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SY Valley Plan to get another hearing

By Dave Bemis/Managing Editor/dbemis@syvnews.com

In a process that stretches back nearly a decade, the Santa Ynez Valley Community Plan will get at least one more hearing before it is sent to the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors for a final decision.

The plan update that is ultimately adopted will guide development in the unincorporated areas of the valley for the next 20 years.

Although a 3-2 majority of the commission indicated in a straw vote at an earlier hearing that they favored what is called the “downzone alternative,” commissioners Mike Cooney and Cecilia Brown wavered at a meeting Monday that was held at the county’s Betteravia Government Center in Santa Maria.

After six hours of discussion and public comment, the commission delayed action on the plan update to another hearing on July 15, also in Santa Maria.

Faced Monday with several land owners complaining that the downzoning as proposed was inappropriate for their particular properties, Cooney, Brown and commission Chairman Dan Blough said they wanted a report on the history of how those lots had been chosen and more information about the size and use of parcels surrounding them.

“I would like to look the people of Santa Barbara County in the eye and say I really understood why this (or that particular) site was selected,” Cooney said.

“For me, I just have additional questions, and I’m not sure about downzoning for all the parcels,” Brown said.

“I think we do need to move the plan along,” Cooney added. “For me the crying need is just more information, which we already have ... in house. Let’s just come up with a better process for educating us (commissioners) about why staff is recommending the zoning classifications you are.”

“I think it is our responsibility to take more time to look at these lots individually,” Blough said. “I don’t think we have consensus anymore to take the downzone alternative as we see it today, and if it’s not modified, it’s not going to get my support at all.”

The other two commissioners favored forwarding the plan to the supervisors but for different reasons.

Marell Brooks favored the downzone alternative, and said the commission should trust the long public process that had developed the plan, while Joe Valencia said he opposed the plan but no amount of further discussion would make a difference.

“We have property owners and people, residents of the valley, that have attended meetings for six years ... $2 million has been spent on this,” Brooks said.

“Everyone talks about, ‘We have to be fair.’ The process is what makes it fair, makes it legal, and the process has been going on for six years.”

“Downzoning” involves changing a parcel’s designation to allow less-intensive development there, and some owners of vacant land have complained that they’re being punished for not developing sooner.

If the commission adopts the downzoning alternative, the plan would increase the minimum lot sizes on 119 parcels that are along the boundary between urban areas and what the plan calls “inner rural” areas, reducing the owners’ ability to subdivide that land.

The two other options that the commission has reviewed in a series of four hearings this spring are making no zoning changes or adopting a “heritage sites” alternative that proposes preservation for some properties without the downzoning.

The heritage site alternative identifies certain “gateway” and highly visible vacant properties that would be subject to additional rules and scrutiny if anyone proposed development there.

George Lindemann, who noted that he and his brother own about 25 percent of the land that would be downzoned, said Monday that their property east of Highway 154 near Brinkerhoff Road and Roblar Avenue had already been downzoned in the late 1970s.

Even so, he added, they would accept downzoning again if the county would change the recommendation to require less severe downzoning and allow a subdivision proposal that is now before the county.

Similar complaints were lodged by representatives of the Shepherd and Mills family properties south of Highway 246 in the Janin Acres and Refugio Road area.

In contrast, valley resident and former 3rd District Supervisor Gail Marshall said any such changes would be unfair after years of public meetings by three separate community advisory bodies: the Valley Blueprint committee, General Plan Advisory Committee and Valley Plan Advisory Committee.

“I think it’s a late hit, and out of fairness to all the people who have been involved in this process, I hope you will move this plan on to the Board of Supervisors,” Marshall said.

“Please don’t at this stage in the game start changing the designation of certain properties. If you do, you’re saying to my community that you know better than we do.”

Blough’s motion to continue the meeting until Wednesday, July 15, was approved unanimously. It is scheduled for 9 a.m. in the supervisors’ hearing room of the Betteravia Government Center at 511 E. Lakeside Parkway in Santa Maria.

Derek Johnson, the county’s director of long-range planning, said the planning staff would prepare a report on how and why the sites “were identified by the GPAC and VPAC for downzoning” in anticipation of the commission taking final action July 15.

The Board of Supervisors is expected to discuss the plan in September or October.

July 3, 2009