The Isla Vista Community Services District consulted on reallocating the funds to their programs after receiving an update on UC Santa Barbara’s contribution to the district at their April 29 meeting.
UCSB renewed its $200,000 per year commitment to IVCSD for another seven years. Nexus file photo
The meeting began with General Manager of Isla Vista Community Services District (IVCSD) Jonathan Abboud explaining that in 2015, then-Assemblymember Das Williams negotiated a deal with UCSB to provide $200,000 every year for the next seven years to the IVCSD. This initial contribution ended in March 2024, and IVCSD has since been aiming to resolve in line with their annual budget process.
The 2024-2025 budget was approved with a projection of an annual $440,000 pegged to the costs of IVCSD’s interpersonal violence investigator, safety stations, the fall and spring festivals and its move-out program. In March, Chancellor Henry T. Yang communicated to IVCSD President Spencer Brandt that UCSB would renew its $200,000 per year commitment to IVCSD for another seven years.
Abboud said he was looking to the board on how to allocate the $200,000, considering that they potentially “won’t be able to afford” certain programs.
“We did think that it’s our fiduciary duty to report to the board that at this point we don’t have the revenues to pay for the expenditures we had planned, and we do need direction on how to go forward with that because at this point we’d be spending reserves which does take a vote of the board to spend,” Abboud said.
IVCSD’s 2024-25 budget included $210,000 on the Interpersonal Violence Investigator, $100,000 for three safety stations, $110,000 for the fall and spring festivals and $20,700 for the move-out program.
IVCSD Board Director Edward Pilotte said its Interpersonal Violence Investigator may have to take the brunt of the budget cuts due to the lack of activity.
“The Interpersonal Violence Investigator hasn’t panned out the way we thought it would,” Pilotte said. “It seems that it hasn’t really done anything so far and the job it would be doing is already being done by the sheriff’s department … Considering that’s also $200,000, which is the missing balance, it seems like that might be the first place to look to cut.”
Brandt responded by clarifying that the original intent was to create a law enforcement that could be “the point of contact for all sexual violence cases” in Isla Vista and confirmed they may need to do a program review considering its high cost.
Board Director Kylan Hobart said if the IVCSD were to reduce funding to the Interpersonal Violence Investigator, they should commit themselves to “other ways of supporting people.”
“I don’t really like the idea of trying to pull [the Interpersonal Violence Investigator] and then kind of just tossing it to the side and only focusing on these other things. I think that there is value to the idea behind it,” Hobart said.
Brandt said that eventually the board will have a program review with the University of California Police Department to report on the results of the program within the past year, as well as discuss if other resources are fulfilling the needs this program is trying to fill.
“This is a really critical service and we need to have our arms around what exactly is going on, is this service being provided, are we just spending money that is covering something that otherwise would already be done with existing resources?” Brandt said. “It seems like we do have a lot of concern here and especially since this partnership with UCSB where they give us money and we give them money, the balance has fallen out of it.”
To avoid interruption of any services, Brandt said he’s “supportive” of utilizing IVCSD’s fund balance to cover the remaining costs which won’t be covered by the University.
The board decided to pass a motion to authorize $187,000 in fund balance to cover the shortcomings of this year’s budget, with plans to further reduce the amount in the future.
A version of this article appeared on p. 4 of the May 8, 2025 print edition of the Daily Nexus.
