issues and then I was asked to be on the Planning Commission where I learned more. I think [City Council] is the next step to serving my community,” she said.
The Santa Maria native was scheduled to announce her campaign on June 30 at Rotary Centennial Park, and told the Sun her priorities included public safety, youth programs, economic development, and housing.
“I think that Santa Maria’s been seen as a small city and treated that way for a long time. But we have 110,000 residents—which is the size of Ventura. We need to start treating our problems like big city problems and we need to start attacking our issues that way,” Aguilera-Hernandez said.
If elected, she’d like to see the police department’s 10 percent vacancy rate decrease, work with community members to hear their safety-related concerns, continue to develop the youth programs already in place, and get more housing in the city to further economic development.
“We need to attract developers to come and build housing in order to address the shortage [by] making it easier to go through the housing process. Sitting on the Planning Commission, we hear from the developers [that] the process can be quite rigorous,” Aguilera-Hernandez explained.
Housing’s also a top campaign priority for 3rd District City Councilmember Gloria Soto—whose running for reelection this year. However, her approach focuses on affordable housing, not just increased development.
“I envision our community to be one that has plentiful affordable housing units and I’d like for us as a local government to look into increasing our rental assistance program,” Soto said. “I’m continuing my efforts on seeing we, as a city, implement an affordable inclusionary housing ordinance.”
She explained that she’s seen other communities use this ordinance to ensure that a set percentage of new development is under fair market value to help people find affordable homes.
“We can’t talk about unaffordability without talking about living wage jobs. To continue my efforts on living wages, I will be championing a community workforce agreement program, [which] will allow us to create economic development opportunities for residents and businesses in the city,” Soto added.
The agreement program will ensure with any development project that the company hires local residents at a “prevailing wage,” she explained.
Along with housing and economics, Soto’s other priorities include supporting local businesses at the city level, and providing affordable child care by setting aside 5 percent of the city’s general fund to pay for more programs.
“My platform stems from my concerns and the concerns my residents share with me,” Soto said. “I want to make sure we continue to push our local government in creating and expanding safety nets for those who are most vulnerable. When our most vulnerable thrive, all of Santa Maria thrives.”
Residents in both the 3rd and 4th Districts can still decide to run for City Council during the city’s nomination period beginning July 18 and ending Aug. 12. Visit cityofsantamaria.org for more information.
This article appears in Jun 30 – Jul 7, 2022.
