Few gestures express appreciation as loudly as a $10,000-a-year raise and this week, the Santa Barbara City Council did just that for their City Attorney Ariel Calonne, celebrating his first year on the job. For Calonne, who now will earn a base salary of $238,000, the honeymoon at City Hall remains an ongoing affair. Lured away from the City of Ventura last year with the retirement of Steve Wiley — a perennial powerhouse within City Hall circles — Calonne has found himself thrown into the deep end of a litigiously rambunctious pool, dealing with such issues as the gang injunction, district elections, and the freeway widening project.
On the eve of the gang injunction, the city’s attorney’s office dismissed charges against ten of the alleged gang members named in the injunction because the case against them was weak. As gestures went, it bespoke a perspective that critics of the gang injunction insisted had been lacking. It was not enough to sway Judge Colleen Sterne, however, who tossed the injunction out of court entirely.
With the district elections lawsuit, Calonne was dealt a losing hand. It’s true the number of Latinos winning city election in the past 20 years could be counted on one thumb, but the threshold established by the California Voting Rights Act to establish disparate voting patterns was exceptionally low. Even councilmembers most adamantly opposed to district elections felt Calonne acquitted himself — and City Hall — with strategic intelligence.