I was first elected a Santa Barbara City College trustee in 2010 and am currently the longest-serving member of the SBCC board. I am a lifelong moderate Democrat.
I ran for trustee after retiring from a career in environmental law because education has been central to my life — from the values I internalized and classes I took (and later taught) at a Quaker K-12 school in Philadelphia, to college in Connecticut and law school in California.
I want everyone to have excellent, affordable educational opportunities. I am committed to the success of SBCC and its students and to building a transparent positive relationship with our community.
Among the ways I have tried to contribute to SBCC’s success has been to work toward the revival of our free, noncredit programs after they were decimated in 2009. Also. then-trustee Marianne Kugler and I in 2014 met with SBCC Foundation representatives and proposed a fundraising drive to support all local high school graduates attending SBCC by paying for their tuition, fees, books, supplies, and a laptop for two years.
Geoff Green joined the foundation as CEO that year, and soon after crafted and built such a program, now known as "the Promise." Geoff deserves all the credit for making the Promise real for over 7,000 local students since it began in 2016.
I believe that where, and how wisely, SBCC spends taxpayer money is public policy at its most fundamental level.
I also believe that transparency is something that SBCC, and all government agencies, owes everyone. At the time I became a trustee, the college refused to release audio tapes of board meetings. Now we are on YouTube, audio and video. Our budgets are much more transparent although most people do not have the time to read and dissect them.
Measure P is not what SBCC needs. Talking at length about the importance of SBCC to our community, and the wonderful opportunities it provides, is easy. Facing the reality of where SBCC is now, its fiscal and facility challenges, and speaking with transparency is neither easy, nor popular.
Sadly, the campaign for Measure P is not transparent, instead driven by political polling.
SBCC is not prepared to spend your tax money wisely, and funding raised through Measure P would allow and encourage the college to continue avoiding the hard decisions it needs to make to be the future engine of opportunity we all want.
All the information to support that view may be found in SBCC agendas, reports and public documents. Public records used and referenced in this article may be found here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , and here .
Measure P is a proposed bond to build new buildings and fix older ones — in the face of falling student enrollment. However, district taxpayers deserve much better budgeting and planning from SBCC before the college asks for more public money.
Credit class enrollments at SBCC have declined continually, a more than 44 percent decrease, from 2009/10 to 2023/24. In addition, more of SBCC’s remaining students now choose credit classes online, instead of attending in main campus buildings.