In a unanimous vote, the Santa Barbara LAFCO board on Thursday denied a bid to extend the city of Santa Barbara’s Sphere of Influence over the eastern Goleta Valley.
The petition, a four-year project spearheaded by a citizens group called Committee for One, and supported by the city of Santa Barbara, was aimed at simultaneously aligning the unincorporated area with Santa Barbara and avoiding a potential annexation of the area by the city of Goleta.
“A Sphere of Influence indicates a future plan to annex, and eventually that is what will happen,” said Peg Hamister, co-chair of Committee for One. “However it is obvious that the Sphere will offer protection against an intrusion by the city of Goleta to extend its Sphere to include the unincorporated area that three times previously refused to join in the making of the city of Goleta.”
But, despite the push by the citizens group and urgings by Santa Barbara city officials to extend Santa Barbara’s Sphere, LAFCO sided with its Executive Officer Bob Braitman’s recommendation to deny the request and tie any future SOI expansion requests in the area with a concurrent annexation application.
The decision to deny was made after almost two hours of public comment: Residents, citizens groups, local government officials all approached the podium to give varying opinions of what the LAFCO board should do with the unincorporated area between Santa Barbara and Goleta.
Both Santa Barbara and Goleta were represented at the hearing, with Santa Barbara Mayor Marty Blum and council member Das Williams there to persuade LAFCO to extend the Sphere boundaries and Goleta City Council member Michael Bennett there to push for a cooling-off period.
“We ask that you not hem us in,” said Bennett, pointing out Goleta’s new General Plan, still in refinement stages, and UCSB’s Long Range Development Plan, which could potentially change planning rules for both cities and the county.
The concept of inclusion in a SOI also caused concern among the mobile homeowners of the area, who feared that eventual annexation would be the end of their county-administered rent control and who turned out to make sure the panel’s decision would keep them out of any city’s Sphere of Influence.
“We believe mobile homeowners would be safer in every respect to remain under the county,” said Rancho Mobile Home resident Ellie Logan. Both Committee for One and Santa Barbara had excluded the five mobile home parks in the eastern Goleta Valley in their plans for an expanded SOI.{mospagebreak}
Another group of citizens spoke at that hearing, residents of the unincorporated area who wished to remain under county jurisdiction and were against inclusion in any Sphere of Influence, and participants in a process that put together a visioning document that the county is now using as part of its community plan update.
“During the entire process of the (Goleta Visioning Committee), not one citizen ever gave testimony to the committee that they wanted to be under a Sphere or be annexed to either the city of Santa Barbara or the city of Goleta” said Gary Earle, GVC member.
It is necessary in this site, said Braitman, to tie any future Sphere of Influence and the annexation process together, to avoid situations where an area was placed within a city’s SOI with no foreseeable plans to annex. A concurrent annexation plan, complete with property tax exchange agreement, would put in the residents’ hands the final decision whether or not to align with any city’s SOI.
A planning conundrum already exists in that area, with the city of Santa Barbara having amended its General Plan to include the eastern Goleta Valley and the county of Santa Barbara embarking on its community plan update for the same area.
I want us to have an opportunity to develop as we see fit and within the parameters that have been set for us so that we can be proud of our own community,” said 2nd District Supervisor Janet Wolf, whose jurisdiction includes the unincorporated area.