A Cardiff mom with a background in regional food supply issues and nonprofit organizations announced Tuesday that she’s running for the Encinitas City Council seat currently held by Joy Lyndes.

Arielle Golden, 38, is the first person to formally announce her candidacy for District 3, which covers the city’s southwestern region.

Lyndes, who has served on the council since 2021, announced early this year that she will not seek re-election to her seat in the November election.

“I see us at a fork in a road as a city,” Golden, a 13-year Encinitas resident, said as she described why she is running and listed some of the key issues that she anticipates focusing on if elected.

Her areas of interest include managing growth responsibly, increasing “more friendly, safe, transit options,” making traffic flow “more smoothly” through town, and keeping the economy thriving, she said. Her press release also mentions that she wants to take action to “protect both residents and Encinitas’s coastline in the face of an accelerating climate crisis.”

Though City Council races are technically nonpartisan, party affiliation recently has been a campaign issue. Both Lyndes and Golden are registered Democrats.

The 2024 election caused a shift in the council majority from Democrat-leaning to Republican-leaning, and Golden said Tuesday that she believes the new council majority doesn’t respect professional, expert advice the way the prior council majority did. She cited the recent controversy over an item that called for putting a skateboarding feature at Glen Park and the conflict over the planned elimination of a protected bike lane on part of Santa Fe Drive as recent items of concern.

Golden and her husband, Jordan Blimbaum — a flight test engineer who recently was appointed to the city’s Parks & Recreation Commission — have two children, ages 5 and 1. She’s been caring for them in recent years, but previously managed the nonprofit food pantry Feeding San Diego’s expansion into North County, she said.

She’s also the former chair of the North County Food Policy Council, which brings together nonprofits and municipalities to discuss food supply issues, including charitable food pantry programs and local farmers’ concerns. In that role, she also served as a regional representative for the California Food Policy Council.

As a council member, she’ll be thoughtful and calm — someone with a “very even temperament,” her neighbor and friend Emily Berliant said.

Adriana Santo Tomas, a fellow Encinitas resident who’s been in a book club with her for years and surfs with her, describes her as a “very good listener” who is great at seeing other people’s perspectives.

“She listens before she speaks,” Santo Tomas said.