Monday evening Community Center meeting boils over with controversy

The Goleta Valley Community Center was the site of passionate discourse Monday night, as growth advocates disagreed with Goletans concerned with keeping high density development away from their neighborhoods.

The crowd spilled into the center’s lobby at a hearing for the county’s planning and development division to present its proposals for the 113 acres of farmland between Goleta and Santa Barbara.

These proposals are contained in the county’s draft Housing Element, with which it is responding to a state mandate to build more homes. More than 6,000 of these have been allocated to unincorporated county land.

Area residents opposed to the county’s proposed development plan turned out en masse, with many speaking out during the two-hour public comment period.

"People are sick and tired of this kind of thing being shoved down our throat," said Cathy Mellen, a resident of Walnut Lane. "[We should] send a message to the state that we do not approve of this kind of mandate."

Ken Palley, a resident of "No-Leta," called some density a "necessary evil." But the county is giving potential residents precedence over the needs and desires of the 250,000 people who already live here, he said.

As for the predicted catastrophe resulting from teachers, firefighters and police officers finding it difficult to afford homes here: "I would like to see one example of [a city] where that dire prediction has come to pass," Palley said.

"A $1 million subsidy is not worth selling out our beautiful coastal hamlets," said Dorothy Dent. "[We’ll] never be able to house everyone who wants to be based in Santa Barbara. Otherwise, it’ll look so bad no one will want to live here anymore."

That "$1 million subsidy" is money the county will be ineligible to receive in 2004 if it does not get a housing element approved by December.

Others questioned whether infrastructure, such as roads, water supply and sewer systems, was up to the demands the county’s proposed developments would place on it.

Still other speakers called specifically for the preservation of agricultural land.

"I don’t know what the solution to this is. ... But I’m [pleading] now ... for land that is still farmable," said Sandy Lejeune, a manager of Fairview Gardens.

Residents — some of whom were chagrined at having to miss a Goleta City Council meeting scheduled at the same time — cheered and clapped for many of the speakers.

Several advocates of the county’s plans — executives, developers and people affiliated with nonprofits — voiced support, and were themselves applauded, but at the beginning were also booed. Supervising planner Lisa Plowman asked that the crowd keep it civil, and the booing stopped.

"This is a very tough issue, as is demonstrated by this meeting tonight," said Ron Werft, president and CEO of Cottage Health System. Werft spoke in support of the proposal. Many Cottage employees can’t afford housing near their workplaces, 40 candidates last year declined employment because of high housing costs, and a housing-assistance program no longer covers a substantial amount of the cost of a dwelling, he said.

Jeff Flowers said he was working with an Isla Vista teen who must consider dropping out of high school to work and help his family with rent.

"If you work here, you should be able to afford to live here,"

he said.

Two representatives of UCSB — Academic Senate chair Walter Yuen and UCSB vice-chancellor George Pernsteiner — supported the program because, they said, housing is too expensive not just for staff members but for faculty. This could jeopardize UCSB’s budding prestige, they said.

"We are losing the best. We are not getting the choicest," said Pernsteiner.

Planners say the additional housing is necessary not just because of growth.

They say that people currently pay too much, crowd into units, move out of the area and clog Highway 101 with commuter traffic, or leave altogether because housing is so expensive on the South Coast, where they work.

Their proposals call for 6,064 housing units in the unincorporated areas of the county, with 1,182 of these in the South Coast.

The draft identifies potential sites for rezoning and development. All told, the sites near Goleta — in Isla Vista and the unincorporated eastern Goleta Valley — could account for more than 2,000 units, according to planners’ "theoretical maximum" estimates.

This is in addition to the 2,388 units that the county has allocated the city of Goleta.