With only three meetings left before his eight years in office are up, Santa Barbara City Councilmember Dale Francisco is going out the same way he came in: confronting popular notions of high-density affordable housing coupled with a car-optional future.
When first elected in 2007, Francisco rode a wave of voter exasperation with bulb-outs, roundabouts, and other “traffic calming devices” favored by alternative transit advocates who hoped by slowing traffic down, commuters could be inspired to abandon their cars and ride bicycles or buses, or walk to work. If people owned fewer cars, the logic went, housing developers could reduce the space devoted to parking, thus making their final product more affordable to working Santa Barbarans. Francisco — smart, unabashedly conservative, and tactically formidable — was never shy about his skepticism, dismissing such so-called “smart growth” agendas as “social engineering” and “utopian.” This week, Francisco would lead an ill-fated charge against another smart-growth initiative, this one an experimental high-density housing program designed to stimulate the development of smaller, more affordable rental housing rather than luxury condos, which were the rage when Francisco was first elected.
After 90 minutes of emotionally fraught wonk-talk at the City Council Tuesday — pitting neighborhood preservationists against affordable-housing advocates in an all-too-familiar rhetorical rumble — Francisco ended up right where he started, with only Councilmember Frank Hotchkiss at his side. When it was over, Mayor Helene Schneider thanked the two for inciting what she called a “nice conversation.”