I asked the County Board of Supervisors a simple question. Why would you rezone 16,000 acres of ag land for solar panels, when CA has an excess of the same, but you won’t rezone the same amount of land for housing, considering the dearth of the same? The only answer I got was a grimace from Supervisor Laura Capps.
While the left, including Democratic socialists, want to blame the high price of everything on capitalism, the fact is, they don’t know much of anything about the law of supply and demand, and neither will they admit that some things are in short supply on purpose.
Thirty-five years ago, I came across a quote that motivated me to pursue a career as a watchdog in Santa Barbara County. The quote is especially relevant because it came from a county planning and development director whose job it was to stall development in the county!
Here is the quote: “The cost of preserving the high quality of life in Santa Barbara County includes limiting opportunities for others, it limits economic mobility, but that is a legitimate political choice.” That statement, of course, is not capitalistic in nature, it is entirely elitist.
Building Homes for County Employees
Years later, when the county suggested that affordable housing be built in the Santa Ynez Valley, I was also told by a valley resident that “The Santa Ynez Valley is for those who can afford it and we want to keep it that way.” That was the buzzsaw that planners ran into when the county tried to zone the valley for its “fair share” of affordable housing.
I can honestly understand the sentiment to a point. People who live on the South Coast or in the SY Valley believe they live in paradise and they want to make sure nobody and nothing is going to spoil it.
However, Laura Capps’ phony solution to the housing crisis, to prove she has bleeding-heart bonafides, is to build housing on county land for government workers. That is, take care of the “county family,” a term that refers to county staff. What about the rest of the community, us serfs, what are we supposed to do?
As I mentioned last week, the county is sabotaging the efforts of several cities to expand their boundaries to meet state mandates for housing. They do this in two ways. First, by helping to block approval of city limits expansions via the Local Agency Formation Commission, LAFCO, and second, by removing the financial wherewithal for cities to annex by way of a concept known as revenue neutrality.
Revenue Neutrality
Revenue neutrality is a somewhat optional condition the county can impose on cities, by way of negotiations, who take land out of the county jurisdiction. Supposedly, it will make the county whole for lost property tax, sales tax, and bed tax revenues because of the jurisdictional boundary adjustment. Goleta is a prime example of a community that got assaulted by the county when it went through the process of becoming a city.
However, the concept is entirely bogus when a city is annexing undeveloped land because the county isn’t going to lose much of anything in, or by, the process. Nevertheless, even if the land in question is undeveloped, the county insists on gaining future “lost” revenues. That is happening right now as it affects the Richard’s Ranch development in the Santa Maria Valley.
None of this negates the fact that what we need is more land dedicated to housing, lest we all end up living in an urban jungle by the sea!
A Six-Point Plan That Could Work
The best solution – based upon my lived experience having lived on the Central Coast for 58 years – is to do what San Luis Obispo does. Nobody can claim SLO resembles the San Fernando Valley or Orange County in any way, shape, or form. Allow low density development and clustered development throughout the county and by way of city annexations, on non-prime ag lands. This allows ranchers to stay in business because low density development can easily coincide with cattle operations.
The same holds for allowing such things as vineyard estates. Or the dreaded “McMansions” on the Gaviota Coast. I, for one, would rather see some beautiful homes pop up here and there rather than thousands of acres of grotesque solar farms. Finally, bring back the ag cluster development ordinance, which was strangled in its crib by county supervisors. This policy would have allowed, for instance, a 3,000-acre ranch to build 30 homes (one home per 100 acres) on 2-acre plots, thereby leaving the bulk of the land in its natural state.
By maintaining rigid zoning and procedural barriers, Santa Barbara County undermines the entire county’s ability to meet state housing goals, worsens the affordability crisis, and signals that renewable energy expansion is a higher priority than expanding the housing supply. Without a recalibration of land-use policy, the county risks deepening both its housing shortage and its credibility gap.
Here is What County Supervisors Should Be Doing:
1) Conduct a comprehensive review of agricultural land designations to identify parcels unsuitable for farming and rezone them for mixed-use or residential development.
2) Reform the LAFCO process to allow cities to annex land more efficiently when meeting state housing mandates, with clear timelines and reduced bureaucratic hurdles while making every attempt to avoid prime ag lands.
3) Establish policies that weigh renewable energy expansion against housing needs, ensuring that large-scale energy projects do not displace opportunities for residential growth.
4) Offer tax breaks, density bonuses, or expedited permitting for developers who build housing on marginal agricultural land or other underused parcels.
5) Develop a countywide plan that aligns renewable energy targets with housing production requirements, avoiding zero-sum trade-offs between environmental and housing priorities.
6) Forego the temptation to be greedy when it comes to negotiating revenue neutrality agreements for the good of the entire county, especially vacant land.
Community Calendar
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Ail good ideas, but easiest, with immediate results, is to require UCSB to limit admission to those applicants who score above average in SATs in English, Mathematics, and one traditional science. And require that remedial courses be taught exclusively at community colleges.
Enrollment would drop 50 percent, and with it, 30-40 percent of non-teaching jobs. Several thousand rentals and hundreds of homes would become
Available and millions of dollars saved.
And the faculty could focus on students ready to learn.
W Naylor
An illuminating and logical set of suggestions. But its effectiveness could only be tested if all readers of Santa Barbara Current were to send a copy to the County Commissioners with a personal note of support for the recommendations made.