Surfer, UC Santa Barbara alum, library technician and the Isla Vista Community Services Board Director and foremost President Marcos Aguilar spent the last four years devoted to Isla Vista, where he saw the government transformed by COVID-19 in 2020, to coming back stronger in increased staff numbers and services at the end of his term.
Former IVCSD president and director Marcos Aguilar reflects on the last four years in office. Courtesy of Marcos Aguilar
Aguilar led the district in prioritizing collaboration and fostering community in Isla Vista. During his time on the board, he oversaw the expansion of staff, getting a consistent lieutenant working at Isla Vista Foot Patrol and onboarding more women within the board of directors.
Before serving the district, Aguilar graduated from UCSB in 2014 with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and English and stayed in Isla Vista. Fresh with post-graduate “burnout,” Aguilar held off on his plans for graduate school and couch-surfed between friends for a few months while working several part-time jobs. In 2016, he landed a job with the UCSB Library, where he had previously worked as a student, and later as the diversity and engagement assistant since 2019.
Aguilar expressed that his love for Isla Vista was strengthened by the friends he made through surfing. He said they taught him about respecting the community, earth and sustainable practices.
“I had a really strong sense of what I valued about this community and what the [surfing] community had taught me, and those were the factors that I returned to each time,” he said.
In 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic took hold of the world and the streets of Isla Vista emptied, Aguilar took a seat on the board as a director. He was convinced to take a chance with the Isla Vista Community Services District (IVCSD) after a run-in with then-President Ethan Bertrand and long-time Director Spencer Brandt at Dublin’s Sports Grill.
“Ethan pulled me into the conversation and was like, ‘You lived here for a long time, what are the things you love about Isla Vista?’ And I went on a tangent rant and just said how great it was and how special it was to me. And they were like, ‘Wow, this guy’s got to be a part of it,’” Aguilar said. Bertrand asked him a week later to join the board.
When he entered the college town’s government in 2020, it had been four years since its formal establishment in 2016. While those start-up challenges were still present, the onset of the pandemic was the government’s foremost concern.
“That first year, the hard part was learning just the tradition of the way that their meetings were held, and also having the stamina to stay in a conversation in a meeting for those years [that] were like three or four hours on average,” he said.
Aguilar said he initially felt unequipped to serve in government. Without a background in government, he expressed that he found it difficult at first to understand the speaking order during meetings and government terminology. He was told his inexperience “wasn’t a factor” in why he was encouraged to run by other directors.
“The factor is, can you listen and represent your community, the constituents of Isla Vista,” Aguilar said.
While on the IVCSD’s policy committee, he oversaw updating the rules as the government grew the number of its employees, from two core employees, the general manager and assistant general manager, to eight core leadership positions that supervise two to 10 student employees.
Those expansions included the Isla Vista Compost Collective (IVCC), Isla Vista Beautiful and the Rental Housing Mediation Program, among others.
Serving as the diversity and engagement chair of UCSB’s library taught him about accessible communication. In library science, accessibility is emphasized so people are not left behind, he said.
“I think that a lot of residents feel safer here in the three different forms of community that I intersected in [Isla Vista, IVCSD and UCSB] — to be themselves and to speak their mind and to make requests for their needs, make requests for their preferences. So as a board member and at [IV]CSD, it rarely was a challenge to be inclusive,” Aguilar said.
He emphasized the importance of diversity on the board of directors, specifically getting more women to run for director roles.
“It’s important also for our board to have those perspectives, in [a] diverse age range, but also diverse gender experience on the board. So for me, that was actually a challenge, how do I go out and get that perspective from community members, or encourage those community members to run for office?” he said.
Over his time on the board, more women were appointed directors. From 2016, only one director was a woman, but the number has grown steadily to approximately three female directors out of eight each year. Only one female director, Carrie Topliffe, has stayed on the board for nearly four years while directors Brandt and Jay Freeman have stayed since its establishment.
Aguilar also served on the parking committee, where the IVCSD undertook one of its biggest projects yet — the active mobility transportation project. After five years of planning and procuring the funding for the project, the IVCSD released a formalized plan in May last year addressing mobility and transportation.
“We now have accurate information to say that Isla Vista is over-parked. Before, we didn’t have that information, so we’re taking baby steps,” he said.
Aguilar remarked on how Isla Vista has transformed from his time as a student to joining the board. There was “nowhere near the amount of cars” as there are now in Isla Vista.
“When I first moved to Isla Vista in 2010 it was dramatic that there was nowhere near the amount of cars just present in the square box of Isla Vista that there are now. You could always find a place to park. You had to ask friends for a car ride to go somewhere or be familiar with the MTD bus schedule,” Aguilar said.
In his final year, he led the IVCSD as president. He said during this time he had to be a representative for the IVCSD and get out of his comfort zone to form relationships with people in the county and otherwise outside of Isla Vista.
“In order to make those relationships with folks outside, someone like me has to leave their bubble and go and understand that person and their needs in that different district. And how can serving Isla Vista maybe benefit that other district that takes a lot of strategic thought,” Aguilar said. “I learned a lot about that way of thinking from my fellow board members.”
He also oversaw the first year IVCSD experienced a budget shortfall. Instead of slashing programs outright, the government reduced funding for nearly all programs, including the IVCC and Isla Vista Beautiful, among others. One of the most substantial changes for I.V. residents was instituting costs to rent the Isla Vista Community Center.
“That’s one of the biggest benefits of CSD being a smaller government, is that we can make faster change, and the people who work for us and the people who run for office are committed to being able to make a faster change,” he said.
As he bids farewell to the IVCSD and plans to move out of Isla Vista within the next year, he expressed hope the housing situation within Isla Vista will improve, including the availability of housing and landlord-tenant relations.
“There’s an argument to say that landlords are trying to provide the resource that people want from them,” he said. “But I do think that they take advantage of the fact that so many of their renters are young people; so many of their renters are people who are not only spending their own individual money but spending money from maybe their parents or their family or from a student loan.”
UCSB will have a new chancellor next year, which can influence what the IVCSD is capable of through its campus partnership. Between the county and campus, the campus is IVCSD’s weaker relationship, he said.
Aguilar plans to stay in Isla Vista until the end of his lease and continue his work at the UCSB Library as its research and integration assistant.
“Isla Vista is my favorite place on this planet, and because of things like surfing and other friendships that still exist with people who live here, I always plan on coming here,” he said.
A version of this article appeared on p. 5 of the Feb. 20, 2025 edition of the Daily Nexus.
