Communities across the 2,737 square-mile county are scrambling to find appropriate areas for new growth as populations expand, in addition to searching for ways to address growing concerns about air quality and environmental protection.
No other agency or organization in the county is more fit to seek out and implement solutions to those challenges than the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments, according to a recent County Grand Jury report.
But the organization, known as SBCAG, has not done enough to focus on comprehensive regional planning, the civil jury found, and instead has focused on road projects rather than other critical issues that impact residents, such as the jobs-housing imbalance and land use planning.
“There is no existing, documented, overarching framework to guide or anchor the decision-making process,” according to the report. “In its review of SBCAG meeting videos and minutes, the jury confirmed reluctance on the part of the board to adopt a collaborative approach to countywide problems. Rather than treating issues as opportunities for collective decision-making, the typical approach has been to frame them as threats to local autonomy, particularly if the state was involved.”
Several elected officials who sit on the SBCAG board — a 13-member panel comprised of the five county supervisors and mayors from each municipality — acknowledged there is work to be done on the regional planning front.
While each member of the board undoubtedly feels strongly about the importance of maintaining local control, Second District Supervisor Janet Wolf said that shouldn’t negate the need for looking at the countywide community as a whole.
“We don’t live in a vacuum,” she said.
The board itself has acknowledged that fact on numerous occasions, according to the grand jury report, including in a 2004 study that spelled out the necessity for tools to deal with challenges that don’t follow political boundaries.
“Regrettably, SBCAG essentially shelved the report and its recommendations,” the grand jury found.
In its own set of findings and recommendations, the jury lobbied for a fully integrated regional plan and aggressive pursuit of any state funding to develop such a blueprint.
The report made sure to point out that of the 58 counties in California, Santa Barbara County was the only to decline an offer of $250,000 from the state to initiate a regional planning framework.
San Luis Obispo County, as a counterexample, accepted the funds and completed its regional plan last year — an achievement praised by the grand jury as a “collaborative effort” that provides a “framework for future planning.”
While acknowledging that the board turned away that money, First District Supervisor Salud Carbajal said the offer came on the heels of a terrible experience with the state’s mandated housing allocation.
He said the cookie-cutter approach of the state housing element is not creative or flexible with local jurisdictions, polarizes local communities and stifles the ability to perform sound land use planning.
“Because of that bad experience, SBCAG unanimously turned down the blueprint effort and funds available for such an effort. … Had it been a different environment, we would have jumped all over that opportunity,” Carbajal said, adding that the environment still remains somewhat politically charged.
“Some people feel it’s a way for the state of California to ram their mandates down our throats,” he said of efforts to establish a regional plan.
Nonetheless, he is confident that the SBCAG board is moving in the right direction, partly by approving a partnership between San Luis Obispo County’s own governmental association and areas of northern Santa Barbara County to build a blueprint for future development and planning in those regions.
State legislators also signed Senate Bill 375 into law — an effort to greenhouse gas emissions that will essentially require SBCAG to incorporate land use planning and sustainable strategies into its regional transportation plan, a requirement that local leaders have accepted.
“That’s a pretty significant step for our board,” said Jim Kemp, executive director of SBCAG. “If this had been two years ago when we were in the thick of the state housing mandate process, the board might have balked at it.”
And although the San Luis Obispo Council of Governments is taking the lead on efforts to put together a regional plan with portions of North County, Kemp said that is another example of local elected officials slowly coming around to the idea of cross-jurisdictional collaboration.
“We’re at least dipping our big toe in the water,” he said.
There’s plenty to swim around in, including one of the most contentious planning issues addressed in the grand jury report: housing.
With pressure from some to provide housing for those who work on the South Coast butting against pressure from others to keep the community’s character unchanged, the various planning agencies have created a “patchwork” of various regulations that “lack cohesion, coordination, and create the potential for urban sprawl and its consequences,” according to the report.
A principal impact of that planning approach has been increased traffic congestion as more people commute to jobs on the South Coast and live elsewhere. Commuting has increased 800 percent in the county between 1960 and 2000, according to the report, and more than 10,000 people make the daily drive from homes in the North County.
“If the increase of jobs, population and commuting continues without establishing collaborative regional planning, the quality of life in the community of Santa Barbara as we know it will deteriorate, and it will continue to have the least affordable housing in the nation,” the jury found.
While not a member of the SBCAG board, Santa Barbara Councilmember Das Williams said he is a strong advocate for any type of regional planning that will bring the jobs-housing equation back into balance, or at least tip it in the right direction.
He acknowledged that the process has been politicized in the past, particularly with the notorious north-south split dividing the county, but said he is hopeful that elected leaders will be able to create better relationships in response to the grand jury report.
“Ultimately, we should be working together to minimize development on open space and our agricultural areas, and incentivize housing that’s affordable for working people close to where they work,” Williams said. “Ultimately, that will reduce traffic and keep us strong as a community.”
And while the SBCAG board is starting to take baby steps, as Kemp termed them, toward regional planning, the executive director said the public also plays a critical role in the process.
“The community needs to support this kind of planning or it will be an uphill battle the whole way,” Kemp said.