The meeting also marked the return of councilman John Connolly, who was in Florida over the last six months on military deployment. Temporary councilman Leo Elovitz, who was appointed as the temporary replacement for Connolly, told the Journal on Monday that he pulled papers to run for a council seat in the November election. Mayor Holly Sierra and councilman Dave King are up for re-election.
At a previous meeting, Sierra requested that the board consider naming the barbecue area at River View Park after Hicks, who served the city from 1994-2011. Sierra proposed the area for a memorial because Hicks was known for donating his time and talents at many community barbecue events.
Disagreement surfaced over whether to rename River View Park to Russ Hicks Memorial Park. Mayor pro tem Dave King suggested the idea because he thought focusing solely on the barbecue area would diminish Hicks’s other achievements. Later, he made a motion directing city staff to calculate the cost of renaming a park.
“Russ wasn’t just a cook. Russ did a lot for this community, and I think focusing on the barbecue area is like putting a plaque on the Potomac for George Washington,” King said. “Renaming the whole park would really honor Russ and what he did for this community. Just putting something beside the barbecue area is basically saying, ‘’This guy was a chef.’ I think it’s ridiculous.”
Hicks had also served on the city’s planning commission from 1993 to 1994. He was the city’s representative on the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments and Air Pollution Control District Board of Directors, as well as numerous other regional and state boards. He participated in school and youth recreational programs and was instrumental in approving the Avenue of Flags Beautification Project, the construction of two city parks and construction of the Buellton Recreation Center.
Councilwoman Judith Dale voted against the proposal. She and councilman Ed Andrisek said they heard from several people who knew Hicks who said he opposed renaming city property after people. “That is so against what he’d want,” Dale said before voting no.” He was a close friend and would not want this.”
Andrisek said he heard from several people close to Hicks, including former city mayor Diane Whitehair, that Hicks did not want to be recognized through the renaming of public property.
“I think it’s a Pandora’s Box that we may not want to visit,” Andrisek contended. He suggested because Hicks sat on SBCAG when the Highway 154 interchange was worked on, Sierra, the city’s current SBCAG representative, should recommend to the association that it be named after him.
Dale said the public record made it clear that Hicks disliked naming things after people and suggested a statue, plaque, or other physical memorial be built at the park or some community place in Buellton, to acknowledge his work in the city.
Sierra said while Hicks may have expressed opposition to anything being named after him, he was “always self-deprecating, always played himself down.”
Council members ultimately agreed that staff should return with suggestions for locations and monument ideas. They also wanted to ensure that Hicks’s family members had an opportunity to have a say in the matter.
In other news, councilman John Connolly, a lieutenant colonel in the California Air National Guard resumed his seat on the council after a six-month deployment in late December. He was based at Macdill Air Force Base in Florida as a logistics officer, creating plans that established airlift routes. Connolly, 47, is also an English teacher in the Santa Ynez Valley Union High School District. “I guess one needs to go away for a while to appreciate what is here,” he told the council. “We truly live in a beautiful place.”
Elovitz, art director for the Santa Barbara-based Evans, Hardy and Young advertising agency, was chosen from eight applicants in November 2011 to temporarily fill the seat held by Connolly. The Buellton resident of more than 17 years admitted the work as council member “was a lot more than I anticipated. It was definitely a learning experience.”
Among other things, Elovitz sat on the council through deliberation and adoption of the city’s visioning plan and a tough budget that saw some cuts, including the elimination of a community resource deputy position. Elovitz encouraged a special meeting in which the council examined the budget line by line. “I believe that was the first time the city council has gone over the budget in that much detail,” he said.
Elovitz doesn’t have a campaign platform, but he does have definite ideas for the city. “Economic health and quality of life are the top priorities,” he said. “And that all has to be done with public participation, and I don’t think everyone on the council agrees on how to do that.”
At a June meeting, Elovitz, joined by Andrisek, voted against shelving a plan to spend $7,900 for a single-camera operation that would have allowed the city to stream meetings over the Internet. He has also broached the idea, which has been met with little council support, of establishing a public relations office that would make it easier for residents to know what’s going on and would survey the public on the issues facing the city. “I’m not sure the public knows more about what’s going on,” Elovitz stated. He also supports an economic development plan that calls for more light industry, which produces consumer goods.
Elovitz said the city is a great location for wineries, restaurants and the attendant tourism. “Most people want to keep the quality of life we have here,” he said, “and my goal is to enhance that by thinking about and implementing smart ways of growing our local economy.”