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Make sure the Ellwood Mesa is part of your plans for 2025. There is so much happening that we want you to be a part of! Read on for ways you can be involved.
Tree Planting and Tree Care
It has been exciting to see the progress made at Ellwood Mesa by our restoration partners and hundreds of volunteers. After a short break for the holidays, UC Santa Barbara’s Cheadle Center, the City of Goleta, and Your Children’s Trees are resuming volunteer work Saturday mornings January 18 through February 22. Sign up for details: https://tinyurl.com/y3umat4p.
20 Year Anniversary Celebration
2025 marks a monumental milestone – 20 years since the City of Goleta took ownership of Ellwood Mesa after an incredible effort by the community to permanently protect the land from development. To honor this milestone, we’re planning a community celebration and soliciting input to make it special.
Save the Date! Ellwood Mesa 20-Year Anniversary Celebration – Saturday May 17, 2025
Help us Plan: There are two ways to share ideas for the event:
- Join a planning meeting hosted by Ellwood Friends on Thursday, January 23, 6:00-7:30 p.m. at Draughtsman Ale Works, 53 Santa Felicia Drive in Goleta. Let’s show our thanks to Draughtsman for sharing their space by purchasing a pint of ale or non-alcoholic tea before heading upstairs for the meeting. Snacks will be provided. RSVP needed: https://forms.gle/RTf613RxrxFUnoDk9
- Complete this short survey: https://forms.gle/euphzC1nrNkm7brZ7
Thank you for helping to celebrate this important anniversary!
Help Ellwood Neighborhoods Prepare for Fire
The City of Goleta and the Santa Barbara County Fire Safe Council sponsored a meeting to introduce Ellwood residents to the Firewise USA® program in October 2023. Firewise USA helps communities increase wildfire knowledge and reduce wildfire risk. Many neighborhoods along the Santa Barbara South Coast Region have completed the Firewise USA certification process and are better prepared for the next wildfire.
The Santa Barbara County Fire Safe Council, along with the Santa Barbara County Fire Department, offer free home hardening assessments where they review the structure and vegetation around the home and provide a list of recommendations on how to reduce their risk of ember intrusion and overall fire risks.
Residents can sign up for a home evaluation following this link: https://sbfiresafecouncil.org/evaluation/. They also offer a Home Hardening Guide where residents can explore to learn about different maintenance and mitigation efforts without having to have someone come out to their property https://sbfiresafecouncil.org/wildfire-home-hardening-guide/.
Motivated communities may also choose to pursue FireWise USA Certification, which increases access to funding and assistance, creates a framework for increasing resiliency to wildfire, builds community connectedness, and the most popular benefit, your Firewise USA certification can assist in maintaining your insurance and can possibly result in discounts in insurance rates. For more information, contact Kate Furlong at kfurlong@sbfiresafecouncil.org.
To stay up to date on what’s happening at Ellwood Mesa, visit http://cityofgoleta.org/ellwood-now.