Snapshot: Scott Burns
Age: 50
Occupation: Retired, former owner of Murphy Electric
Background: Community volunteer for Old Spanish Days El Presidente, Sunrise Rotary Club, Santa Barbara Children’s Commission, UCSB, Goleta Chamber of Commerce, Roosevelt School

LD: Why do you want to be on the city council?

SB: The main reason I’m running is my father. It’s a legacy…Back in spring; I got a little upset not with the city but with the state. If the state is getting so fiscally mismanaged, they’re going to start negatively impacting the city. There’s no one on the council with a long-term small business background, who is able to prioritize what they’re doing with the limited resources. Fiscal accountability slowly kept getting dropped off the list. Not that I think that professional staff is doing anything wrong. They’re doing an OK job, but not doing as good as a job as they could if they had someone looking over their shoulder saying OK, that’s good, but how come you don’t do this?

LD: What would be your priorities if elected?

SB: To maintain our quality of life in short term, we need to make sure our budget is balanced. We need to prioritize fiscal responsibility… at least running the city with the same regiment … a small business would. Audit the bed tax. From (City Finance Manager) Rob Peirson, I found out that he did not know what the accounts receivable aging was for the city … the finance department is doing a great job, but I think they’re just not paying as much attention as I would like them to on certain items.

… We can’t do every thing; let’s try to do as much as we can. If you were to look back at the last 10 elections: housing, traffic, have always been issues, and there’s not a whole lot the city can do. One of the unintended consequences of us being such a great city and making it so nice for the people that live here is other people want to live here.

LD: What would you most like to see change?

SB: Get it so people feel more accessible to the council. … As I’m walking neighborhoods, I’ve heard that issue probably as much as any one.

… I’d love to get a greater turnout. I would love to be able to say that Santa Barbara has the highest percent of voters per capita. With that being said, if you run the city smoothly, generally people don’t vote if they’re happy. So that’s a hard issue. If you want everyone to vote but you want to run the city so well that people are happy.

LD: How would you attack the problem of the jobs/housing balance in our town?

SB: … I’ve talked with a couple of different nonprofits about having homeowners pledge that when they sell their home a small percent of the selling price would go to a nonprofit that would help promote or fund or build workforce housing. …This is way they can give back to the community.

We’re working on … the details … because it’s an outside of the box proposal, a realistic proposal that will work. It’s not the only solution to the housing issue but it is one solution that these other groups have all gotten excited about.

LD: What do you appreciate most about Santa Barbara?

SB: The small town feel we’ve got. You can see people on the street, sit and talk with them, you’re able to communicate with them. We’ve got a diverse city, with a lot of different people and a lot of different interests and we’ve melted or melded together to a point where everyone cares about the city. It’s small enough where you feel you can do something.

And there are so many things the city has here, the arts, the natural beauty, the beaches, and honestly the safety. I mean realistically if there’s a shooting in Santa Barbara you hear that there’s a shooting and the person was apprehended.

… Fiesta makes the entire community go on vacation without leaving town and that helps makes this town very special. People can just relax, see their friends, have a party. The nonprofits, they make money from Fiesta. That’s something that makes this a special town. And it helps bring the historical significance of Santa Barbara and early California, which a lot of California doesn’t really have.

LD: How would you describe your political views?

SB: I would call myself a radical moderate. I’m more liberal than most of my Republican friends, and I’m more conservative than my Democratic friends. I would say I am a fiscally responsible person with a liberal or a tolerant social agenda or that I don’t have a social agenda.

LD: What about your views on spending?

SB: It’s not just making money, but it’s living within your means. Because of that I’m able to retire. I’m one of six children and the other five will work until they’re 65. What did I do different? What was I thinking? …. I’ve always looked at things in a way that makes sense, and I’ve always tried to live within my means. I’ve told people this and my wife is embarrassed, but the TV that we watch is a TV that we got as a wedding present in 1985. It still works. Why do we need a new TV? One of these years we’ll probably buy a new TV, but we’ll probably put that one in one of the other bedrooms. It’s … living within your means and I think that’s what I’m going to bring to the city.

LD: Which current or former city council member do you admire the most?

SB: Probably Rusty Fairly. He has given 12 years for the city. He’s also made (the point), “the more you learn, longer you’re on you, the more you realize you’re there to do the long term planning.”