January 1999
COMMUNITY AGENDA
Every Tuesday @ 9 AM
Board of Supervisors meets – on Channel 20.
Every Wednesday @ 9 AM
Planning Commission meets – on Channel 20.
January 20 – Goleta Roundtable
January 25 – Goleta Valley Land Trust meeting
January 27 – GTIP at Planning Commission
January 28 – South Coast Environmental Alliance
January 29 – PANA Board Meeting 5:30 PM
February 2 – Citizens Planning Assoc. Land Use Comm.
February 3 – Goleta Valley Chamber of Commerce 967-4618
February 10 – Capital Plan at Planning Commission
February 12 – PANA Board Meeting –noon
February 15 – SBCAG meeting FTIP approval / MTD request
February 16 – SB Shores Park @ Supervisors
February 17 – GTIP at Planning Commission
February 25 - PANA Board Meeting - noon
March 3 – Housing Element at Planning Comm.
March 10 – South Coast Subregional Plan. Comm.
March 16 – SB CO Trails Council
These dates change frequently – for the latest dates, times
and locations; or to add information -call Jack Hawxhurst
at 683-9068.
STANDING INVITATION
PANA invites all to our Board of Directors meetings. Events
have been so hectic that we have been meeting twice per month
– Noon on Friday of the 2nd week of the month, and 5:30 PM
on Thursday of the 4th week of the month, but call first in
case we change. YOU are welcome.
A BIG HUG AND A THANK YOU TO......
Doreen Farr for your leadership. The past year saw you organize
and lead PANA to become a force in the community. You got
us incorporated ready for legal action if needed. You were
an articulate spokeswoman for our neighborhood at the Board
of Supervisors and the Planning Commission. You devoted untold
hours to the community debate over Maravilla. Now you are
serving the entire community as our representative on the
County Planning Commission. We will miss you. We owe you.
Donors
Nearly 100 of your neighbors have donated to PANA in order
to finance the publishing of this newsletter and support our
efforts to provide testimony regarding neighborhood developments.
Their generosity has provided funds sufficient to meet our
budget for three fourths of this year. You are probably receiving
this newsletter because of their contribution. If you can
help, please do. We feel it prudent to anticipate legal support
in the future when projects come forward for the Albertsons
site or others. Some find it easier to contribute money while
others volunteer many, many hours of time. Both are very welcome
and much appreciated.
Volunteers
in advance. We need you. Please get involved in a particular
project or leading PANA. We have open positions on the Board
of Directors and will need Officers in the future. Whether
you wish to be in the trenches or lead we welcome you. If
you have a particular interest in traffic or parks issues,
you could birddog those. Please don’t be shy. Every one of
us sat on the sidelines for years thinking that we were alone
in our opinions, only to discover that we were in the majority.
BACKYARD ISSUES
Vons
Rumor is that VONS in the Fairview Center will undergo a
major expansion. We hear that Vons will shift into Anna’s
Bakery, Radio Shack, Italia Pizzeria, Jaspers and the two
big empty stores. Is this about a 100% increase in floor space?
This will then be about the size of the Turnpike Vons. Rite-Aid
might move to Vons current location. Wow.
Positives? This would insure that Fairview Center remains
a viable center for North Goleta. It would provide our neighborhood
with THE most modern supermarket and use existing commercial
floor space, much of which has been vacant for some time.
It would seem to end any push by Albersons to build another
NEW large supermarket at Calle Real and Patterson.
Negatives? The community would surely miss Jaspers and Anna’s
bakery a couple of our best long term fixtures and NOT chains.
We hope they will find a new home close by. Could Luckys survive?
What do we want for the Albertsons site? Orchard Park
The JM Development plan for only 20 homes on the property
between the Fire Station and Patterson may be challenged by
County planning staff. Planning staff still wants higher density
(up to 40 units) to help meet its Affordable Housing Overlay
(AHO) goals. PANA and JM Development have gone on record that
neighborhood compatibility is more important than AHO goals
on small parcels such as this 5 acre parcel. PANA will be
involved in showing the County how to reach its AHO goals
at other, more sensible, locations in Goleta, so neighborhoods
are not impacted by too-dense development on small parcels.
JM is also planning four homes on Cathedral Oaks, on the
slope just East of Patterson. This is the Koopmans lot split
of 4.8 acres and will be discussed at the February PANA Board
meeting.
Allstore
We continue to hear from neighbors how unpleasant the Allstore
facility looks at Patterson and the Northbound 101 ramps.
The landscaping is very small so it may be many years before
the entrance to our neighborhood will again be pleasant. This
project is a good example of what can happen when citizen
input is missing from discussion of policies and ordinances.
Perhaps the underlying question is the standards used by the
County Board of Architectural Review.
New on the Radar
Three new projects have come to our attention within just
the past few days. PANA will be finding out the details of
these developments as soon as possible, and will schedule
discussion at a PANA Board meeting in the near future.
The Veterans Administration is planning a project just South
of the Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital. The Cerebral Palsy
Agency is planning a 13 unit project on 2 acres between the
Goleta Presbyterian Church and the Fairview Shopping Center.
Cushman Construction is planning an expansion on Overpass
Road.
NEIGHBORHOOD TRAFFIC COP
Patterson Signals
If you like stop lights, you are going to love 1999. Starting
about March, a new light will be installed at Patterson and
University Drive. As it is completed around September, work
will begin on another at Patterson and Overpass Road, on the
other side of the freeway. It remains to be seen whether others
will follow the following year at the Post Office and entrance
to Maravilla on Calle Real.
Calle Real and Fairview
The San Jose Creek Bridge, between Kellogg and the Maravilla
site will be advertised for bids in March and widened for
four-lanes between June and November. Calle Real will be widened
to four lanes beginning in late 1999. So it seems that Calle
Real will involve flagmen from June 1999 to about June 2000
or longer as a result of Maravilla construction.
If that were not enough, the Fairview Avenue interchange
might be torn up for improvements beginning in December and
continuing until August 2000 - about the same time as Calle
Real. Cathedral Oaks may be our only way out.
All these dates are subject to change. One reason is that
bids on such projects are coming in 50% higher than budget
because all the contractors are too busy with the area developments
so infrastructure improvements to keep pace with the construction
boom are slipping. OUT OF NEIGHBORHOOD ISSUES
Airport Development
The City has plans to develop a 180,000 sf high tech facility
for Mirivant on the site of the Kinkos, north of Hollister.
The City has begun to discuss mitigating this development
by turning the old Drive-in site into an active recreation
site – suitable for soccer. This seems a particularly good
active recreation site - useful for noontime use by workers,
afternoon use by old town residents and evening use by the
entire community.
Goleta Armory LULU
The Santa Barbara School District has considered conversion
of the existing National Guard Armory on Cannon Perdido Street
to a school. This cannot happen without moving the armory
to a different site. The District owns an undeveloped site
just South of the freeway in Goleta, next door to the recently
reopened El Camino School, off San Marcos Road. We believe
the District is close to ending consideration of sending such
a LULU (Locally Unwanted Land Use) to Goleta.
The impact of the City on Goleta is one which seems to be
a high priority of many Goletans. The Airport, new train washing
station with no passenger support, an Armory, trash transfer
station, jail, car wrecking yards and similar LULUs weigh
heavily on our relationship to the City. It is partly related
to the economic concept of Highest and Best Use. As the City
converts its prime property to bars, restaurants and hotels,
it displaces garbage services, auto services, and construction
services to Goleta. If these issues are of importance to you,
please let us know.
COMMUNITY-WIDE ISSUES
PANA has written to Susan Rose, asking for her support on
a number of different issues.
We have suggested that height restrictions of 35 feet are
incompatible with many Goleta zones. Your next door neighbor
should not be allowed a three story addition.
Neighborhood Compatibility deserves increased priority in
Goleta zoning. The Maravilla, Allstore and Oak View projects
showed a common flaw in existing zoning – allowing high and
dense development right up to the property line adjacent to
existing residential neighborhoods. We favor buffers to provide
a gradual transition next to existing residential lots.
While studying traffic issues for Maravilla and Patterson
Avenue, we discovered that the entire process of planning
for Cumulative Impacts was flawed. This led to traffic predictions
for 2007 occurring NOW. We have suggested the planning process
be modified to reduce the chance of such errors in the future.
Revision of the Goleta Community Plan
The past Boards approved 10 years of Goleta commercial growth
in just 5 years by repeated exemptions in the Goleta Growth
Management Ordinance (GGMO). We argue that the EXTRA 4 MILLION
square feet of Commercial development, put in by the Supervisors
AFTER the Community Plan was developed, needs to be removed.
Instead, the Plan should identify where housing can be placed
to support all those new jobs that were created here over
the past couple years of rapid development. We need to find
the most compatible locations for Affordable Housing. And
we need to locate the 43 acres of new parks that are coming.
We are elated that supervisors Susan Rose and Gail Marshall
have both already supported revision of the Goleta Community
Plan.
Parks
As a direct result of PANA founder Beth Wood’s effort to
force the County to obey California’s AB 1600 Law, the Supervisors
raised the development fees on new housing units from $585
to $7004 with additional money targeted for Goleta Parks.
This long overdue action will provide funds to acquire 43
acres of new parks in Goleta, as well as facilities at the
new parks.
PANA is working with Citizens Planning Association (CPA)
and the developers to speed identification of park sites and
acquire the properties before they are sold for development
or escalate in price. Every acre of parks acquired for our
children to play on is an acre that does not congest our roads.
Trash
A Community Advisory Committee concluded 11 meetings of 3
½ hours each, recommending that the Board of Supervisors seriously
plan for a South Coast composting system instead of expanding
the Tajiguas Landfill in the future. Goletans Mary Hicks,
Mel Zaid, and Jonny Wallis were members of this Committee
and Jack Hawxhurst of PANA attended all the meetings.
The Tajiguas Landfill about 25 miles out the Gaviota Coast
has been the destination for all non-recycled South Coast
garbage for the past 25 years. It will fill up within the
next 2 years, so a plan for the next 25 years is pending.
It is located in a valley in the Coastal Zone above the tiny
community of Arroyo Quemada on the ocean. A creek runs through
the valley to the ocean and the Arroyo Quemada beach has been
closed due to contamination for many months.
The South Coast will spend about $1 billion on trash disposal
over the next 25 years, and the composting system could cost
as much as $100 million, so it will affect us all.
Each of us generate about a ton of trash per year. We are
not recycling as much as we could, perhaps about a third of
what we could, so we are filling up Tajiguas faster than necessary
and might even miss the State mandate of diverting 50% of
our waste from Tajiguas by 2000. The new composting system
would get the South Coast past the 50% point.
Goleta Roundtable
PANA has participated in this grassroots discussion of whether
any options for Goleta Governance might be superior to the
current status quo of rule by the County Board of Supervisors.
Representatives of almost all Goleta interests - all the neighborhood
groups, pro-annexation and pro-incorporation groups, business
interests, existing special districts and elected representatives
of the County and the City attend. The Roundtable is currently
deciding what process and organization to adopt in order to
fairly discuss the pros and cons of alternative Goleta governments.
This discussion is potentially important to each neighborhood,
because in a few short years the first US Census of the new
millennium will lead to a permanent South Coast minority on
the Board of Supervisors. The North County will govern Goleta.
Freeway Under/Over Crossings
Traffic modeling indicates that existing Goleta 101 interchanges
will severely congest in the coming years as a result of recent
Board of Supervisor approvals of new commercial development
in Goleta. The County has finally agreed to put new freeway
over-crossings in the Goleta Transportation Improvement Plan
and the Regional Transportation Plan. These would be similar
to either the State Street under-crossing or the Micheltorena
over-crossing in the City of Santa Barbara. These will be
essential to travel between North and South Goleta when the
traffic from the new construction shows up. While these under/over
crossings are planned for the distant future, they must be
in the plan before funding can be sought.
Continuing Priorities
The above issues are likely to be discussed repeatedly in
future newsletters, since they will not be resolved overnight
and affect almost all other aspects of Goleta planning. They
are 1) traffic congestion, 2)housing development (affordability,
balance with jobs, sprawl into the foothills and the Gaviota
Coast, density within the Urban Limit Line, and the whole
population growth issue), 3) development fees for infrastructure,
4) future solid waste disposal, and 5) options for Goleta
Governance.
Perhaps YOU wish to take one of these issues under your wing.
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