Keeping the Country Character of Goleta and Avoiding ‘Builders Remedy’

As you know, the City of Goleta has been dealing with the Housing Element (HE) for over a year now, since we first submitted our draft to the State Department of Housing & Community Development (HCD). Since then, we have gone back and forth with the state as we work to get it approved, or certified.

I want to be clear that this exercise of rezoning certain parcels throughout the city is something that we had tried to avoid. The city first submitted a draft of our HE to the State over a year ago, and since then we have been going back and forth with them to draft a document that they would accept and certify. Up to this point, we have avoided considering any rezones of vacant parcels. Importantly, no agricultural sites that are protected by Measure G-2012 (including Bishop Ranch, among others) were considered for rezoning at any point in our process. We have tried, unsuccessfully, to include only under-utilized and nonvacant parcels, with the goal of meeting the state’s requirements without unduly impacting neighborhoods and areas of the city.

Unfortunately, the state isn’t buying it. For too long, too many cities have included such sites in their Housing Elements without results. Too often, nonvacant sites like the ones we’ve included on our list have not resulted in the amount of housing being constructed that was promised (or at least hoped for). It has been our sincerely held belief that these nonvacant, under-utilized parcels really do offer the opportunity to build housing, and that it would be far superior to develop these sites rather than look to vacant parcels. But despite our best efforts, we are now here looking at the rezoning of vacant parcels in order to satisfy the state’s requirements and get our plan certified.

I want to acknowledge that we have received a great deal of public comment on this topic, as well we should. This discussion and the decisions that follow will have a great impact on the city and specific neighborhoods. The decisions that we make now about how to respond to the state’s requirements will affect the character of the city for years to come.

We have all heard about the housing affordability crisis, and California has passed many laws in the last few years to address it. Unfortunately, many of these laws have taken away local control and have reduced or eliminated cities’ ability to say no to growth and development. We simply don’t have the option of saying no. So, what we hope to accomplish through this exercise is to do what we can to plan for more housing in a thoughtful and responsible way, in a way that satisfies the state’s requirements while minimizing or avoiding unwanted impacts to our city or to particular neighborhoods.

I think we all here agree that we want to preserve the character of Goleta, and this means keeping what we can of our open spaces and avoiding sprawling developments. I believe that the way to keep what’s left of the country feel of Goleta is to fight vigorously against sprawl, especially in the urban-rural interface around the city. We need to look at infill projects. This may mean increasing densities of certain areas within the city. To me, it makes sense to keep a mix of open rural space with relatively dense suburban areas in order to avoid sprawl.

It’s important to share our priorities for how we make these decisions, and here are some of the considerations:

•  Within walking distance to retail or other services? Is there a store or a market within walking distance? Can our children walk or bike to school safely? Are there nearby parks to walk or bike to? (Or any other form of transportation or however you get around: wheelchair, scooter, etc.)
•  Is it accessible to public transportation? Is it convenient to get on an MTD bus?
•  We need to consider the impacts of parking and what it will mean for the immediate vicinity.
•  And in order to reduce the impacts of parking and traffic, we need to take into consideration how people will get around, and make sure that they can do as much of their getting around as possible without a car. We may not be able to expect people to leave all their cars at home, but we should make it as easy as possible for them to do so.
•  Will it provide a good mix of affordable units, especially for the low and very low categories? (And by the way, just for clarity, when we put a number of how many in each income category, what we’re really talking about is a formula based on density.)
•  How compatible is it with the neighboring areas?
•  There are other important considerations that will also be explored during the planning process. Today, we aren’t reviewing the particulars of any specific project; this about the underlying zoning only. When projects are reviewed then we will have an opportunity to review the height, architecture, the extent to which it preserves or enhances our creeks and environmentally sensitive areas and protects our viewsheds.

There are no perfect solutions in which we are able to provide all the needed and affordable housing without having any impacts on the community. So, our goal here is to minimize those impacts and plan in a way that spreads out impacts without unduly impacting some areas.

In short, how can we ensure the greatest public good while minimizing the potential negative effects?

I want to make it clear that the City of Goleta is not happy with our loss of control in making these decisions. We have opposed many of the bills that have taken our control away. And while some may want us to push back harder on the State, I’d say we have to pick and choose our battles. We have, after all, sued UC Santa Barbara for their impacts to the city, and I’m happy to see that UCSB has just put out an RFQ [request for quote] to pursue building another 3,500 units. I hope this is a sign that the university is finally getting serious about providing housing to accommodate its rapid growth. We’re willing to push back when we feel like we have a chance of a fair fight, and if we feel it would be a worthwhile investment of public funds for potentially costly and drawn-out litigation.

Finally, I want to emphasize how important it is that we get our housing plan certified by the state. We submitted our first draft to the State over a year ago, and we’ve been working with them going back and forth ever since. But without getting that final stamp of approval, we are open to the “Builder’s Remedy,” which would mean that we have even less (or even no) discretion on reviewing projects. I believe it’s in our best interest to get our Housing Element certified by the state to further reduce the risk of unwanted development, or development in unwanted locations.

Kyle Richards is a councilmember for the City of Goleta.