The possible expansion of Santa Maria’s boundaries as the city plans for thousands of new residents and jobs is likely to require annexing agricultural land, a step not necessarily popular, according to City Council members.
On Tuesday night, the City Council received an informational report on the first phase of updating the Santa Maria General Plan, a blueprint for guiding development by deciding land use, economic development, quality of life and other issues.
But a future step — choosing where and how the city should grow and hurdles it might face — prompted some blunt discussions about the options for growth.
Growth can be accomplished through infill development, increasing the density of developments, extending the boundaries or some combination of the options, according to Community Development Director Chuen Ng.
Santa Maria needs to plan for 35,000 to 40,000 new residents and 10,000 new jobs through 2045, according to estimates from the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments.
Councilwoman Etta Waterfield urged city leaders to start talking about annexation ideas now since the process will take time to complete.
“I’ve been told that there may well be some form of organized resistance in the South County to our annexing the land around us,” Councilman Michael Moats said. “We may decide in our General Plan we want to annex a whole bunch of land to the east, and we may not be able to.”
Any land annexation must be approved by the Local Agency Formation Commission and the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors.
“You know, the Board of Supervisors is interested in keeping power in the South Coast,” Moats said, noting that the projected growth eyed for the North County could push the city’s population to 150,000. “That would overwhelm the South Coast. They don’t want to do that, so I consider South Coast politicians a threat.”
Councilwoman Gloria Soto said the city needs to take care that any future growth is sustainable and won’t affect the level of services to existing residents. That includes increasing revenue so that the city can provide additional services needed because of growth.
Councilman Mike Cordero agreed that annexations are likely to encounter resistance.
“I think those of that have been around awhile realize that,” he added.
The property east of the city is prime agricultural land, creating some added issues that the city could face, he said.
“We’ve got a lot of challenges ahead of us in the next several years. The next 10 years are going to be vey interesting for this council in how to meet these growth needs in a sensible way,” Cordero added.
Mayor Alice Patino recalled a predecessor saying that the city should have started annexing land years ago “because we are going to grow.”
“Santa Barbara doesn’t want to grow, and I just don’t know how we can grow without annexations because I don’t want to see us stacking and packing people and warehousing people,” Patino said.
Efforts to update the General Plan began late in 2019, with the hiring of consultant Raimi & Associates, Ng said.
The updated General Plan is expected to be completed by winter 2023.
“A good General Plan must reflect the vision and value and aspirations of a community,” Ron Whitmore of Raimi & Associates said. “If we’re truly successful by the end of the process, the community will feel a very strong sense of ownership.”
The process requires building a consensus about the city’s future direction, and key decisions are needed regarding growth and character, according to Whitmore.
The update has completed the first of five phases, with the next step involving the creation of guiding principles that will serve as the foundation for moving forward.
“Fundamental to all of this is active community engagement during each phase of the project,” Whitmore said, adding that the council will make the policy decisions.
The first phase has included outreach and engagement in addition to creating websites, available in English by clicking here and in Spanish by clicking here, along with forming partnerships to reach various sectors of the community.
Plans next call for a community workshop and survey in November to gather data about priorities that will lead to creation of the guiding principles, Whitmore said.
“I think it is a great exercise and a very exciting exercise to go through,” Patino said.
— Noozhawk North County editor Janene Scully can be reached at jscully@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.