Height Limits Ordinance

[ Prior to the City Council meeting of April 22, 2008, Das wrote to SantaBarbarasBlog the following: ]


“First, the discussion tonight would not be whether to adopt the draft interim ordinance that was drawn up by Bill Mahan, Sheila Lodge, Brian Cearnal, and myself (with help from 20-30 members of each group), but whether or not to have a process at Ordinance Committee by which the public can give us some input and we can decide whether or not to have an interim ordinance at all,” Das told the Blog.

“The origin of this is that former Mayor Sheila Lodge and I both started showing up to groups, her to support the Mahan heights initiative and me to oppose it. Sheila is one of my heroes and one of the people whose example got me into politics and we concluded that it was quite foolish for us to be fighting when we agree that:

1. The issue of size, bulk, and scale must be addressed
2. That we need to assure that we can still build affordable and workforce housing
3. We need to assure that red-tile rooftops, screened solar panels, and other good architectural elements are not dis-incentivized by this effort
4. We need to ensure that the massing of buildings gets smaller as the building rises
5. We need to address the setback and open space issue for mixed use buildings
6. That it would be better if we had environmental review on any proposed change to the charter

"Mahan’s 40′ limit initiative would only address the first of these issues. It ignores the others because citizen-based initiatives do not cover multiple topics. That is why the idea of an interim ordinance, perhaps placed on the charter INSTEAD of the 40′ limit, is a better way to go.

"This draft proposal has a 40′ limit, but one in which the roof does not count so that we still have red-tiled roofs instead of flat roofs, an incentive of 12 more feet if there is 30% or more affordable housing, and it makes setback and open space requirements. The only downside, from my perspective, is if we do place this on the ballot, we are making decisions for future generations, who may have other needs.

Now I’m not even saying that this one must be adopted as is. There should be an open and transparent process in the City to wrestle with these issues and one that is part of the General Plan process, but unless the Council forwards this onto the Ordinance committee tonight, there is unlikely to be that kind of discussion in which anyone can take part, except I suppose on the Blog.” - Das Williams