The daily economy
Local shops, restaurants, services, makers, and independent professionals create jobs, culture, and the street life people value.
Hope · Build the paths to local life
A future people can see.
Hope means a clear next step: a job, a raise, an open storefront, a creative stage, a path back to stability, or a reason to build a life in Santa Barbara.
Campaign photo: Alexander listening with local workers, students, creators, or small-business owners
The path should be visible
IdeaOpen doors
TrainingPaid work
TalentLocal opportunity
Public assetPublic value
What is happening?
Santa Barbara has extraordinary strengths. The paths into them are too often unclear.
Our city has small businesses, skilled trades, hospitality, healthcare, schools, arts, research, entrepreneurship, public service, local capital, and a growing regional innovation economy. Yet the route from talent to opportunity — or from an idea to an open door — can be expensive, fragmented, and slow.
The result is a city rich in possibility where too many local people still struggle to see their next step.
Economic development should make local life more possible.
The people who keep the city working
Teachers, caregivers, public servants, tradespeople, hospitality workers, and young professionals need housing and visible paths to advancement.
The life between the buildings
Artists, performers, events, cultural institutions, and public gathering places give people reasons to return downtown and belong here.
A beauty-and-brains economy
Research, technology, resilience, healthcare, and entrepreneurship can create broader local opportunity when the benefits are intentionally connected to residents.
Why it matters
Hope is practical. It is the next rung people can actually reach.
Housing gives people roots. Health gives stable ground. Hope gives a path forward. City policy cannot choose a person's future for them. It can make the path clearer, fairer, and more usable.
Work
A first job, a paid apprenticeship, a credential, a promotion, or a career ladder that does not require leaving home.
Small business
A permit route that is understandable before a local owner commits savings, signs a lease, or loses months to rework.
Creativity
Places to perform, make, gather, film, exhibit, and build the culture that makes Santa Barbara feel alive.
Recovery
A path from crisis to care, stability, service, and work — with clear expectations and room to rebuild.
Belonging
A way to participate, serve, volunteer, mentor, and see that local government values contribution from every neighborhood.
Alexander's position
Turn local strengths into local life.
The goal is not growth for its own sake. The goal is more opportunity, stronger small businesses, reliable city services, and a future local people can enter.
Santa Barbara should keep high standards and become clearer, faster, and more coordinated. The City should convene and set rules — not pick favored companies, make speculative investments, or subsidize private activity without a measurable public return.
The public-value test
Local benefitDoes this help residents, workers, students, small businesses, or taxpayers?
Housing fitDoes it reduce the workforce-housing gap or deepen it?
Fiscal honestyCan the City afford, staff, maintain, and explain the commitment?
Clear returnWhen public money or property is involved, is the public benefit enforceable and measurable?
Character fitDoes it respect Santa Barbara's scale, beauty, neighborhoods, and public trust?
What would Alexander do?
Four actions that turn hope into a usable path.
Each action begins with existing authority, clear standards, named responsibility, and a public measurement before the City makes new open-ended promises.
Small business
Small Business Opening Reform
Plain meaning: one clear route from idea to open doors.
- Publish checklists and expected timelines for common tenant improvements, signs, outdoor uses, and business permits.
- Offer early coordination before an owner spends heavily or signs a difficult lease.
- Assign one accountable point of contact and a transparent escalation route when a complete application stalls.
- Report where rework and conflicting instructions are adding avoidable time or cost.
Measure: median processing time, avoidable resubmittals, businesses opened, and unresolved cases beyond the published timeline.
Workforce
Local Opportunity Ladder
Plain meaning: connect local learning to paid work and advancement.
- Build a visible partnership among local schools, SBCC, UCSB, trades, employers, nonprofits, and public agencies.
- Expand paid internships, apprenticeships, service pathways, mentorship, and practical credentials.
- Make local opportunities easier to find through one public-facing pathway rather than scattered programs.
- Connect workforce planning to housing, transportation, childcare, and the real barriers that keep people from participating.
Measure: paid placements, completed credentials, participating employers, advancement, and six-month retention.
Downtown & culture
State Street Local Life Program
Plain meaning: give people more reasons to return downtown throughout the week.
- Create a coordinated calendar for arts, performance, markets, family activity, local retail, and community programming.
- Use clear temporary-use and pop-up templates so good ideas can be tested without inventing a new process each time.
- Pair activity with the basics: cleanliness, lighting, access, restrooms, maintenance, and visible public safety.
- Use short pilots with public goals before permanent commitments.
Measure: active storefronts, program days, permit time for temporary uses, repeat attendance, and published operating results.
Innovation & public value
Innovation-to-Local-Benefit Compact
Plain meaning: make sure regional growth creates visible opportunity here.
- Convene UCSB, SBCC, employers, trades, civic institutions, philanthropy, and local capital around specific public-benefit goals.
- Prioritize workforce pathways, housing partnerships, resilience pilots, local procurement, and small-business opportunity.
- Use the City as a trustworthy convener and rule-setter — not a speculative investor or promoter of individual companies.
- Require a clear public return when City property, money, or special access is involved.
Measure: local placements, partner commitments, housing or resilience outcomes, public-private dollars leveraged, and completed pilots with reported results.
Campaign photo: State Street or a District 6 business block with people present
The District 6 lens
District 6 is where the local economy becomes daily life.
State Street, storefronts, rents, public safety, parking, permits, arts, hospitality, housing, and city finances meet here. A better local economy is not an abstract growth statistic. It is whether a neighbor can open, hire, advance, stay, and return tomorrow.
A working downtown
Safe, active, accessible, and useful across the day and evening.
Safe, active, accessible, and useful across the day and evening.
Clearer openings
Fewer surprises for people taking the risk to start or improve a local business.
Fewer surprises for people taking the risk to start or improve a local business.
Housing near opportunity
A serious economy needs a serious workforce-housing plan.
A serious economy needs a serious workforce-housing plan.
Public assets with purpose
City land, buildings, leases, and parking should produce clear public value.
City land, buildings, leases, and parking should produce clear public value.
How will voters know it is working?
Publish a Local Opportunity Dashboard.
A plan is only useful when residents can see whether the path is getting clearer. I will push for a public baseline, named ownership, and quarterly reporting that shows progress and delay without spin.
Metric
What it shows
Reporting
Time to open
Whether common permits and tenant improvements are becoming clearer and faster after an application is complete.
Quarterly
Local opportunity placements
Paid internships, apprenticeships, credentials, job placements, and retention through the Local Opportunity Ladder.
Quarterly
Downtown activation
Active ground-floor uses, temporary-use approvals, program days, and repeated public participation.
Quarterly
Public-private delivery
Partner commitments and completed workforce, housing, resilience, or small-business outcomes tied to a public-benefit agreement.
Semiannual
Public assets assigned to purpose
Whether City-controlled land, buildings, leases, and facilities have a documented public-value role and accountable next step.
Annual
ActionOwnerCostDeadlineResult
Public claims, source links, and verification dates should be published in the accompanying Campaign Decision Brief.
The first operating step
Seek Council support for a Hope Delivery Agenda within the first 100 days.
The first vote is not a blank check. It is direction to identify the lead, establish the baseline, sequence the work, attach fiscal notes, and return with an implementation plan for the four actions above.
Common questions
What this plan means — and what it does not.
What does “Hope” mean in city policy?
It means making the next step visible and usable: a clear permit route, a paid training path, a place to create, a route from recovery to stability, and a public system that tells people who owns the next action.
Is economic development just attracting more companies?
No. Economic development is the long-term work of expanding local opportunity, productivity, quality jobs, small-business durability, workforce capacity, housing, infrastructure, and city revenue. Recruitment is only one possible tool, and it should never replace support for the businesses and workers already here.
Does this plan favor technology companies over local small businesses?
No. Small business is the daily economy and the first priority on this page. The innovation economy matters because it is already creating regional pressure and opportunity. The City's job is to connect that value to local workers, housing, resilience, downtown, and small-business benefit.
How does housing fit into the local economy?
Housing is economic infrastructure. Employers cannot retain people, workers lose time and money to long commutes, and local spending leaves the community when the people who keep Santa Barbara working cannot live within reach of it.
Would the City subsidize private companies?
The default should be clear rules, faster processes, reliable infrastructure, and strong partnerships — not favors. Any use of public money, property, or special access should carry a written public benefit, a fiscal note, measurable conditions, and a way to enforce the agreement.
Can one councilmember deliver all of this?
One councilmember cannot privately direct departments or promise a unilateral outcome. A serious councilmember can build a majority, set policy, adopt budgets, authorize agreements, ask public questions, and require visible reporting. That is how direction becomes delivery.
Our future here
Santa Barbara should be a place where more people can see their next step — and build on it.
Tell me which path feels hardest to find today: work, business, housing, recovery, creativity, service, or belonging. Local government works better when it begins with the actual obstacle.
