Meet the Candidates
Three names, one plan.
FOUR-YEAR TERM
Floyd E. Wicks
Water Resources Consultant
Floyd Wicks has spent his career running water and wastewater systems. He started as a laborer at an Ohio sanitary district and finished as chief executive of a water company with 700 employees, which means he has stood at both ends of a capital program: the crew that builds it and the desk that signs for it. He knows what one should cost.
Montecito voters have elected him before. He has served on the Montecito Water District Board for the past ten years, helping secure the historic 50-year agreement that brings Montecito 1,430 acre-feet a year of drought-proof water from City of Santa Barbara sources, including desalinated supply. That partnership is the proof that this kind of arrangement works. The wastewater plan is that same relationship, running the other direction.
Floyd holds an MS in Water Resources Engineering from Ohio State University and is a registered professional engineer in several states, including California. He has lived in Montecito since 1992 with his wife of 46 years, Diana (Dee Dee). Their son Brandon lives in Seattle.
He is running because you do not build a new treatment plant when a larger, more efficient regional plant already exists next door.
FOUR-YEAR TERM
Chris Francis
Financial Consultant
Chris Francis has spent his career reading contracts and pricing risk. He is Managing Partner at ORION Capital, where he advises families, corporate executives, businesses and private investors on complex financial and investment decisions, and he brings more than 25 years across investment management, real estate development and entrepreneurship. A graduate of the University of Southern California, he has spent that career doing the one thing this board is being asked to do and is not doing: putting a number on a deal before anyone signs it.
He looks at this decision the way a ratepayer does. The Montecito Sanitary District is preparing to award the largest commitment in its history, at a price nobody will name, on a contract that never went out to bid. Chris does not believe a district of roughly 3,100 households should sign that without competitive bids, and he does not think that is a controversial position.
He is running to make sure the number comes first and the signature comes second.
TWO-YEAR TERM
Ellwood "Woody" T. Barrett II
Director
Woody Barrett has served on the Montecito Sanitary District Board for eight years, elected by Montecito voters. In that time he has been the director asking the uncomfortable questions about spending priorities, including voting against a budget he believed spent money in the wrong order.
A professional geologist and small businessman, Woody has called Montecito home for more than 25 years, and the Barretts' children all went through Montecito Union School.
He is running for the two-year seat against an appointee who has never received a single vote from Montecito voters. This election is the only time ratepayers get a say in what the district does next.