The long awaited Fire Station 10 in Goleta still has a long way to go before it’s up and running, but city officials say they are looking for ways to move the project along. 

The city is in discussions with the Santa Barbara County Fire Protection District over how the project will get funded, and Assistant City Manager Jaime Valdez said officials are even considering changing designs to make the project less expensive.

“We’re looking at different alternatives in terms of funding,” Valdez said. “Possibly even looking at station design changes to accommodate a smaller footprint or a less expensive building, but we’re not there yet where we can abandon the discussion that we don’t have enough funding to get there as of today.”

The discussion of Fire Station 10 came out of Tuesday’s Capital Improvement Program (CIP) preliminary budget workshop at the Goleta City Council meeting. The workshop allowed the council to discuss long- and short-term city projects and review the operating budget for the next two fiscal years. 

At Tuesday’s meeting, city staff recommended that they move Fire Station 10 from the five-year CIP list to the long-range CIP list.

Valdez said the city currently doesn’t have enough money to move forward on the project, but they are working with the Santa Barbara County Fire Protection District to look for other ways to move forward and get funding. 

Councilmembers Stuart Kasdin and Luz Reyes-Martin said they didn’t want to move Fire Station 10 off the five-year list because staff is actively working on it. 

Councilmember James Kyriaco said it was important to show the county that the project is still a major priority for the city.

“We’re in conversations with the county on a variety of fronts, and I just don’t want the county to get the impression that that’s not an important enough project to us or that’s not something we’re really looking to do in the near term,” Kyriaco said. “It’s something that needed to happen in the 60s and 70s, not the 2025s. Anything that we can do to keep that in front of the county fire district and the supervisors is something that’s critical.”

For years a sign has stood on Hollister Avenue in Western Goleta promising a future firehouse to improve fire protection and related emergency services to the Ellwood and El Encanto Heights neighborhoods — as well as much of the Gaviota Coast beyond the city.

City staff also introduced a new “must do” project to the five-year CIP list. The city recently learned it will have to take on repairing a wing wall culvert near the corner of Cathedral Oaks and Glen Annie, which is estimated to cost $5.5 million.

A culvert is a structure that allows water to pass through under a road or railway, and the wing walls help to guide the water into the culvert, reducing soil erosion. 

Autumn Glaser, assistant public works director, told the council that one of the wing walls fell over during winter 2022 storms. The city didn’t pursue emergency funding because the county began working on it. However, late last year they handed the project back to the city because the culvert is city owned.

Without the wing wall, the roadway is at risk, according to Glaser. The project will be for the city staff to design a new wall and understand what it will take to replace it.

The final budget recommendation and five-year CIP list will be presented to the city council on June 17.