LP Valley Development Impacts

[Commentary by Paul Relis, SBN-P, 3/1/2005]:

Las Positas Valley and impacts of growth

COMMENTARY: Paul Relis

3/1/05


In 1974 the Santa Barbara City Council commissioned a study to help Santa Barbarans wrestle with the question of how big Santa Barbara should be. The study was called "Santa Barbara: The Impacts of Growth."

I was one of its co-authors.

"The Impacts of Growth" began with an observation about Santa Barbara's place in California and American urban history:

"There is an increasing appreciation among urban Americans of the fact that, however warranted it might be on some grounds, continuous metropolitan growth carries with it certain obvious costs to the quality of life. In no American city is this appreciation more strongly present than in Santa Barbara. This city is in the process of asserting its traditional role as a community which attempts to take control of its own destiny."

The exhaustive, nearly 1,000-page study provided much of the analysis the council and the community used to reject what appeared to be an inexorable growth machine that was marching up the coast of California. With popular, though by no means unanimous, support, the City Council courageously proceeded to down zone the residential density of the community by nearly half to allow for a build-out population of about 85,000 people. That decision was a monumental one for the community and has guided the city's land use ever since.

Now, 30 years later, a proposal is coming before the City Council that is shockingly out of step with the view that Santa Barbara should try to live within its resources and retain its quality of life.

The proposal I'm referring to is the Veronica Meadows Project. The proposed project is targeted for the relatively unspoiled riparian zone of the Las Positas corridor. To be realized, the project requires the rezoning of three parcels that then would be annexed to the city, not to mention the grading of steep slopes. With the rezoning and annexation, the developer could build 24 single-family homes. Access to the development would require an easement over city land and a bridge over Arroyo Burro Creek.

According to the city's environmental analysis, the project will cause unavoidable impacts to the riparian zone and exacerbate gridlock traffic conditions that cannot be mitigated.

There are, under very special circumstances, reasons for approving projects that increase the density of land in Santa Barbara to meet critical needs in our community such as health care, affordable housing, education or public safety. Twenty-four market rate housing units on pristine land not zoned for this purpose located next to a creek in need of protection is clearly not such a special circumstance.

-- Paul Relis lives in Santa Barbara.

[SBN-P Online Edition: Las Positas Valley and impacts of growth]