In the eyes of the Goleta City Council, Santa Barbara County isn’t being very neighborly. 

After promising to work together to reach the county’s goal to make room for more housing, Goleta Mayor Paula Perotte said the county hasn’t been working with the City of Goleta.

“Since the very beginning, they haven’t been working with us,” Perotte said. “This isn’t being a good neighbor. This isn’t working collaboratively with us.” 

The Goleta City Council unanimously approved sending a letter to the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors after learning that county staff recommended allowing new projects to be exempt from looking at traffic impacts caused by housing development and meeting the standard operating conditions for roads and intersections.

“We want to make sure that for this level of development that is being proposed that we consider the traffic impacts in the classic sense, congestion, and our concern is that the county is proposing an exemption to its own rules for these massive housing sites,” said Peter Imhof, director of the Planning & Environmental Review Department. 

In its letter to the county Board of Supervisors, the City Council expressed concern over the county staff recommendation that Housing Element sites should be exempt from the county circulation element policy.

The county circulation element policy commits the county to service not just roads and intersections in the unincorporated part of the county but also for roads and intersections in incorporated adjacent cities. 

In the county staff’s report to the county Planning Commission, staff wrote that the level of service standards in the circulation element policy could cause constraints to housing projects and the county meeting its housing requirements. The report also stated that some of the housing projects could result in roads and intersections “operating below current level of service standards.” 

Councilman Stuart Kasdin said it would be unfair for residents to deal with the impact of these housing development projects without conducting the normal inspections and services.

“Saying that we’re going to allow communities to bear the burden of these impacts without mitigating the full level of them and forcing communities to live with and acknowledge unacceptable levels of service is not very collegial,” Kasdin said. 

Imhof said that because of the way the exemption is worded, any housing site that counts toward the county’s regional housing needs allocation — which would be any housing built, not just housing built on the rezone sites — would be exempt from looking at and mitigating traffic impacts.

“This is an exemption that threatens to swallow the rule,” Imhof said. “It’s hard to see what is left of the rule with this exemption.”

City Councilwoman Luz Reyes-Martín shared her frustration that at this point in the process, city staff had to learn about this proposed exception by combing through documents, and not hearing about it from the county directly. 

“It erodes trust in government, it erodes trust in wanting to have a collaborative relationship with the county, and it puts us in a really difficult position about how much we continue to trust,” Reyes-Martín said. “Now, we all know we gotta watch every single thing that happens from now into the future.”

Under the exception, it would be up to county Public Works to decide if a project is implementing acceptable roadway and intersection improvements. 

“That just seems so unfair to put that on county staff, to make them the arbiter of what constitutes acceptable intersection improvements,” Reyes-Martín said. “We do genuinely want to continue to have a collaborative relationship with the county, and this is just the beginning of a lot of these conversations.”

Councilman James Kyriaco said the Housing Element process has been complicated for both the city and the county and that he understands why the community is frustrated with the county. Kyriaco said it feels like the county is asking Goleta to accommodate new neighbors and not send any help. 

“I know it’s more complicated than that. I know it’s more nuanced than that, but on a certain level, that’s how it feels,” Kyriaco said. “They’re certainly giving themselves a lot of options to just step back and say it’s your problem, you deal with it, we got the housing we needed.”

The state-mandated Housing Element identifies sites where housing could be built. The plan is updated every eight years, and while it identifies areas where units could be built, it doesn’t mean they have to be built. 

The county identified a potential of 5,664 housing units divided into four income levels — very low, low, moderate and above moderate. Of those, 4,142 have been allocated to the South Coast and 1,522 to the North County. 

In order to meet those numbers, the county has to rezone numerous sites to allow housing to be built. Eight sites will be rezoned from agriculture to residential housing adjacent to Goleta. 

The South Patterson Agricultural Area, which could create 7,708 units, and the Glen Annie golf course with 2,673 units, are the main concerns for Goleta. 

“This is going to be a challenge for everyone,” Imhof said. “It’s going to be a challenge of the residents in the new area. It’s going to be a challenge of parents trying to bring students to Dos Pueblos High School. It’s going to be an all-around challenge.”

Before the county issued its final environmental impact report, the City Council made several comments on the draft report with solutions to address infrastructure needs; those suggestions were not addressed in the final report, according to the city staff. 

In their comments on the draft report, the City Council asked for mitigation measures to address transportation and infrastructure impacts of the new housing developments at Glen Annie and the South Patterson Agricultural Area.

The council proposed mitigation such as restriping, signalization, improved bike lanes, and roundabouts. No such efforts were added to the final report.

“All of the above sites are only accessible through the city, and any future residents on these sites will rely on the city’s transportation network, open space and recreational spaces, emergency response facilities, and other resources,” Imhof wrote to Hannah Thomas, county project planner, on Feb. 9 in a letter with the council’s concerns on the draft program environmental impact report.

Kyriaco acknowledged that housing is needed but said he hopes the county can understand the housing can be a good thing while having some challenging impacts.

“If we want to be a community that creates good, high-paying jobs where people can live with dignity, follow their dreams, have a great Goleta life, have a high-tech job and a low-tech lifestyle, we’re gonna have to accommodate some housing,” Kyriaco said.