The 2020 City Council Live Debate forum was a unique opportunity for Lompoc residents to see their candidates live, during a year that has been anything but traditional!

Osborne

I have a vision for a better community. It will take money, which obviously is taxes but I would spend it on Police, Fire, Parks, fixing the homeless, and anything else that we can think of. We should all come together with my vision, and remove the existing majority that was put in place by a group of older community members that want control. The new blood is me, Cordova, and Ball, who are supported by staff. We should have used the sales tax for other items not to pay off our debt so aggressively. I do not want to defund the police, I want to remove tasks that the police do so that funding can be better used, such as safe housing for the homeless and better support to those in our community with mental challenges. I challenge all of you to help me even if it means picking up trash on your daily walks

Vega

I grew up in Lompoc. I have Lompoc in my heart. I am not making grandsons promises because I am busy working on fixing city staff and helping others during these really tough times. It is time to make the city staff more responsive to the citizenry and stop finding legal ways to say no. We need to significantly improve the business environment which will raise the goodness for all of us as a result of more jobs. I want to represent you, just come and talk to me so we can determine what needs to be fixed.

Ball

I have a better approach. These guys have messed up our city (except Osborne). They should have taxed us sooner and we should tax businesses more, particularly cannabis. Cannabis manufacturers are robbing the city of adequate funding. If we had more taxes earlier then Santa Maria would not have taken all our police. If we had more taxes earlier, we could have better maintained our parks. If we had more taxes sooner all our problems would have gone away. All of this is because of my opponent. I am an inclusive leader and will listen to all of you so we can better define how we spend our taxes.

Mosby

Some people are not being straight with you. Police are funded, they just have not been able to fill slots. We need to be responsible. Don’t let them scare you out of your money. We did not need a 90-Million-dollar fire building. People don’t appreciate me because I ask the hard questions. Look at my graphs, I am the only one here that understands this stuff. Things are just not as bad as some people say. We have more businesses (cannabis) let’s not drive them away now. We are in a better position than all the doomsayers are saying. Our enterprise systems all have reserves and are healthy. Our per capita is up. We have a tough situation with Covid, but if we stick to the plan, we will see results soon.