BOARD OF SUPERVISORS

Merry Christmas to everybody. This is the last meeting of the year for the Board of Supervisors. Is that me? It is me, are you sure? Okay. Okay we're going to try and do this without being irritating. Welcome anyway to the Board of Supervisors and Merry Christmas glad to see everyone here and everybody looks so darn cool. Happy holidays! Let's have the Pledge of Allegiance after the roll call Mr.

Lavagnino? Here. Ms. Wolff? Here, Ms. Farr? Here Mr. Carbajal? Here Ms. Gray? Present

Thank you. The reason, I'm sure no one really cares but the reason they give me these mics like this is because I'm too short to reach the mic mic so they are kind enough to put it on my collar. Mr. Allen we need to approve the minutes is that correct? Do we have a motion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? We're now going to go to the administrative agenda at this point in time we have County Council asking to speak on A-41 there's someone from the public that would like to speak about A-12, A-19 Supervisor Lavinino anything from you?

Madam Chair I need to pull 17 19 34 and 41

We also have A4. 17,

19, 34,

41. 41, we've got 41. Supervisor Carbajal? You're fine. Supervisor Farr?

Madam Chair I would like to pull A12, A13 and A15. Supervisor

Wolff? Okay. All right, let's do it this way then. A4 came from the public Mr. Allen?

Madam Chair we just have a quick one on A4 from Tom Fairam.

Mr. Fairam?

And item A4 is resolution proclaiming the week of December 12th through 16 as Flood Awareness Week.

Madam Chair, members of the Board I just wanted to make note of this resolution which is not presented at 1.30 but wanted to advise the board and the public of the presentations not only here in the Government Center in Santa Maria but also in Santa Barbara these public outreach activities all lead up to a 20% reduction in flood insurance rates for the citizens of Santa Barbara County so these types of activities along with many other things we do are Helping our citizens save money every day and please take time to take a look at the materials and pass it on to your friends. Thank you.

Thank You, Mr. Faram. So let's go to A12 now Mr. Allen

Madam Chair, members of the Board. Item 812 is from County Council. The recommendations that the board consider are recommendations regarding a contract with outside counsel for potential eminent domain litigation and we have one request to speak on this from Mr. Dave Stockdale.

And just before Mr. Stockdale comes up to the mic and makes his statement could I have a motion to approve everything that hasn't been pulled? All in favor, say aye. Aye. So if in fact you have an item that hasn't been pulled and you'd like to go back to work, you can do so. So we are now on A12 is that correct? That's correct.

Morning. Thanks for the opportunity to speak. The reason I'm here really is because I would like to kind of read into the administrative records some of the background this particular legislation so that it just didn't get passed over. When the EIR for Union Valley Parkway was presented in 2009, it referred in a passing manner that the property acquisition we're talking about was for the Taylor property that the acquisition was underway.

At the time Walmart had owned the property for two years. The oversight was so egregious that Walmart itself retained counsel to commit To commit to notify you that they in fact own the property, which of course everybody would have known. And that the public should be told that the county did not own it. Make a point of telling public the county didn't own it. Essentially they were telling the parties involved at the cost for that piece of property would be dear and maybe the parties involved should think about the cost, about committing the costs or proceeding on the project But the city and the county went ahead anyway. And now we're talking about retaining council just to discuss eminent domain proceedings with a contract of up to $150,000 without having to come back to the supervisors for further discussion.

Univac Parkway between Highway 101 and 135 is in fact critical to our transportation needs in the county. The section between 135 and Blosser Road which has been built, which the city went ahead with is one of the most egregious and gross misallocations of government funds imaginable. When I went to numerous, here's my point because virtually $10 million has been spent on this worthless piece of property, this worthless road.

What we've essentially gotten for it is a nice bike path, a nice walking road and two really dangerous intersections where there have been multiple injury accidents where only by the grace of God has nobody been killed yet I went to numerous meetings regarding this and in all that time virtually everyone who spoke on it was either an elected official, they worked for the government, they were on a planning commission for the government or they were an urban planner who derived most of their income from working for the government.

On the other side was a loud and sustained Disagreement from the people who actually infected, the people who had to pay for it saying this road's a waste of time. This road is useless. It's going to cost too much money. We don't want it built now. Maybe 10 years from now. Maybe 15 years from now. Maybe 20 years from now but not now. We were ignored and so here's my point.

This is not sour grapes. This is not an envy. My point is this. The next time you have an issue here where Everybody on one side works for the government, derives their income from the government, is associated with the government. And everybody on the other side is the people. Make note of that. Thank you.

Thank you Mr. Stockdale. Was there another? Someone else

had a... Madam Chair, I'm just wondering whether we could trail this item until after closed session.

All right, so we will be trailing 12. Anyone else on 12? Mr. Allen?

No further requests to speak from the public.

I also have 13 now.

That's also me.

Let's read it into the record.

Madam Chair, item A13 is for the County Executive Office to approve budget revision requests.

Ms. Barr? Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes I would like to pull out the transfer number 1923, the $75,000

Good morning, my name is Lori Tamora with Urban Planning Concepts. I'm here today with Jim Loloja from Rice Ranch Ventures. The Rice Ranch Ventures have been involved in this project since 2004. They are the developers that have provided to the county the Orchard Community Park, trails, roads, infrastructure, signalized intersections at Rice Ranch Road and Patterson Road. They have met every commitment of required conditions for the first phase of the project.

We heard three weeks ago that this item was going to appear both at the Planning Commission and now at the Board of Supervisors. We understand that county staff and County Council have advised The board It is critical that we work with the county staff and county council on some kind of an easement for temporary construction in this open space. Once the county accepts the land, it is hamstringing the future development of the rest of the project. We need to have some kind of working relationship with the staff, an agreement written prior to transfer of the land so that we can complete sewer water infrastructure. Meet the conditions of approval which we have bonded for which are the trails, the biological mitigation landscaping, irrigation and the infrastructure to complete the full subdivision.

So again we understand what's happening but what we do need from you is a working document that says we have rights to work within the county land that you are accepting to complete the project So we need your

help.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Our next speaker is Sonny Russell to be followed by Rick Corbo.

Mr. Russell, welcome.

Good morning. I represent some of the landowners up there that have been managing property up there for the last five years and I've been trying to run cattle up there where you want to put this bike trails and everything. And I'm opposed to it. They've cut my fences. Put ruts this deep in the ground by mountain bikers I've had. Several of them threatened me.

One of them just come up and said, hey I've been doing this for several years. I'm going to continue doing it and nobody's gonna stop me. The deputy that was giving tickets out up there, a woman argued with him about it. He said he was gonna take her to jail and finally she accepted the ticket. Who's gonna pay for all this? Is the county gonna come in and fix my fences that they've cut I've put no trespassing signs up. They tore them down. One year, I even put trespassing signs up that said survivors will be prosecuted. That morning, that night they were gone.

I'm losing money. I can't run cattle up there. Paul Rigetti has had problems with the fences being cut. The mountain bikers... We've got lost forest ranch for the mountain bikers and horseback riders. Why can't they go over there? I mean landowners have no rights up there on Orchard Hill. We've talked to them, they have said well we're not hurting anything I said well how about if I come to your house and walk through your backyard? Well that's different it's not different they're trespassing and if they get this in there they're going to keep spreading out spreading out. The oil companies had nothing but problems up there. They put fences up they cut them down put no trespass signs up they tore them down big welded No trespassing signs and they've torn them down.

And Ms. Gray, I know you're for it but and I thought you were for the cattle people in farming around here too but it don't sound like it if you're pushing for this. And I've had it, you know? I don't know what else to do. I keep losing money. They stole my rolls of barbed wire And once they get their foot in there, they're going to continue the spreading out.

Thank you for listening to me.

I'm glad that you were here today because you're the first one that's actually contacted so we need to get together okay? Because you know I run cattle and I know what you are talking about and they said it was fine but I'm glad you were here today.

In fact they just had some cattle fence cut and some cattle got down on... That was

the cattle that were on Bradley there?

Yeah, and that's from a fence being cut. And it's you know... And who's going to be liable for the insurance and everything? And couldn't money being used for this bike park or whatever is gonna be used for something like a county jail?

Well thank you for being here today Mr. Russell. Who's the next speaker?

Our next speaker is Rick Corbo to be followed by Jeannie Sparks

Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the board. My name is Rick Corbo. I'm a resident of Orchid. I've lived there for the last 14 years. Since that time, I've raised three kids. One is in college now. He went to Pine Grove, went to junior high, went to high school, and now he's in college. I have a daughter who's in eighth grade who goes to Lakeview, and she's gone through nursery school, preschool, everything up to that time. I have a son who's in first grade now at Patterson.

During that time in 1997 The Orchard Community Plan was enacted and it had an appendix that talked about a trail plan up there in that development area, all that open space. It's been sitting there. Nothing has been going on with that development. We need the open space for our kids. My kids often say, can we go on a hike? Well if we want to go on a hike, we've got to go to St. Louis. We have to go to Santa Barbara. We can't hike in our area. What Sonny was saying is valid. There are concerns. We don't condone actions of people who cut fences and dig holes. That's something we don't want done. We want a space for the Orchid Committee where we can hike, where we can go with our children. And it's been years. I mean, I've lived here and my kids can't go up in the hills and hike around because of that issue.

We have a plan in place. Let's move forward and have this land for the people who live here, the citizens who vote in Orchid need this land. Thank you.

Thank you for being here today. Next speaker

is Ginny Sparks, followed by Luis Escobar.

Hi, Jeannie. Good morning, Joni, Madam Chair and members of the board. I'm Jeannie Sparks. I represent North County Green Team. It's a new organization focused on environmental issues in the north county. So I'm here to say that they support this, you accepting the property and hope to move forward with it as quickly as you can. And as a founding member of Winners of Off-Leash Freedom, or commonly called W.I.F., who was instrumental in getting the dog park at Walden, which your board supported. Of course the county developed that and also the dog park at Rice Ranch. I'm in touch with a lot of dog owners and being a dog owner myself, I really see the need for trails to recreate with our animals, with our dogs specifically. And of course people have horses they have those needs too and the bikers but as a dog owner who enjoys both of the dog parks I find myself going also out of the county or to surrounding areas to walk with my dogs because while my dogs get exercise in the dog park I don't so I like to go on trails with my dogs and it's just a nice thing to do as a person we need to have that area outdoors for us just to be able to recreate, get our exercise and I hope you'll do your part.

And I know you will do your part in hopefully today or sometime soon to take these trails along and expand our open space areas for people to recreate in. And understand the rancher is really difficult because he's got a private property but here we're talking about land that has been dedicated for the public because of the development and it's not his property We need to keep people off of this property by giving them an alternative so they can go and recreate where they're allowed to. You know, we have so much open space here but it's not accessible to most of us. Most of us do not own ranches. We can't just go out and walk in the hills. We need to have some places that are public and are legal for us. So thank you. Thank you Ms. Sparks.

Our final speaker is Luis Escobar.

Hello my name is Luis Escobar I'm a member of the San Bernardino Valley Open Space Partnership, and I'm high school cross-country coach here in town. And I just simply want to say that I support this and the whole group of us are ready and willing to donate our time and our resources to make this project happen. Thank you for your support and thank you for the opportunity. I have also a letter of support from the Orchid Area Advisory Group that I'd like for you to have.

Simple as that. We're ready to go to work. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

You've

put a lot of time into this. Thanks Mr. Escobar And that's the final comment on 19? Yes, ma'am. Mr. Lonino?

Thank you Madam Chair. I do want to thank... There is another speaker.

Okay.

We have a request from Jennifer Weston

Larson. Good morning. As Lewis indicated, we provided letter of support to the Santa Maria Valley Open Space Partnership Lewis and John Blanchard came to one of our meetings and gave an excellent presentation. And we see they've been very active in inquiring into a lot of necessary areas and thought, you know, of a lot of issues that still have to be worked out in all kinds of different areas.

And in addition on our letter We advised Lewis that we also are strongly supporting item A-19, which of course is Where the Rice Ranch will seed land to the Santa Barbara County for public open space and also easements for the public trails. And I guess it comes down to the fact that This action would be really consistent with advancing the goals and policies of the Orkut Community Plan. And I think, you know, I just was looking through once again a couple nights ago The compendium of some of the policies and you know, it's all there.

But again if we don't take action to implement it then we're not going to have that vision. down the road if there aren't steps taken. And I think this is one of those necessary steps to go ahead and approve that the county accept this and approve item agenda, administrative agenda item A-19. Thank you.

Thank you. Is that the final speaker?

Yes, Madam Chair.

At this point I wanted to call on Supervisor Labanino and before I do that I want to thank him and his office incredibly just so much for helping and working and we've really worked this as teamwork because it affects all of us and Supervisor Labanino has...I have had some illness in my office some of my staff have not been real well So we're all getting better now. Not me, I'm okay. The oldest one is the okay-est one. It never makes sense. So I wanted to thank Steve and his staff for helping out so much on this and you've just been great. Thank

you Madam Chair. Well in fact I want to start off by, for those that have worked on this they know that Corey Bantalon who's my Chief of Staff has kind of been the point person on this And I think he needs to be mentioned in this as far as being a real mover on this item. I also want to... To Mr. Russell, I totally agree with you that we do have a problem up there. There's no doubt and I've been up there. I've met with Brightburn and I really believe that if we provide a legal alternative, hopefully and I hope everybody here that's a trails person today is listening to this as well. Is it you're going to need to police other folks that are on these trails when they eventually come up?

I'm going We can legitimize the area that folks are going to be going into. I gotta be honest with you, I am not a hiker. I don't ride a mountain bike. I have a Yorkie so it stays in the backyard and I take it out for long walks. But I have heard from many people and part of this job is representing everybody in your district. So... I'm really interested in moving this forward. I will say too that I want to thank Mr. LaLogia, the developer for working with us on this, but I also want to caution us that there are still many items that we need to get our arms around on the Rice Ranch project.

I think Mr. Moore brought up a very interesting one today with the construction easements. I don't want to see people going up there and Hiking through a ghost town, basically. We want it to be a vibrant community. I'd like to see Rice Ranch get completely built out. I know we're not agendized to talk about a lot of the items today but we'll be putting on the agenda for our next meeting January 10th.

pathway of how we can get to where we need to be there so that the developer gets done what they need to do. They made a step forward today, but I think this is probably the largest development we have right now in the county. The market's changed. It's stagnant. There's possibility of losing it. I really feel like we need a point person in the county that we all can go to that has a clear path of how we're going to get there. Because when I look at the project, not only is it providing us these trails and open space but it also is gonna be providing jobs if we ever start building houses out there. The property tax that we so desperately need to fund the projects that we have here.

And so I think there really needs to take a look at what the vision is. What can that be out there with the trails and a beautiful community out there? Or if we don't do anything at the county, what it's going to turn into be. And that's not something I want to see. I don't want to see a project like that's up behind the Santa Maria Raceway where it's just a ghost town with a bunch of empty homes there.

So really excited about today but I think there are some larger issues that need to be discussed. We can't discuss them today but I will be agendizing this for January 10th so we can come back and tackle some of the big issues.

Thank you, Supervisor. Supervisors Carbajal?

Thank you Madam Chair. On item 841 if the Clerk of the Board could read it for the public.

Madam Chair, members of the board...

I don't think so. Hang on. He's going to sign it. Okay,

yeah. Item 841 comes to the board from Supervisors Gray and Lavagnino is to consider recommendations regarding the formation of the Orchid Trails Commission.

Thank you. To that end I wanted to commend Supervisor Lavinino and Gray for initiating this trails commission that is basically The impetus for working on these issues that we're talking about. I would appreciate though if we could clarify the fiscal impact a little bit more, this is a little bit broad and you know as having been on the board broadness always gets you in trouble and what it says is under fiscal impact is resources needed will be based on the level of activity necessitated in the future by the commission Well, I would appreciate it if before we do any work on this project, if staff could bring back to us a budget and a fiscal impact.

Because here we know there's going to be a significant fiscal impact and it's important to understand what that is and for this board to approve that because this doesn't itemize what that is. And I know we're also fiscally prudent that it's important to understand what kind of expense we're talking about.

And I think County Council wanted to add something on 41 also that had just basically to do with language.

Madam Chair and Supervisors, the supervisors who brought this item requested minor changes to the resolution drafted by Parks Division. Those substantive changes include clarifying at paragraph 5 of the resolution That it's the board itself, not the commission that would determine an alternate meeting place. And in paragraph six, that a quorum will be a majority of the members, not necessarily five members. We've made those changes. We've distributed those to each of the supervisors and clerk at the board has distributed them in the back of the room and also in Santa Barbara at the hearing room.

Thank you, Council. Supervisor Farr? Madam Chair, actually now I have a question. How would this group interact with the County Riding and Hiking Trails Committee that we already have and make appointments to or not?

You

know how

would they interact? My vision is very similar to the Sports Commission that we have at Waller Park. What they do is they get together and specifically work on the trails and so on in Orkat And then about every, oh four months or five months there's just kind of a report from their trails group to the larger group that says these are the kinds of things we're considering. And that would be what... That's the way we do it with Sports Commission at Waller, that's now working in the Waller Park

area. So they report on a somewhat regular basis to the county?

Somewhat informal but it's basically to the Trails Commission Okay, and so... And I think Steve will have someone that's... Is Louie on? He would be. One of our people is on the Big Parks Commission or the Big

Trails Commission. So then to Supervisor Carbajal's question about the cost, how do we have any kind of a model then for the sports commission that would give us some idea about what the costs are? If it's a similar kind

of group? It didn't cost us anything. They just met and worked with plans. John Karamentos

is

the chair, so...

So but there was no like county staff in that

county? No county staff. John was the chairman and he wasn't a county staffer at the time. Other questions? Supervisor Wolfe, anything? Supervisor.

I was just going to say this, this doesn't seem to be like the sports commissioners or task force. This seems that it would be staffed by county staff based on what I've read and that's why I think a sense of the fiscal impact would be really important. I see this very similar to a compendium to what we do with all other community plans And this is the Orca Community Plan, and yet it's another expense that I would anticipate is the case.

Having this group come together working with county staff to address the trail issues. I think it's a good thing. I'm just saying it's important to codify and understand what the fiscal impact is and call it what it is.

Madam Chair? First of all, I think this is a wonderful project to have in your district. And I was trying to figure out why in the past a previous board didn't accept it. I didn't get into that but I think now is the time to move forward. I kind of liken this to what happened at San Marcos Foothills and that was before I became a board member When part of the land that was purchased by the developer, it's a little bit different. He deeded a portion of that to the county and then what we did is Through parks, they have been working with community members to work out a trail system.

And part of that trail system was in place but it wasn't up to really any very good standards I guess you might say. So they've been working with the community to put together a much better plan for that trails portion You know we don't, in my district we have a CSA assessment for open space so we're trying to use some of that money for that particular project. I think however in your project there is an allocation of $60,000 from the Parks Department The way I would envision this, I guess that goes for the maintenance of the area. And I would imagine that this commission if they work like the advisory group, they just have different names at San Marcos Foothills are more of an advisory group so they're not appointed by the board but they work with Parks Department and as you mentioned there really is no substantive cost, except there is some staff time that goes into it.

So I don't know. I understand the concerns raised by Supervisor Carbajal about you know it's very open-ended about the fiscal impacts maybe we can just tighten that up a little bit but I think that you've got Folks here who've spoken and I've looked to see, and they actually are the members that are on the advisory committee. I have a lot of confidence in the work that they're going to be doing. I think it's going to be monitored very well. It doesn't make me necessarily happy that we're taking money out of the Parks Department for this project but on the other hand, this is such an incredible opportunity for this community to have a trail system. So I'm inclined to go with both pieces of this and again, I'm just taking a leap of faith that our Parks Department's going to be working well with this group and really getting it up to speed so that folks like the speaker who was here Can go hiking with his kids and not lose this valuable asset that we have.

Madam Chair, I think it's interesting if somebody flip the TV on just now it's the North County is fighting for open space and trails and my first district supervisor is pushing for the fiscal oversight. Get a little reversal today. One thing I did want to bring up is I know there's a specific plan application in the system. And...