Goleta Looks to Preserve Large Agricultural Parcels with Measure G2024

October is a month of surprises during election years, like the one that happened in 2012 during Goleta’s first enactment of Measure G — a law that requires for 20 years that the rezoning of any agricultural property of over 10 acres to go first to a vote of the people. Six properties fit that description, but one in particular, Bishop Ranch, sparked community concern in 2012 because its 240 acres were proposed for 1,200 homes. However, developer Michael Keston and landowner University Exchange Corp. notified the city on October 13, 2012, that they were dissolving their development agreement.

Did that mean Measure G was not needed? Nope. City voters passed it by 71 percent. Goleta Mayor Paula Perotte is working to ensure Measure G is extended for another 20 years.

Back in June 2023, Perotte got the ball rolling by asking city staff to look into putting Measure G on the 2024 ballot, saying that having it on the ballot would show “how much we care about agricultural land.” Her colleagues quickly supported her motion.

Bishop Ranch’s 240 acres are the largest undeveloped lands of the 2,000-plus acres acquired by San Francisco attorney Thomas Bishop around 1890, payment for winning a lawsuit with W.W. Hollister. The land currently protected by Measure G is part of the long history of Dos Pueblos Ranch, a Mexican land grant to Nicholas Den that extended from Fairview Avenue to the border of El Capitan Canyon. Den died at the age of 50, after delivering a baby on the ranch amid a rainstorm and contracting pneumonia in 1862. The storm was part of a hard winter that saw nearly a month and a half of rain. Five years of drought then decimated the herds of cattle that sustained the ranchos.

Bishop was hired by Den’s heirs to regain the land from Hollister, who had bought it in 1869 despite being warned the probate court had not approved the sale. The family wanted to sell as they were deeply in debt, and Hollister paid them $10 an acre when foothill lands were going for a dime. He named the 5,000 acres Glen Annie Ranch, which he turned into a horticultural wonderland. The lawsuit reached the national newspapers, wrote Walker A. Tompkins in The Royal Rancho, and went on for 14 years, outliving Hollister, who died in 1886.

“Things happen, councils change,” Perotte answered the other day when asked, why now, eight years before Measure G’s sunset date. “We thought we would get ahead of it, and it’s really about facilitating long-term planning.”

The recently revived Shelby development was among the original six, but it bypassed Measure G by achieving a tract map before the vote in 2012. Two others under protection are properties that bookend Bishop Ranch at Glen Annie and Los Carneros Road. Fairview Gardens and Ellwood Canyon Ranch round out the remaining five for a total of 327.32 acres preserved by Measure G. No opposition was submitted to this year’s ballot measure, and the current owners and their representatives did not return calls.

Bob Wignot of the Goodland Coalition, which had petitioned to place Measure G on the ballot a decade ago, said that now was a good time to renew the measure as land use was on people’s minds. “In order to meet RHNA [state housing requirements], the county had zoned significant amounts of ag parcels to residential,” he said. As well, “the next RHNA cycle coincides with the expiration of G2012,” Wignot pointed out. “If the provisions were to sunset in 2032, three council votes could rezone these ag parcels. This is why we want to extend Measure G another 20 years — to try to preserve what we have.”

Perotte noted that while Measure G2024 gives residents the opportunity to protect ag land, it left the door open to any “really great” ideas. “If someone had a really great idea,” one that greatly benefited the community, the mayor indicated, “Goleta residents would then have the opportunity to agree or disagree. The rezone would only be effective if approved by a majority of the voters of the City of Goleta.”