Jason Carlton
| Candidate Name | |
| Jason Carlton | |
| Position Sought | |
| Santa Barbara City Council - District 6 | |
| @Carlton4SB | |
| Why are you running for office?: | |
| I am running for City Council because we need our city government to work for the people. I believe the city’s job is to make Santa Barbara a safer, cleaner, and more affordable place to live for everyone. | |
| What makes you qualified for the job?: | |
| I am not a politician and this is not a stepping-stone on my career. I am a small business owner and I know how to solve problems as a team. Too many of the problems we face as a community have been growing for years, we need less talk, more action, and a good dose of common sense. | |
| What are your two main priorities if you win?: | |
| I want to change city hall’s priorities. We need a city government that works for the people, not the other way around. I’ve heard consistently from residents and businesses that they don’t understand what’s going on in city hall. At the same time, they’re seeing problems on the rise. We need to change that - I believe in a transparent government that’s accountable and available to the community it serves. | |
| How will you interact with other governments?: | |
| I think it’s important to build working teams and to seek support from other governments whenever we can. Santa Barbara can’t go it alone, but at the same time, we should recognize that some of the problems we face have been made worse by many years of inaction. We have to hold our city government accountable first before we can expect to be able to collaborate effectively with others. | |
| What are your plans to help overcome COVID-19?: | |
| We need to change the culture and priorities at city hall. COVID has exacerbated the problems facing our community. Santa Barbara was already facing problems with affordability, a rising homeless population, and an unfriendly environment for owning or operating a small business. If elected, I will make sure the city takes action on these important issues and make meaningful progress. | |
| Which two issues are most important to you?: | |
| I’m a downtown resident and I care passionately about the homeless situation. We need the city to take meaningful action, it took TV Hill being turned into an ashtray before we started to see some movement from the city council. That frustrates me - we need to treat this crisis with compassion and humanity, and we need to make our streets safer and cleaner. We also need to make it easier to run a small business in Santa Barbara, I know this as a small business owner myself. I’ve talked to most of the businesses on State street during my campaign, nearly everyone has expressed frustration with how difficult it is to work with the city government - we need to change that. |
