A small crowd gathered in the Grossman Gallery at the Lompoc Public Library, where Lompoc City Councilmember Jim Mosby—donning a cowboy hat, jeans, boots, and a button-down over a T-shirt—stood at the front of the room. Before him, binders and stacks of government documents spread over a fold-out table.
Mosby was about halfway through his first city government transparency forum when five-year Lompoc resident Steve Tribble demanded transparency on a topic near and dear to him: the Lompoc Valley Motorsports Park.
“I live a quarter mile from the proposed motorsports park, so obviously, I’m against it,” Tribble said to Mosby. “I talk to my neighbors, I can tell you maybe one out of 10 knows what’s going on—”
Mosby interrupted: “That’s good.”
“It’s good for you, when you want the motorsports park,” Tribble said. “It’s not good for the people.”
Mosby clarified: “I’m saying it’s good it’s one out of 10, because in a lot of cases, you might have one out of 100 or one out of 1,000.”
And that’s pretty much the gist of the forum’s 90 minutes—a roomful of residents and a City Council member, talking over each other on various controversial subjects with one common goal: transparency.
Mosby initially announced the event following public criticism of the City Council from Lompoc resident Jane Behr, who had requested at the March 15 council meeting that council members agendize the topic of transparency. When Mayor Bob Lingl glossed over Behr’s appeal, Mosby took the transparency issue upon himself.
“There’s a lot of information that’s in our staff reports, and City Hall is full of information,” Mosby told the Sun. “Many times, people ask a question and if you have an answer for them, they understand and a light bulb comes on.”
The April 12 forum provided an open platform for anyone to question Mosby on Lompoc’s city government. Mosby showed up equipped with decades-old plans for Lompoc and its budget, hoping to show where the city has met its goals—and where it’s fallen short.
“Part of transparency is understanding the history and where we’ve been,” Mosby said at the forum. “Many times it tells us where we’re going, and many times it tells us where we shouldn’t be going and stepping in the same piles.”
The first topic to come up at the meeting was not surprising: the fire station.
At the City Council’s March 1 meeting, Mosby moved that the city start actively saving for a new fire station and put off plans to build until it has the necessary funds to do so. Though Lompoc’s need for a new station was widely recognized, the city would be forced to dip into its $2 million Economic Uncertainty Fund—ideally reserved for emergencies—if it started on the proposed plans right away.
At the transparency forum, Mosby described the situation as “like a 16-year-old kid trying to buy a Ferrari.”
Mosby’s motion passed 3-2 at the March 1 meeting, postponing fire station plans for another five to 10 years.
Mosby reflected on that decision during the transparency forum. “This was probably one of the most controversial items on the agenda that I’ve gone through in the year-plus that I’ve had [on the council],” Mosby said, holding the 10-year projection chart showing how economically detrimental it would be to build a station at this point.
“There’s no doubt we need something done with the current station we have, but time and place are very important.”
Tribble connected the fire station issue to the motorsports park, for which the city would be held financially liable if it began construction on the park but couldn’t finish it.
“I’m with you on the fire department when you talk about how it could put us in a bad financial situation,” Tribble said, addressing Mosby. “Is [the motorsports park] not the same thing?”
Mosby said he trusted City Manager Patrick Wiemiller’s judgment on the issue because Wiemiller would not move forward with the motorsports park unless he was sure the city could handle it financially.
“Tell me again what the city manager suggested on the fire department,” Tribble retorted. “His recommendation was to build the fire department.”
Mosby smiled and told Tribble they’d talk more later.
Following debate on the fire station and motorsports park, forum attendees grilled Mosby on issues including public transportation, utility rates, budget, public information access, and city growth rates—but the most impassioned subject was the City Council’s relationship with its constituents.
“We’ve got to work together,” Mosby said in response to resident Pam Wall’s criticism of the city’s public transportation. “In transparency, a lot of it is the communication aspect. You will see a lot of times when you go to a council meeting, you’re there, but how many people aren’t there?”
Wall argued that City Council meetings can be unpleasant for residents, pointing to instances in which Wiemiller has snapped at people making public comment.
“It is to the public as though we’re not really welcome there,” Wall said. “When a council member attacks somebody in public from their little pulpit up there, they need to be called out on that.”
Resident Ian Behr also questioned the seating arrangement of the council meetings, where non-elected city staff sits alongside the council members—an interesting point, considering Mosby himself was appointed to City Council, not elected.
When the Sun asked Mosby about this, he said it shouldn’t matter how he came on to the council as long as he’s doing a good job.
“I don’t think there’s any relevance to whether I was appointed or elected,” he said. “Actually, it was a lot harder to be appointed than elected. We’ll see how it comes out down the road, but I tried to be solid whether I was elected or appointed.”
Staff Writer Brenna Swanston can be reached at bswanston@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 21-28, 2016.