Roger Horton, who championed childcare and commuter rail during his two terms on the Santa Barbara City Council, died this past week at age 83.
First elected in 2001, Horton served in the era before district elections when the ghost of Pearl Chase — and her civic legacy — still carried sway. He brought with him the administrative chops of a high-ranking bean counter at UCSB, which is what he was before joining the council.
When it came to housing, Horton supported both affordable housing and the city’s height limit. When it came to the freeway-widening efforts — much fought about and deliberated over during his tenure — Horton refused to let the concept of a commuter rail, the so-called “third lane” that has never meaningfully materialized, drop.
A moderate’s moderate, Horton was both a registered Democrat and a fiscal conservative. He was soft-spoken on the dais almost to a fault but able to throw a well-placed eyeball roll when provoked.
Though understated in public, Horton also had a playful side. When the Angry Poodle carried on about people with the last, first, or middle name Lee being disproportionately prone to sociopathic behavior, Horton took mock offense, castigating the column — under the name Roger Lee Horton — for being “an awful, incorrect, insensitive, slanderous, thoughtless, wrong, nasty, poorly written pile of garbage.”
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