For nearly 35 years, Gary Blair served as the CEO of the Santa Barbara Superior Courts where he was responsible for overseeing 300 employees across 8 sites, managing an annual budget of $32 million and administering the construction of multi-million dollar building projects until his retirement in 2013. Recently, Mr. Blair was elected to a Trustee position of the Santa Barbara County Employees Retirement System which has the responsibility of overseeing $2.8 billion in investment funds.

Mr. Blair has two daughters that currently attend Carpinteria High School. He is an active member of the CHS Boosters Club and the CHS Site Council and served on the Measure U Site Committee for CHS.

Mr. Blair received his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara where he graduated with honors and later received his master’s degree in public and social affairs. Mr. Blair’s fiscal expertise is extensive, and he is deeply committed to his role on the Measure U Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee.

Denver Compton came to the Santa Barbara area in 1981 as a captain in the U.S. Army to serve as an Assistant Professor of Military Science at UCSB (in Army ROTC), teaching military history. At the end of four years in that position, he chose to become an Army Reservist, subsequently teaching history for two years at Dos Pueblos High School and then serving initially as Director of Admissions and later as Dean of Admissions and Dean of Students at Villanova Preparatory School in Ojai. In 2001, he accepted a position as Managing Editor of Historical Abstracts with ABC-Clio in Goleta and retired in 2013.

From 1987 to 1997, Mr. Compton held a position as an Individual Mobilization Augmentee (]MA) in the Office of the Chief Army Reserve at the Pentagon, specifically as Chief Historian and later as a Congressional Action Coordination Officer, spending up to five months on active duty in a year, with the cooperation of Villanova Prep. He retired from the Army Reserve as a Lieutenant Colonel in1997.

Mr. Compton is also a veteran of the Vietnam War. During the First Gulf War (1991), he served in the Pentagon and edited/wrote the Army Reserve’s unclassified after action report for Desert Shield/Desert Storm after the conflict ended.

Denver and his wife have lived in Carpinteria for nearly 25 years.