Former Goleta Mayor and Councilmember Ed Easton passed away last week following complications from a stroke. He was 83.
Mr. Easton was born in New York and raised in Connecticut. He obtained degrees in political science and architecture from Yale University in the 1960s.
He was elected to the Goleta City Council in 2008, and served as a city leader through 2014. He served as mayor from 2011 to 2012.
“The City is saddened by former Councilmember Ed Easton’s passing earlier this week,” Kelly Hoover, city of Goleta spokeswoman, said in a statement to the News-Press. “He was always kind, supportive, and proud to serve the Goleta community. We will miss him.”
Mr. Easton also spent time working on the city’s Design Review Board and Planning Commission. In addition, he was on the board for the Gaviota Coast Conservancy.
Mr. Easton married Carolyn Williams in 1959. The couple moved to the South Coast in 2000 and settled in Goleta, according to his Wikipedia page.
Mr. Easton worked on redevelopment projects for the city of New Haven, Connecticut, after graduating from Yale in 1965. He then became an architect in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1968.
In 1971, Mr. Easton served as the Program Development Director and the Director of Regional Planning for the Centralina Council of Governments. He also worked on various wilderness campaigns and was the founder of the Central Piedmont Group of the Sierra Club in Charlotte, and became the Appalachian Regional Vice President of the Sierra Club in the later 1970s.
Mr. Easton then worked for the National Wildlife Federation and became the chief executive officer of the Institute for Conservation Leadership from 1979 to the 1990s, according to his Wikipedia page.
