The people of Lompoc voiced their frustration with local government at the polls on Nov. 2 by ousting two longtime City Council incumbents and electing political newcomer John Linn mayor over incumbent Cecilia Martner.
The council will now be composed of members with two years or less of political experience each, including Linn; Martner and Bob Lingl, both of whom were first elected in 2008; retired U.S. Navy officer Dirk Starbuck; and recent UCLA graduate Ashley Costa.
“This new City Council, none of us are career politicians. Bob Lingl and Cecilia Martner have only been on the council for two years, and the rest of us have no government background,” Starbuck recently told the Sun. “I think it’s going to be exciting. You’re going to see the City Council, and Lompoc, move fast [to improve itself].”
The new mayor and council members will be officially sworn in on Dec. 7. In advance of that, the Sun asked each of them to discuss their future visions and goals for Lompoc. Of course, only time will tell how successful they’ll be at achieving those goals.
John Linn
After a narrow defeat in the 2008 mayoral race, Linn hit the campaign trail again in 2009 with a vengeance. That tenacity—coupled perhaps with voters’ dissatisfaction with the status quo—was reflected in Linn’s more than 13 percent lead over incumbent Martner in this year’s race to become the city’s top politico.
In a post-election interview with the Sun, Linn said the first issue he’ll bring before the council in December will be a plan to prevent Caltrans from constructing a single-lane roundabout at the intersection of
La Purisima Road and Highway 246.
According to Caltrans, installing the $5.1-million roundabout at the intersection would be cheaper and safer than installing a traditional stoplight.
Linn, however, isn’t convinced.
“It’s about the dumbest thing I’ve seen in a long time,” Linn said of the plan. The 55 mph roundabout, he said, would “kill traffic on that hill.”
Instead, Linn is looking into the possibility of constructing a merge lane connecting the road to the highway. He estimates the lane could save Caltrans and the city millions of dollars.
Once that’s making its way through the council, Linn said he’s going to focus on streamlining the city’s planning and development process. This issue is quite personal for Linn—he told the Sun in October that his plans to build a wine tasting room in Old Town were thwarted by the city’s complicated building permit process.
Now that he’s mayor, Linn said he wants to help form a committee of local business owners and city employees tasked with finding ways to make the building process more efficient.
“It’ll be up to [the committee] to look at the current situation and see what needs to be done. It’s another set of eyes looking to see if things can be improved,” Linn said. “Once this [new] plan is in process, we’ll go back to the existing business community and ask, ‘What can we do to help expand and improve your business?’”
Other goals:
• Correcting city ordinances that Linn said “penalize the majority and don’t protect anybody from anything.” He gave as an example the city’s recent parking ordinance, which proposed restricting where people could park trailers and motorhomes.
• Creating an economic development committee tasked with finding ways to attract businesses to Lompoc.
• Holding a budget workshop to find out what city departments can give up “because,” Linn said, “you have to give up something.”
• Incorporating more technology into city business, such as online utility payment and automated building inspection scheduling.
Ashley Costa
Lompoc native Ashley Costa graduated cum laude from UCLA in 2009 with a degree in political science. And while she might not have the most real-world experience, Costa said she’s ready to get to work.
“The study of politics gives you a lot of experience as opposed to just being thrown into it. At UCLA, we were taught to focus on statistical data—checking our facts and sources,” she explained.
Shortly after finishing her studies, Costa returned to Lompoc to work as a freelance grant writer and tasting room manager at the Loring Wine Company Tasting Room.
“I think it’s important to venture away from your hometown and experience other cultures and diversity,” Costa said. “But L.A. is such a big city. … I really missed my hometown.”
Now in her mid-20s, Costa said she was looking for a place to settle down and start a family. Lompoc, she said, is a great place to live, but “it’s also one of the hardest places” to start a life because of the lack of jobs and other resources.
“I think past councils haven’t really focused on how to market and brand the city,” Costa said. “Lompoc is in an identity crisis.”
So, what is Lompoc’s identity?
“I want to get input from everyone: the public, the council, and city staff,” she said. “We’re an ag-based community. I want to [use my experience in the wine industry to] bring in businesses that can take advantage of that.”
Other goals:
• Costa shares Linn’s goal of streamlining the planning and developing process by creating a committee of business owners and city staffers.
• She’s dedicated to downtown revitalization: “I want to make downtown more pedestrian
friendly,” she said. She also wants to develop a downtown website, and she’d like to see the city restore the old Lompoc Theater.
• Student empowerment. Costa wants to create a city internship program for high school seniors and college students.
Dirk Starbuck
Longtime Lompoc resident and business owner Dirk Starbuck said his 20-year career in the U.S. Navy gave him the leadership skills necessary to run city government successfully.
“When I entered the Navy, I was a potato peeler. By the time I retired, I was running maintenance and repairs on submarines and aircraft carriers,” Starbuck said. “We used taxpayers’ dollars and had deadlines that couldn’t be flipped.”
Currently, he said, “it seems government doesn’t have respect for taxpayers’ dollars.”
Government’s failure to come in on time and on budget “creates million-dollar mistakes” that are paid for with taxpayers’ money, he said, adding, “If that happened in the private industry, you’d get fired or maybe even locked up.”
Starbuck said he’ll keep this in mind when introducing or voting on projects and other ordinances. His first such project, he said, will be to fix the city’s building process.
“We’ve got to open up City Hall for planning and permitting,” he said. “Right now, people come out of City Hall with armfuls of paperwork, and they don’t know where to go or what to do. We need to set up a standard process and appoint a person to guide them through it.”
Doing that will create more jobs and more tax revenue because people will start opening more storefronts, Starbuck said, and that “natural generation of revenue” will allow the city to establish stronger public safety, youth, and other programs.
Other goals:
• Supporting the Allan Hancock College Public Safety Complex.
• Expanding the Lompoc airport.
• Overall city cleanliness.
• Streamlining code enforcement.
• Supporting construction of the California Space Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base.
Contact Managing Editor Amy Asman at aasman@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 11-18, 2010.