The commission agreed to continue mulling the downzoning option at its regular July 15 hearing, which is
expected to be the final leg before the 20-year blueprint for growth management
in the unincorporated Santa Ynez Valley is sent off to the Board of
Supervisors.
At its June 3 hearing, the commission held a a straw vote, 3-2, to recommend the plan’s downzoning proposal, which would increase minimum allowable
lot sizes to 40 acres and allow less development per acre.
This vote came despite criticism by landowners that the
proposal would, among other things, subject certain properties to spot zoning,
a term generally applied to rezoning property for uses that are clearly not in
line with the surrounding area.
At the last hearing, a handful of property owners again
turned out in opposition to the downzoning proposal.
Trish Beltrano, representing
George Linemann, whose 1,000-acre property comprises
25 percent of the proposed downzoning boundary, asked
staff to keep some of his property out of ag-2 zoning, which is a county
designation for intensive agriculture.
“What you’re doing is bringing ag-2 zoning right down
into the center of Baseline Avenue and Edison Street and all these smaller
properties when you could use the ag-1 40 tool. Are you going to use a
sledgehammer, or are you going to use a hammer that’s adequate for the nail you
need to drive?”
Spot zoning
Susan Petrovich, a Santa
Barbara County land use attorney with multiple Santa Ynez clients, has been at
the forefront of bringing the complaint to the commission’s attention.
She asked the commissioners to instruct planning staff to
create a map that would show “legal lots,” which are lots within parcels that
the county assessor’s office does not track.
Downzoning
these lots, she has argued, would not advance the county’s goal of preserving
open, agricultural space because these spaces may have already been developed.
They could also impact nearby lots that are not fit for subdivision, she said.
“What is this fear of having accurate information?” she
asked the Commission. “Is it because accurate information won’t support the
assumptions people have made that these properties will somehow spread ranchettes throughout the valley?”
County staff has identified 119 parcels that would become
non-conforming. Petrovich said this number does not
represent the legal lots. To illustrate her point, she called the commission’s
attention to a map she brought showing some legal lots within the plan’s
boundary.
Highlighting one area set for downzoning,
she said: “These parcels have been zoned ag
20 for ages and for good reason.
“These parcels already have been divided consistently
with that zone district. So why rezone them? Is that to justify nabbing a
couple parcels that might be further divided?”
Fifth District Commissioner Daniel Blough,
who had voted against the downzoning option,
concurred with Petrovich.
“I do think it is spot zoning when you take an area like
they showed in the map earlier — where all the parcels are smaller — we rezone
them all and make them non-conforming so we achieve a rezone really only on one
parcel,” he said.
“I find that inordinately unfair. It’s circumventing what
we’re supposed to be doing. Our counsel says we could legally defend it in court,
but I don’t think we could ethically defend it in court.”
More study
Blough
later said he had a “hard time accepting that this is done to preserve
agriculture when the Agricultural Advisory Committee comes to this commission
and tells us that they don’t want the rezone from ag-1 to ag-2.
“They don’t want the size of the plan as large as it is.
These are the guys that are supposed to be the professional ag people telling us what policies we should be
implementing in order to preserve agriculture.”
Blough
said he was in favor of zoning reform and asked staff to purge the system of
potential spot zoning by doing a more thorough study of parcels under the plan.
Deputy Director for County Planning Derek Johnson said
the county is not equipped to do a study of that size, but agreed to address Lindemann and other disconcerted landowners at the
commission’s next hearing.
First District Commissioner C. Michael Cooney took issue
with language in the staff report that said the county “shall ensure the confidentiality
of information regarding traditional cultural, historical and spiritual
properties shared by the Tribe.”
He cautioned that this language could hamper the county’s
ability to discuss with or to hear testimony from the Santa Ynez Band of
Chumash Indians about topics of public interest, such as tribal expansion.
Staff agreed to narrow the meaning of information to the location of relics.
Valley resident Doug Hertel
accused the tribe of operating under a veil of secrecy and warned that it may
target people who oppose their efforts by bringing out archeologists to claim
that their property had relics.
Freddie Romero, cultural preservation specialist for the
tribe and for the tribe’s Elder’s Council, denied Hertel’s
claims and added: “We don’t want to tell you what to do with your land; we just
want to help protect what is there.
“And sometimes it gets destroyed because somebody didn’t
want to take the time to do this study on behalf of this culture.”
Other issues
Also at issue was the Santa Ynez River Trail, which was
taken out of the Valley Plan after facing opposition from landowners concerned
about trash, vandalism, trespassing and its impact on wildlife corridors, as
well as ranchers elsewhere in the valley who fear future trails near their
property.
The staff report reads, “A new action item (should) be
added to the (plan) supporting development of a trail along the Santa Ynez
River.”
Johnson told the Journal that the trail would not be put
back into the plan, but added that staff would be “investigating to look at
trails in the future.”
Laurie Tamura, principal planner and president of Urban
Planning Concepts, Inc, took issue with an added provision that would preclude
new driveways from being constructed along highways 246 and 154.
“Those need to be looked at from a parcel-by-parcel
basis,” she said.
Staff agreed to change the language so that the
feasibility of removing driveways could be addressed.
She also said another provision requiring new developments
along Highway 246, between Meadowvale Road and Cuesta
Street, and along Highway 154, between Foxen Canyon
Road and Alamo Pintado Avenue in Los Olivos, to be set back a minimum of 35 feet from the edge
of the highway right-of-way.
“To have that huge of a setback on those kinds of
properties is going to most likely not going to get the properties built,” she
said.
Reach Jeremy Foster at
jfoster@syvjournal.com.