To our neighbors on Alan Road, Wade Court, Solana Court and Vista Del Mar Drive:
By now you have received a mailing from the Yes on Y Campaign, asking you to vote yes on Measure Y in June. We would like to add our voice to the yes side of the ledger on this important ballot measure and tell you why it is so important for our neighborhood.
While this election is a citywide election, its outcome will have a significant impact on our little, self-contained neighborhood. The passing of Measure Y will ensure that Alan Road provides access to only three of the planned 24 homes that will make up the Veronica Meadows neighborhood. If Measure Y does not pass, it will once again open the possibility that the developer will return to the city and request permission to build the development with the access being Alan Road.
Many of you will remember that a few years ago, the Santa Barbara City Council turned down the proposed bridge and suggested access via Alan Road. Many of us mounted a full-blown campaign with ads in local newspapers, emails to the mayor and City Council members, and circulated petitions to gain reconsideration of the bridge. At the City Council meeting, we packed the seats and prevailed, and the bridge was restored to the plan!
The city, once again, approved the bridge but it was taken to court by people who don’t even live in our neighborhood and who are more concerned with issues beyond the impact on our neighborhood. The result was that in order to build the bridge, a very small portion of it would have to be located on vacant and unused city park property, and thus the court ruled that the decision must be left up to the voters.
None of those who filed this lawsuit live in our neighborhood; none of them wait at the intersection of Alan Road and Cliff Drive to get out of the neighborhood, and none of them would have to wait longer if the only access to this development was via Alan Road. And none of them will have to worry about evacuating the neighborhood in times of emergency.
Yet they won the court case. So now we are faced with having to fight this battle once again. It is not fair to our neighborhood nor is it fair to the developer, who has spent more than 10 years in the process working closely with our neighborhood and has offered to restore the creek, restore city-owned land for park use, provide safe access to the beach, and has set aside 44 acres of the property as permanent open space land.
We are asking that you not only vote yes on Measure Y, but that you urge your neighbors, relatives, friends and colleagues in the city to do the same.
We need a yes vote on this measure. If it passes, we will have saved our neighborhood once again; if it fails, we will end up having to accept that Alan Road will become much busier, our kids will not be as safe on our roads, and we will have to wait even longer to get on to Cliff Drive.
Please join us in helping pass Measure Y. Our neighborhood will change forever if it does not pass.
Andy and Linda Seybold
Santa Barbara