Four Candidates Running for Two Seats on Goleta City Council

Goleta elections of the past have sometimes fielded only one candidate per open seat, but this year each district — 1 and 2, the eastern half of the city — has two people running. Two are incumbents, Luz Reyes-Martín and James Kyriaco; one is a newcomer, Rollin Gartzke; and one, Phebe Mansur, is new to the ballot but not to city politics. The small city of 32,000 souls — 20,000 of voting age — experiences the Central Coast issues common to coastal cities: affordable housing, the flow of traffic, safety, but also major construction in Old Town and what to do about Goodland Guns, which recently moved in next to a preschool. The candidates for Goleta City Council spoke about what they’ve done and what they plan to do, if elected.

DISTRICT 1

Luz Reyes-Martín

District 1 is what Santa Barbarans call the “civilized” part of Goleta, where fairly uncongested roads run along rambling shopping centers, an urban farm, the library, a historic train museum, big open spaces like Los Carneros Park and Bishop Ranch, four schools, the Goleta Union School District offices, a gun shop, and lots and lots of homes. No jets roar overhead.

Luz Reyes-Martín, who has lived in Goleta for 15 years, is running for a second time to represent the city’s northeast quadrant. Hers is a familiar face around town, not only as a councilmember and former Goleta school boardmember, but also as a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood now and Santa Barbara City College previously. Though Reyes-Martín’s popularity won her seat in 2022 over a longtime incumbent, she’s been putting the election work in this year, too.

“I’m out knocking on doors,” she said. “I don’t take anything for granted.”

What she’s been hearing as she’s canvassed her district are “nuts and bolts” questions about city services — and about trees. After what must be the hottest month ever, Goletans are asking for more shade. Her solution is a more proactive plan to add replacement trees that have more canopy, which she’s discussed with the city manager. And to suggest that people might want to get involved with the city’s Public Tree Advisory Commission, which meets quarterly, most recently in September 23 to discuss the 3,400 new trees planted from 2022-2027 across myriad projects.

After the controversy of the city permitting a firearms retailer next-door to a preschool, Reyes-Martín said she spoke to people in the area and answered a lot of emails. “It has been very emotional and upsetting,” she acknowledged, adding that everyone she’d talked to felt heard and that the city would respond. Reyes-Martín made the request of staff to help the gun shop owner relocate. “I think part of the solution will be to review the ordinance, and I think there’s some opportunity for locations that might be appropriate that are currently zoned industrial. If we revisit that, it might open up more opportunities.”

As a former land-use planner, Reyes-Martín speaks traffic. She recalled getting a lot of complaints about the traffic signals in her district, but city staff were already aware of it, she said. They’d won a grant to upgrade almost every signalized intersection in the city, and the work was completed this summer. More recently and alarming was the installation of cameras at intersections. “Those cameras are not recording or storing any data. They’re just sensors. As you can imagine, we got those questions right away,” Reyes-Martín said, explaining that the cameras tell the traffic signal that a vehicle is waiting.

Looking beyond her district, Reyes-Martín sees a future in STEAM careers at the new Google-plex on Castilian Drive: “I think what’s neat is the company obviously sees the value in investing in Goleta,” Reyes-Martín said. “They are not just leasing space; they are buying property, which to me is a signal…. We have these incredible science and math industries here. And, I was just reading this morning an article about the math test scores in the Goleta school district, and how Latino students, only 38 percent of them, were at grade level in math.”

She took her interest to the new chancellor at UC Santa Barbara, Dennis Assanis. “I know test scores aren’t the be-all, but I said to the new chancellor, ‘What’s up? We should be able to connect what’s going on in the Goleta community and the university’s booming math- and science-focused community.’”

Reyes-Martín wants to see Goleta kids have a shot at those good jobs. “How do we help them prepare to go into these programs? Because if you wait until high school, you’re behind, and it’s going to be much harder. From the time they’re in 2nd and 3rd grade, how do we make this a path for them?”

Rollin Gartzke

Rollin Gartzke restores pool tables for a living and does some bookkeeping on the side — his father is a CPA — and said he was urged to run for council by Rich Foster, who ran for mayor a couple of years ago. Gartzke had been a write-in candidate on Nextdoor during that election as “a little joke” and got around 30 votes. Foster asked him to run as there was no one to run against the incumbent, Reyes-Martín, in District 1. “Oh, I answered the wrong phone call,” Gartzke said, laughing, but he said yes.

Tall, lanky, and quotable, Gartzke said he was after greater safety in terms of sidewalks and streetlights, and better roads. “A good friend of mine who was a bartender at Chili’s was hit and killed” on a stretch of Calle Real, he recalled. The woman had been walking last year near Baker Lane, the same area where a bicyclist was struck and killed in 2020. Gartzke noted there were no sidewalks in that area and big gaps in streetlights, as well.

This was in District 3, outside Gartzke’s district: “My only pet project is the City of Goleta, so really, that’s my focus, just the community.”

Another safety issue is the parks. He lives near Stow Grove Park and said the park doesn’t close its gates at night. “Bathrooms are wide open, lights blaring all night long, and it’s inviting campers. The only reason there aren’t campers is because I drive my Mercury through there late at night with my amber lights in the back window. I clear people out in about 30 seconds,” he said with some pride. His Mercury was formerly a police car.

The city’s roads need “a serious revamp” beyond patches that last for weeks, he said. Rolling gravel atop asphalt is dangerous for bicyclists, and rough roads are hard on a classy “affordable luxury car” like his. “You know, it’s not very nice on my suspension.”

Gartzke believes city spending could be done more wisely. The lifelong member of the South Coast Railroad Museum said Goleta’s new train station was oversized. “It’s gorgeous, I love it, but it did not need to be that big or expensive…. I want to see how the community room is going to be sustainable for the amount they say it’s going to cost. Love the project, but sustainability is an issue.”

After going through the city’s candidate orientation, Gartzke expressed admiration for staff. “I’m surprised that they do so much with the few people that they have,” he said. “They do so much, it’s not surprising that other things aren’t getting done because of the few people doing everything.”

Gartzke has yet to attend a City Council meeting. “I have a lot going on,” he said, adding that he hasn’t been paying as much attention as he should. “So I have a little bit of research to do.”

He continues to comment on city doings at Nextdoor, though he said he’s been more “chill” lately. “I’ve always been the quote ‘voice of reason’ that nobody likes because I just say how it is,” he admitted. “I have a hard time when I see something that is just blatantly wrong and not saying something. You know, when people are spreading misinformation of saying something that they don’t have factual truths about, I just put it out there in a usually PG-13 way.”

Of the gun shop controversy, however, “I mentioned that, you know, people are using the children as pawns,” he said. “There’s never, to my knowledge, been any incident of somebody going to a gun store and then walking next door to a preschool. And if they’re worried about the kids, the kids are young enough; they’re not even going to know what that store is.”

And Gartzke has his boundaries: “I don’t go online telling people they’re stupid. Sometimes it’s a little sarcastic because I run on sarcasm and caffeine.”

DISTRICT 2

James Kyriaco

Walking toward San Jose Creek where the construction of new bicycle and pedestrians paths is underway, James Kyriaco patted a waist-high crosswalk button at Kellogg Avenue, explaining that it was part of the Americans with Disabilities Act–compliant infrastructure being added to Hollister Avenue as part of Project Connect.

The construction in Old Town, the soulful center of Kyriaco’s District 2, is either a disaster or a long time coming, depending on whom you talk to — but from final paving to landscaping, it must all be finished by spring 2027 because of grant deadlines. For Kyriaco, it’s all about safety: “What really inspired me to get more involved in Old Town was Michael Montenegro’s film Crossing Hollister Avenue. It talked about all the people who were hit and killed, or hit and injured, and laid out some really gruesome statistics.”

After around 30 years’ worth of surveys, workshops, and conversations, the work is nearly done, preceded by controversial decisions. Kyriaco still remembers all the options: “Believe it or not, back-angle parking, parallel parking, and wider sidewalks was the most popular option. The others took away parking.”

Kyriaco, whose day job is at Pueblo Radiology human resources, is energized by politics and the ability to make a difference, especially when it comes to childcare. It’s a lifelong interest he brought to the council when first elected in 2018 and one reason he supported the city’s sales tax measure in 2022: “We needed that money if I wanted to do a childcare program,” he explained. The funds now generate an extra $250,000 for the city to spend annually on childcare programs in partnership with the Santa Barbara Foundation and other organizations.

“Last year, because we saw the impact the immigration raids were having on families, including children, we reprogrammed $100,000 to 805 UndocuFund, the Immigrant Legal Defense Center, and LEAP (Learn Engage Advocate Partner) to provide legal and just kind of neighbor-to-neighbor support for families that were struggling and feeling targeted.” Kyriaco noted Goleta was the first to do so, soon following by the city and county of Santa Barbara.

It was an outing with the Boys & Girls Club that showed him the world of politics. In 1984, Geraldine Ferraro was coming to Santa Barbara as she ran for the vice presidency. “I was like 10 years old,” Kyriaco said, “and I got to see Sheila Lodge talk, and I got to see Gregg Hart speak, and there was just so much energy.” Ferraro’s train was late, and the kids all missed seeing her, but that was the spark.

He sees the challenge of making difficult things happen to be a matter of patience, a willingness to partner and to be a bridge-builder. Heritage Ridge, for example, had been a Michael Towbes market-rate effort for decades. That early work benefited the project in the long run, in which one out of three of the 332 units is affordable. “They will be affordable housing for low- and very-low-income residents and families, seniors, veterans, people who were at risk of homelessness, so that’s a big deal,” Kyriaco said, giving full credit to the people involved in the project approvals but also the city’s persistence.

Just east of San Jose Creek is the new double roundabout, a key part of Hollister’s circulation plan. “Here’s why the roundabouts are important, because I know some people grumble about the roundabouts,” said Kyriaco. “If we hadn’t done those roundabouts, imagine all of those cars going through that area and trying to get on the 217 to go to UCSB, trying to go through Old Town to get to their jobs.” The cars he was referring to don’t exist yet, but they will once the housing on county ag lands on South Patterson are built out to just under 3,000 homes. “And that’s maybe one and a half cars per home,” Kyriaco recounted.

“You would have had Carmageddon there.”

Phebe Mansur

Phebe Mansur’s campaign T-shirts say it all: “Life Is Better with 4 Lanes.” Hollister Avenue runs outside the door of her shop, and the reduction of lanes has not been good for business, she says. Running to represent District 2, Mansur is well-known at City Council for many issues, including Project Connect, an ambitious city project that reduced Hollister from four lanes to two, added a pair of roundabouts, and has disrupted traffic for more than two years.

“This feels worse with traffic stopped, horns honking, people yelling at each other,” said Mansur. “The other version, it flowed.”

She heard from other businesses that their revenue was down 40 percent, which prompted her to look at her own books: down 57 percent. “Like I wish I were only down 40 percent,” Mansur said with the hint of a smile, “and I know of at least one business that’s down even more.”

(While individual businesses may have had losses, Old Town overall saw increases in sales from 2024 to 2025 of 7 percent, according to Goleta sales tax data. Fast-casual restaurant trade was down 6 percent, while cannabis, autos, and transportation-related goods were up between 6 and 30 percent.)

Her roadway solution would be to allow left-hand turns in more locations. She’s been told it’s not possible for safety reasons, but she answered, “If it’s unsafe for the 34 businesses that need left-hand turns, why is it safe for the city, the school district, the Habit, for Wendy’s and Santa Cruz? Those five left-hand turns, those are safe? But everybody else is not safe?”

She’d also change the back-in diagonal parking. One merchant told her that while they might have more parking spaces in front of their store, they’d rather have more customers.

Her interests go beyond Old Town to the maintenance of roads throughout the city. She argued that low-cost maintenance like slurry seals didn’t last long, had to be repeated, and ended up costing the city more than fixing the road in the first place. 

“Or you spend more money upfront and chip seal, like they do on the freeway, and it’s good for 10 years plus,” she said.

She’s also concerned about the rising cost of business licenses, lighting district fee increases, and Goodland Guns. “He was my neighbor for five years,” Mansur said of Dan Ashton, who owns the gun shop. “One of my customers came in and saw my campaign signs, and she was really concerned about the gun store.” Mansur said she explained how she knew Ashton, they talked, “and by the time she left, she didn’t feel as, you know, stressed about it. I think it’s just talking to people.”

Chatting with Mansur in her shop feels a little like sitting with Lucy van Pelt while the doctor is in. She has a direct gaze and a thoughtful way of considering her words before speaking. If her shop is any indication, comfortably full of papers, print jobs, T-shirts, and books, Mansur is something of a polymath, interested in a lot of things, including city politics.

“When I moved my store to Old Town, it was really clear to me right away that it was underrepresented,” Mansur said. That was in 2007. Mansur had come to Goleta from Orange County to attend UC Santa Barbara in 1984, graduating in political science and film studies. She had a couple of mailbox businesses before starting CopyRight Printing, and she said she now feels like a steward for Old Town.

Even so, she called the new splash pad at Jonny Wallis Park a “boutique project,” saying the $235,000 maintenance cost was wasted money that could be better spent cleaning sidewalks in Old Town and regularly picking up trash.

Mansur, who has recruited candidates in the past for District 2, joined the race because her potential candidate bowed out a week before the filing date. “Oh shoot,” Mansur said she remembered thinking, before filling out the paperwork to run herself.

CAMPAIGN MONEY

The campaign contributions for the Goleta candidates is fairly flat, thanks in large part to Mansur’s zero total and Gartzke not soliciting funds. Reyes-Martín and Kyriaco each had about $11,000 in their pots as of September 2026, receiving contributions from family members, fellow Democrats, and also $1,000 from the county firefighters and deputy sheriffs unions. The largest giver in Goleta is the Price family — owner of multiple gas stations and other properties around town — with $3,000 to Reyes-Martín from John Price and $7,000 to Kyriaco from Price and his son, Jason Price.