The battle between Santa Barbara County and Montecito homeowners near the Hot Springs Trailhead erupted into full-scale legal and political warfare this week.
County Public Works Department employees placed signs at 11 properties on East Mountain Drive threatening fines and jail time if the residents do not remove rocks, boulders or other “unpermitted” obstructions — including a bank of mailboxes — in the public right of way, within 10 days. The county installed the notices on June 22.
The swift and sudden move outraged homeowners and the legal team representing them.
“It is a confiscation of my property to do something as hideous as this,” East Mountain Drive resident Barbara Matthews, who received a notice, told Noozhawk.
The Hot Springs Trailhead has been a flashpoint of tension between neighbors and the public heading up the popular trail after parking on East Mountain Drive, Riven Rock Road and other nearby streets. The county got involved with plans to create dozens of parking spaces in the East Mountain rights of way.
Homeowners challenged the project, contending the county did not properly consider the environmental and emergency evacuation impacts. On May 6, Superior Court Judge Donna Geck issued an injunction blocking the county from moving forward.
“The county’s letters violate a clear court order,” said attorney David Cousineau, a partner at Cappello & Noël LLP of Santa Barbara and who represents four of the homeowners in the litigation against the county.
“Other homeowners can keep similar encroachments in place, but these residents are threatened with potential fines, penalties and criminal prosecution because of the county’s rush to develop the Hot Springs Trailhead without a CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) analysis.”
Cousineau said he requested a judicial hearing, which is scheduled for Tuesday morning in front of Judge Thomas Anderle.
The county claims some neighborhood residents have placed no-parking signs, boulders and obstructions in the public rights of way to prevent people from parking near the trailhead.
Long a local attraction, the Hot Springs Trail and its namesake hot springs have become a social media-fueled regional destination during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The county currently provides eight parking spaces at the base of the trail on East Mountain Drive, near the top of Riven Rock Road. The demand for parking, however, is much greater, with hundreds of people driving to the area daily, and finding parking anywhere they can.
The plaintiffs — Christopher Anderson, Ross Bagdasarian, Peter Barker and James Moreley — contend the county must perform an environmental review before taking such a drastic action with its parking plans.
In issuing her injunction, Geck acknowledged that landscaping elements such as rocks and mature plants have been placed within rights of way throughout Montecito. If the East Mountain Drive parking plan moved forward, she said, the county would be selectively enforcing its power on only some parts of the public right away without determining whether a full environmental review is necessary.
County officials told Noozhawk on Friday that they did not violate any order.
“As you know, there is pending litigation regarding the county’s right to remove encroachments from the public right of way on East Mountain Drive,” public works director Scott McGolpin said, noting that the county had received multiple complaints about the obstructions and encroachments.
“With the pending litigation, the county must assert all claims it has related to its right of way in that area or risk forfeiting certain rights. To that end, the county provided notice of the unpermitted encroachments and a 10-day opportunity to cure properties …”
First District Supervisor Das Williams said “the county asks homeowners to correct violations of the public right of way all the time.”
“If it didn’t, most of your readers would have no place to park when going to the beach and no place to walk in their own neighborhoods,” he said. “Last month someone tried to build a wall in the public right of way and in another case put up no-parking signs in legal beach access spots. The county enforced in both cases.”
Williams was unequivocal.
“I find it obvious that placing large rocks to block legal parking spots is a violation that should be corrected,” he said.
Joe Cole, a private practice Montecito attorney who has represented some of the homeowners, said the county is worsening fire dangers by creating new parking spaces without environmental review.
“It’s reckless for the county to increase community fire risk to unprecedented levels with zero accountability,” he said. “Many in the area have lost fire insurance after surviving deadly fires, so the fear is palpable.
“And it’s wrong for the county to misrepresent the issue as shutting down trail use. These residents have lived and worked with hikers for more than 40 years.”
For Matthews, who owns two properties that received violation notifications, “the situation is not to be tolerated.”
The irony, she said, is that she has county permits for her encroachments into the right of way.
“There was never any suggestion from any agency that there was a problem,” Matthews said.
In the 1990s, she explained, the county granted permission for her to place boulders in the right of way and plant 20 trees to replace two that she removed. She said she never added anything to stop people from going to the trailhead.
A private company she hired said it would cost “millions of dollars” to remove the trees and boulders, including a drip line, and that the company would not do it. There’s a gas line nearby and no one would be able to park there anyway, she said.
Matthews can’t believe the county is taking this step.
“It is reprehensible,” she said.
Sharon Byrne, executive director of the Montecito Association, has fielded numerous calls about the county’s actions.
“We have been concerned about the parking overrun and the abuse of the natural landscape of the trails by over visitation in a mountainous neighborhood, in an extremely high-fire severity zone,” she said.
“The idea of jamming more people in there is the wrong idea in the event of a swiftly moving wildfire. The neighbors are blocked in. Our concern is for the safety of the community up there, and we do not feel that the county is handling this well.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at jmolina@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
