LAND OF THE GOOD

Goleta City Councilmember Roger Aceves named Julie Solomon, a
marketing consultant, to sit on the city’s first Planning
Commission. The other two new councilmembers, Michael Bennett and
Eric Onnen, appointed Doris Kavenaugh and Brent Daniels,
respectively, to the commission in January. Those three will join
Jean Blois’s appointee, Ken Knight, and Jonny Wallis’s appointee,
Ed Easton. The commission will start meeting in March.

Making good on a vow taken on election night, Goleta City
Councilmember Michael Bennett asked city staff to look into
replacing the city’s butterfly logo, which he claims was selected
without public input. A staff report presented at Tuesday’s council
meeting responded that the council had merely declined to submit to
a Santa Barbara News-Press logo design contest. In spite of
arguments that a change could cost at least $69,000 and would be
confusing to the public, the council voted 3-2 – with new
councilmember Roger Aceves and former mayor Jonny Wallis
dissenting – to discuss the design at a future meeting.

The Goleta City Council directed its planning staff to begin
preparations for changing the city’s general plan. Five years in
the making, the plan was adopted November 1 of last year, but the
slow-growth council majority that crafted it was replaced in the
November 7 elections. The newly configured council will begin the
process March 5 of amending the plan to suit its more
pro-development vision, one favored by the Goleta Valley Chamber of
Commerce.