TGO #34: Goleta Election Updates

— The Goodland Outlook, Edition 34 — November 4, 2016

 Foreword:

This edition has two VERY time-sensitive items:

1. UPDATES ON ELECTIONS AFFECTING GOLETA

* Breaking News: Kyle Richards and Stuart Kasdin Endorse Each Other for Goleta City Council (see their press release below)

Important “Follow the Money” and other updates on ballot items affecting Goleta on the November 8 ballot:

  • Two Goleta City Council seats
  • A measure that would change the way Goleta selects its mayor
  • The 3rd District County Supervisor who represents a large part of Goleta
  • The Goleta Water District

    2.  RANCHO GOLETA MOBILE PARK FIRE ROAD PROPOSAL

An important EIR hearing on this proposal will take place at Goleta City Hall on November 9 at 5:30 PM. Please consider attending or sending comments via email.

Just a few of the many objections raised by the Santa Barbara Audubon society are listed here, with more details provided further below.

  • The proposed project violates Goleta’s carefully crafted General Plan and would violate many California Coastal Act and Goleta General Plan/CLUP provisions.
  • The current trail adjacent to Devereux Creek from Coronado Drive to the southern end of the mobile home park is heavily used by walkers, joggers, birders, and bicyclists.
  • The project proposes to remove native trees in this riparian corridor, including five arroyo willows, one western sycamore, and four live oaks.
  • The DEIR’s analysis of impacts on birds and wildlife is inadequate.

More details on these and other objections from the Santa Barbara Audubon Society are listed below.

Please take a moment to review this important information.


Details:

  1. UPDATES ON ELECTIONS AFFECTING GOLETA

BREAKING NEWS, PRESS RELEASE: Candidates Kyle Richards and Stuart Kasdin Endorse Each Other for Goleta City Council

Today, Goleta City Council Candidates Kyle Richards and Stuart Kasdin announced that they are endorsing each other’s candidacies. They said that as their respective campaigns progressed, they found that they agree on many issues, especially citing the need to rein in Goleta’s over-development and resulting impacts. They also cited the fact that they have been endorsed by many of the same community organizations, including: Sierra Club, Democratic Party, Tri-Counties Central Labor Council, Santa Barbara Women’s Political Committee, The Goodland Coalition, and others.

Richards said, “I am confident Stuart Kasdin will be a voice for slow, carefully-managed growth and living within our resources. I’m impressed by Stuart’s experience with community and economic development, and his background in public policy will bring fresh ideas to the council and promote a more efficient city government.”

“It is critical that Goleta voters elect two candidates who will bring change, not more of the same in this election,” said Kasdin. “I am supporting Kyle Richards as a common sense candidate who I can partner with on the council. We are the two candidates most committed to making sure future development doesn’t further erode the key services and resources residents expect such as water, public safety, libraries, and road capacity.”

Richards concluded, “Stuart and I agree that this election is really a referendum on Goleta’s growth policies. We are committed to returning to the vision in Goleta’s General Plan, protecting Goleta’s neighborhoods and resources.”

[END OF PRESS RELEASE]


As you may recall, The Goodland Coalition has made several endorsements in races directly affecting our city. One of the races is for Goleta City Council.

The Goodland Coalition strongly endorses Stuart Kasdin and Kyle Richards for Goleta City Council.

They are committed to reining in Goleta’s rapid pace of growth and preserving and protecting water supply, roads, views, libraries and other key services and resources.

The incumbent candidate is Tony Vallejo who votes with the council majority that approved virtually all of Goleta’s recent development. To “Follow the Money,” a who’s-who of realtor and development interests supporting Vallejo, click here  http://tinyurl.com/hbn9bso

For an entertaining video, see http://tinyurl.com/jr3opn2


Other key Goodland Coalition endorsements include:

  • Goleta’s proposed Measure C2016 for an elected Goleta Mayor (C2016): Vote NO. For a great article about this measure, click on http://tinyurl.com/zc2fxcx
  • 3rd District County Supervisor: Joan Hartmann – To “Follow the Money” of her opponent’s big oil and developer supporters, click here  http://tinyurl.com/jeyalj7
  • Goleta Water District Board: Lauren Hanson, Rick Merrifield, Bill Rosen


    2.  RANCHO GOLETA MOBILE PARK FIRE ROAD PROPOSAL

  • An important EIR hearing on this proposal will take place at Goleta City Hall on November 9 at 5:30 PM. Please consider attending or sending comments via email.Details of the ideas and objections raised by the Santa Barbara Audubon society are listed below.[From the Santa Barbara Audubon Society]Dear Friends,

    The City of Goleta has proposed a project called the Rancho Goleta Mobile Home Park Fire Improvements Project that would damage the environment at Devereux Creek near the Coronado Butterfly Preserve. See the City info on the project at  http://www.cityofgoleta.org/city-hall/planning-and-environmental-review/ceqa-review/rancho-goleta-mobile-home-park.

  •  Santa Barbara Audubon is opposing this project as proposed and has prepared the email below to marshal additional opposition.We would appreciate your support to help us protect Devereux Creek. Please come to Goleta City Hall on November 9 at 5:30 PM and comment on the project.For those of you who can, we’d appreciate it if you could forward the email below to your membership.We just received the attached letter from the California Coastal Commission to the City. The letter expresses some of the same concerns that Audubon has.

    Regards,

    Steve Ferry, Santa Barbara Audubon Society

    Save Devereux Creek!

    Speak for the Creek on Wednesday, November 9th, at 5:30PM in Goleta City Council Chambers! [If you can’t testify in person or if you would like to augment your verbal remarks, please send written comments via email to Joe Pearson II, Associate Planner, 805-961-7573; <mailto:jpearson@cityofgoleta.com>jpearson@cityofgoleta.com no later than 5:00 PM Monday, November 21st.]

    The City of Goleta has released a Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for the Rancho Goleta Mobile Home Park Fire Improvements Project. The proposed fire road would be built on top of the bank of Devereux Creek, near the Coronado Butterfly Preserve. Devereux Creek in the Ellwood area of Goleta is an important corridor for migratory and breeding birds and other wildlife. The proposed project would remove trees and violate the creekside buffer zones that are mandated by Goleta’s General Plan.

    The creek needs your help! If we have a strong turnout at the hearing we can influence the City to select Alternative 2, a more environmentally-friendly alternative (see below).

    Attend the hearing on November 9th at 5:30 PM and give your comments on the adequacy of the DEIR. Goleta City Council Chambers are at 130 Cremona Dr., Suite B, Goleta.  Enter on the east side of the building. Anyone can testify – you don’t need to be a resident of the City of Goleta.  Be sure to pick up and fill out a speaker slip near the entrance and give the speaker slip to a City official inside the Council Chambers.

    Attend the hearing on November 9th at 5:30 PM and give your comments on the adequacy of the DEIR. Goleta City Council Chambers are at 130 Cremona Dr., Suite B, Goleta.  Enter on the east side of the building. Anyone can testify – you don’t need to be a resident of the City of Goleta.  Be sure to pick up and fill out a speaker slip near the entrance and give the speaker slip to a City official inside the Council Chambers.

    Speakers will probably be given three minutes each to give their comments. Some people find it easiest to write out their remarks and just read them. This is perfectly acceptable. Santa Barbara Audubon Society has prepared talking points below. You should select the two or three talking points that you feel strongest about and give those. Using your own words is most effective, but not necessary.

    Talking Points

    —I  support Alternative 2.  Alternative 2 achieves the goal of fire safety without the environmental impacts of proposed project.  In this alternative, an extension of Sea Gull Drive provides a different location for the fire access road and fire line.  The new fire access road would be gated to prevent regular access between the mobile home park and the adjacent neighborhood.  The gate would only be opened for emergency access.  The DEIR appropriately describes Alternative 2 as the Environmentally Superior Alternative.  Alternative 2 would avoid all the damage to the streamside habitat.  Because a much less environmentally-damaging alternative is available, the City must support Alternative 2 to avoid Class I environmental impacts and conflicts with City and Coastal Act policies.

    — I support Alternative 2.  Alternative 2 achieves the goal of fire safety without the environmental impacts of proposed project.  In this alternative, an extension of Sea Gull Drive provides a different location for the fire access road and fire line.  The new fire access road would be gated to prevent regular access between the mobile home park and the adjacent neighborhood.  The gate would only be opened for emergency access.  The DEIR appropriately describes Alternative 2 as the Environmentally Superior Alternative.  Alternative 2 would avoid all the damage to the streamside habitat.  Because a much less environmentally-damaging alternative is available, the City must support Alternative 2 to avoid Class I environmental impacts and conflicts with City and Coastal Act policies.

    —The proposed project violates Goleta’s carefully-crafted General Plan.  General Plan policy CE 2.2 requires a minimum 100-foot buffer outward from the tops of stream banks.  This is the streamside protection area, or SPA.  This buffer is required unless a project is infeasible without the reduction and the resulting reduction has insignificant environmental impacts.  Even if conditions for exceptions are met, the SPA cannot be reduced to less than 25 feet.  However, in this case, it is clear there is a feasible alternative, Alternative 2.  In addition, the proposed project with reduced buffers will have significant environmental impacts.  The proposed project will reduce riparian buffers to as low as 6 feet, violating even the minimum requirements of CE 2.2, resulting in an unmitigatable Class I impact to SPAs.

    —The current trail adjacent to Devereux Creek from Coronado Drive to the southern end of the mobile home park is heavily used by walkers, joggers, birders, and bicyclists.  Thus the trail is a valuable public amenity for the community. Most users and neighbors would prefer that the trail stays in its current configuration.  The proposed all weather fire road, and associated water pipeline and wall, would replace this trail and destroy the vegetation on the north side of Devereux Creek.

    —The project proposes to remove native trees in this riparian corridor, including five arroyo willows, one western sycamore, and four live oaks.   The DEIR recognizes these trees are important as habitat, for shading, and as filters for contaminants. Although the DEIR states that this tree removal would constitute a mitigatable Class II impact, mitigation plantings cannot occur in the road corridor, owing to road clearance requirements.  As a consequence, the project would destroy native riparian vegetation without appropriate on-site mitigation, constituting a Class I, unmitigable impact.

    —The Devereux Creek corridor in this area is critical habitat for migratory and resident birds.   The proposed road and vegetation clearances would degrade on-site and adjacent bird and wildlife habitat, including the important migratory bird “stopover site” at the end of Coronado Drive.  This is a designated Audubon birding hotspot known as the “Coronado Seep”.  This area is especially valuable for fall migrants from late July to early October.

    —The DEIR’s analysis of impacts on birds and wildlife lists only 28 bird species that might be affected by the project.  The DEIR is inadequate in its analysis of bird species.  Santa Barbara Audubon has gathered documented observations of 114 bird species within the project area, including 44 migrants and 54 breeding species. These data were collected by many birders who regularly visit this site.  Lists for other vertebrates are also inadequate.  For example, brush rabbits are common in the project area and ringneck snakes are often observed.

    —The DEIR is inadequate in that it does not include the impacts of the project to Recreation.  I recommend that the DEIR be re-circulated to account for impacts to Recreation and mitigation measures that should be implemented.  Large numbers of birders from throughout the state visit the project area, especially the Coronado Seep, from mid-summer through fall.  This is the most visited birding spot in the county in some years.  The impacts to this form of recreation, the loss of Recreation, remedies and mitigations leading to more prudent management of the site are missing.

    —The DEIR and associated Biological Reports (Appendices B and C) recognize that the project would violate many California Coastal Act and Goleta General Plan/CLUP provisions.  These include polices on Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Areas (ESHAs, including raptor and monarch butterfly habitat) and their required buffers, Streamside Protection Areas (SPAs), and wetland buffers.  The Biological Reports recognize that this project violates many of the City’s environmental policies.  However, the DEIR is inadequate because it argues that many of the project impacts could be mitigated.  This assertion contradicts the environmental review documents which clearly state that violation of the underlying policies protecting environmental resources could not be mitigated (therefore resulting in Class I impacts).

    —The proposed fire road is in the Coastal Zone, conflicting with Coastal Act 30240(a), which states that Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Area, ESHA, shall be protected against any significant disruption of habitat values; Coastal Act 30240 (b), which states that development adjacent to ESHAs must be situated and designed to prevent impacts to ESHAS, and Coastal Act 30231, which protects the biological productivity and quality of coastal waters, including encouraging riparian habitat.

    —Due to the construction and maintenance of the 20-foot wide road, and 10 foot clearances on both sides (within 6 feet of stream banks), the disruption to bird breeding, feeding, and roosting habitat would persist for the life of the project, that is, indefinitely.

    —The numbering of impacts and mitigations in the Biological Report (Appendix B) do not match the numbering in the DEIR, which is confusing and misleading.  The Biological Report performed a considered analysis of the environmental impacts of the fire safety plan, which largely was not followed in the DEIR.  The DEIR made many unsubstantiated conclusions regarding the class of environmental impacts and the appropriateness of mitigations.  We refer the City to the DEIR’s Appendices B and C for a reasonable environmental impact analysis.

    —The City erred in making the fire safety plan a condition for approval of the mobile home park condominium conversion years ago.  At that time the environmental impacts of the fire safety plan were unknown.  Therefore, the attachment of these conditions as a Development Agreement (DA) did not trigger a revised or supplemental EIR which would have allowed the environmental impacts of the entire project to be evaluated.   The impacts and mitigations for the project with conditions were not examined until long after the conversion was approved, inappropriately limiting the options of future approval bodies.

    —Further, the City is allowing a private operator to build and maintain infrastructure on City-owned public lands, while degrading an important community amenity.

     

    If you can’t testify in person or if you would like to augment your verbal remarks, please send written comments via email to Joe Pearson II, Associate Planner, 805-961-7573; jpearson@cityofgoleta.comno later than 5:00 PM Monday, November 21st.  SBAS will be providing a letter template.

    Notes on City of Goleta process:

    The hearing on the DEIR on November 9 is a hearing before the City’s Environmental Hearing Officer.  The City will take the public’s verbal and written comments on the adequacy of the DEIR.   No decision on the project will be made at the November 9 hearing.  After the hearing the City will incorporate the public’s comments into the Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) where appropriate.  Then there will be hearings on the FEIR before the Goleta Planning Commission and the Goleta City Council.  There is also likely to be a hearing before the California Coastal Commission.

    Alternative 2 would require removal of two mobile homes.