One thing is clear when it comes to redistricting: Santa Barbara County’s 3rd District doesn’t make sense, and something needs to change!
Joan Hartmann’s district—which stretches from Lake Cachuma through the Santa Ynez Valley, down to Isla Vista, over to Lompoc and Vandenberg Space Force Base (I’m never going to get used to that), and on up to Guadalupe and the SLO County line—is the largest geographical district for the Board of Supervisors. It’s one that arguably contains the most diverse subset of the county’s population from rich to poor, white to Latino, college students to winemakers to field workers.
The people in all of those places have only one thing in common, and it’s Hartmann!
There’s no way for one representative to adequately represent all of those interests—and Hartmann does an excellent job of repping the Santa Ynez Valley (Especially the winos, because she knows where her money comes from!). And not so great of a job of reaching the outskirts of that district, aside from the occasional public relations bit in Guadalupe and the bike path connecting it to Santa Maria—its neighbor in another district.
Why exactly is Guadalupe lumped in with Isla Vista and Santa Ynez and not with Santa Maria or Orcutt, which is where Guadalupe students attend high school and Guadalupe residents work, shop, eat, and play?
CAUSE (Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy—which is actually CCAUFASE, but I guess that acronym doesn’t really get the message across) is right. The Latino community in North County isn’t represented on the Board of Supervisors. As CAUSE Policy Advocate Rebeca Garcia put it: “It doesn’t make sense that our needs aren’t represented.”
It’s so obvious that Santa Ynez and Guadalupe aren’t like-minded communities, it hurts to look at the 3rd District’s current iteration, but the big question is what should North County’s districts look like? I’ll tell you what they shouldn’t look like: Anything that gives South County more power over North County than it already has.
“It can feel impossible to have voices actually heard, especially when more affluent populations in the county have their issues prioritized,” Garcia said.
Although the map that CAUSE put forward—United Communities Map—is designed to ensure at least one Latino representative on the Board of Supervisors, it doesn’t necessarily give North County’s voice on the Board of Supervisors any more volume than it has right now. And it puts New Cuyama and Vandenberg Air Force Base—oops, Space Force Base—in the same district but pulls Lompoc into another district. Very like-minded and united!
Say what you will about Democratic versus Republican representation in the county, and North County absolutely needs a Latino representative on the Board of Supervisors, but it also needs more services and to be prioritized at the county level for state and federal grants, social service pilot programs, and county-nonprofit collaboration that benefits North County constituents in need.
I guess we’ll just have to trust this new process that voters decided to experiment through and hope that the county Independent Redistricting Commission comes up with a more fair and just way to divide up supervisorial districts than currently exists. But you know what they say about faith in government!
You can only trust it when it goes your way.
The canary reps North County. Send comments to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 11-18, 2021.