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5. The Search for a City
By Carmen Lodise
 For
many years, Isla Vista had a community council (the Isla Vista
Community Council (IVCC), but it has never had a city council.
In the fall of 1970, community leaders began a search for an appropriate, positive, and legal framework to promote economic and political development in Isla Vista.
The Community Action Commission, a countywide anti-poverty agency,
funded a study carried out by IVCC's Economic Development Commission.
That study concluded that becoming a city was the best next step
for the community to take.
Since then, the search for an appropriate form of municipal government
for Isla Vista--thought by most residents to be an independent
City of Isla Vista--has been a consistent goal of elected community
leaders. Literally thousands of hours have been spent by IVCC
members and others for more than 15 years in the effort to get
this question on the official ballot for community residents to
vote on. Yet, 20 years after cityhood was first identified as
a logical next step in community evolution, I.V. still has no
municipal government. What's more, Isla Vistans have never had
the opportunity to vote on this issue in an official election.
Why this is so makes up much of the modern history of Isla Vista's
community development. And, it is at the center of the acrimonious
relationships both between the UCSB Administration and the community
and between the Isla Vista Association (composed mostly of resident
homeowners) and the rest of the community. It is also a major
reason for the lingering enmity among the leadership of the alliance
between Goleta's environmentalists and Isla Vista's activists--an
alliance that had dominated the Goleta Water Board (and controlled
development in both Goleta and Isla Vista) between 1972 and 1985.
It also accounts for the community's generally inadequate urban
services and excessively high rents.
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