Planning Commission

Okay. Mr Villalobos, will you please make the TV announcement?

thank you.

Can we go to the agenda status report Mr Wilson?

Good morning chair and commissioners in regards to the status of our agenda today we have one item on our standard agenda and that is the phase 1 oil and gas prohibition ordinance amendments and staff is ready to present on that item today I'll move to the projection report Mr. Chair

yes

So our next scheduled hearing will be on April 29th, and that will be in Santa Barbara. There's two items projected on that day development plan for a footpath handrail in the sermon area and then the housing project in Los Alamos area on Price Canyon again that will be held in Santa Barbara on April 29th so we will not be meeting again until the end of the month And following that, we begin May on May 6th and will be in Santa Barbara on that day.

That was the date that we continued the Utility Skills Solar Amendments Project so that's the only item on that agenda and that will be in Santa Barbara on May 6th. Then moving further down into May, we canceled the May 13th hearing And then our next hearing after that will be May 27th. We had continued the Chick-fil-A project on to that date and there's also a appeal of a parcel map on that date as well, and that will be in Santa Barbara on May 27.

And then in June no items projected for June 3rd but then we will be returning to Santa Maria finally Two items projected for that date, a tentative parcel map and then a development plan permit transfer on the asphalt refinery in Santa Maria. And again that's June 10th in Santa Maria. There's no other items projected in June or in July but I'm sure that will change as we progress so that concludes the projection report Mr. Chair

Alright thank you. So at this time we allow for public comment, public testimony only related to items not on today's agenda so at this time is anyone prepared to give public comment again on items not on today's agenda?

And for those of you online if you'd like to speak okay we do have one hand and then for those of you joining us by phone its star 9 to raise your hand So our first speaker will be Jason Marischal.

Marischale, can you hear me?

Perfect go ahead.

Okay great thank you. Good morning Planning Commissioners. Thank you for the time my name is Jason Marischale and I'm a Vice President of Kimberley Gardner, a national engineering and planning consulting firm. I just want to briefly speak about housing needs in Santa Barbara County I reviewed the 2023 county housing element and really identified two critical facts. One is that in 2022, the county had the sixth highest average cost rental housing in the United States.

And then number two, in the past two decades, the annual average permitting of new housing in the county decreased by approximately 37 1⁄2%. The housing element that was drafted by the county and approved responded to a state RENA allocation of about 5600 units By identifying potential housing sites across the county, doing some rezoning and some code modifications. And I believe that the Planning Commission would be really doing a great service by reporting the number of units permitted in unincorporated county on a regular basis to evaluate the effectiveness of the measures that were identified in the housing element. Kim Lee Horne's consulting presence in Santa Barbara County continues to grow. We're working on the airport. We have some hospital projects, some housing projects and a lot of exciting things happening We're really honored to help improve the infrastructure and help build communities in the county.

We're also strategically opening offices across the state, and we've identified Santa Barbara County as there is an area we'd really like to open a physical office but I will say that access to affordable and available housing for our employees is really a strong barrier to entry for us. We have great desire. The opportunity is difficult in part because of ongoing housing issues that I know you are all aware Kimberly Horn is helping to build communities, helping communities across the state address housing issues that are endemic to California. With our planning and engineering efforts we actually write housing elements as well. We do strongly encourage the Planning Commission to continue support housing projects willing to offer our services, our planning and engineering services to the county and to builders within the county to help develop affordable and intelligently planned housing that we really feel is critical to sustain the high quality of life Santa Barbara County.

Thank you for thank you for the time.

Well, thank you any additional

no additional hands up Mr. Chair

OK so this time we proceed to planning commissioners informational reports when individual commissioners can present brief reports on planning issues seminars meetings literature any other item they feel would be of interest. Any informational reports? Okay, with that I will make one. I believe two weeks ago I had the opportunity to observe the scoping hearing held by county staff on the Solomon Hills development. It was well attended it was very informative and very well managed by staff so I appreciate their effort in conducting that hearing. That workshop, I suppose. So now we move on to minutes.

Have the commissioners had an opportunity to examine the minutes of our meetings of March 4th and March 25th? And if so, are there any corrections deletions or additions that anyone would recommend? Well, given the absence of any recommendations on or noticing of corrections omissions or deletions. Do we have a motion to approve the minutes of March 4th 2026 and March 25th 2026? Motion to approve. Would you second?

I will second Mr

chair at all in favors. Aye. So director's report, do we have a director's report this morning?

We have two

sets of minutes. Oh excuse

me. Was that for I'm sorry was that motion for both sets or just the March 4th? Both sets. Okay great thank you. Sorry Lisa.

That's okay good morning members of the commission. I wanted to report on the board hearing yesterday. We had the presentation of the Long Range Work Program for long range planning. It was well received, the board did not modify any of the recommendations we made on how we allocated staff. If there are members of the commission that are interested I'm happy to share copies of the presentation that we made to the board so you can get a sense of how staff would be allocated with respect to the programs in the next fiscal year.

But suffice it to say, we're spending quite a bit of time on state mandated items such as the open space element, the circulation element and the safety element and then implementation of the housing element. In response to the question that we received, and I want to touch on this respect of the housing element. The county has approved over 2,000 new housing units which is quite substantial given the history of the county and the level of housing units that we've approved in the last couple of decades so I think it is The actions that were taken by the board and recommended by the Planning Commission have been quite significant with respect to the production of housing, and we have about 5,000 more sitting in the pipeline. So that's good news with respect to housing.

In terms of other items on the long-range work program, we have a number of things where we'll be working on with respect to the ordinance, and one of them is creating more ministerial permits, so simplifying the process for types of projects that are more simple. And that is going to the board at briefing, making sure we're going in the right direction on the 5th of May.

As Chair Reed indicated, the Solomon Hills scoping hearing was held for the EIR. That's a substantial project. That's around 4,000 units and several hundred thousand square feet Um, commercial development in the Solomon Hills in the Orcutt area. And so there were a lot of comments about the cost of housing now in the North County. Traditionally it had been more affordable than the South County and it still is more affordable but it has become unaffordable for the community there and we heard from I think it was Marion Medical indicating that they've been having a hard time recruiting and retaining staff because of those issues. And so, that's something that I think the county is paying attention to and wanting to make sure that they get the similar kind of focus that South County has been getting with respect to housing costs.

And then one other exciting thing is we launched our pre-approved ADU plans They're free, and they are completely 100% plan-checked except for any site preparation work that needs to be done for an ADU. So anybody who wants to build one can go on our website and look at these plans. We have a couple of different architectural styles, and we have a number of different sizes.

And so that can save a homeowner tens of thousands of dollars In terms of hiring an architect to draw up a set of plans. So that's I'm excited to see how many people will take advantage of that and then in terms of future board items next week are the budget workshops we are on the 13th of April so that's the Monday if you're interested in watching that one thing to note for planning and development and I may have mentioned this at our last meeting There's an effort by all county departments to address the budget shortfall that we're going to be facing.

And one of the ways in which we are doing that is, we are keeping a couple of positions that are currently vacant open. Two of those happen to be in long range planning. We have requested the restoration of one of those positions and long range planning so we can keep moving the programs forward at a faster clip But that's a decision that the board will make during the budget hearings ultimately. And there's a lot of demands and a lot of needs out there so I you know the board will do what they think is best and we will accommodate it.

I also wanted to mention that we are moving the concept for local preference For marketing, it's requiring a marketing plan of developers and that's for market rate units. That's going to be going to the board on the 21st of April. There's as I've mentioned previously there's not much we can do in terms of demanding that market rate units be offered at a right first refusal for market use Because of the state laws that protect against discrimination, so fair housing laws, federal and state laws. And so we're trying to navigate a path so that we can give our local community the best shot at getting access to these new units. And I think hopefully it'll make a difference It's not I think what we would all like to see but that's our goal is to make a difference and give people an opportunity to get into these units.

And then we are as I mentioned we're working on this ministerial permit process and will be briefing the board on the 5th of May. And I'm happy to answer any questions.

I have a question. I'm looking at those pre-drawn plans for ADUs. I actually thought they were really attractive and I appreciated the variety of sizes and styles, and then I also thought about what we hear over and over again, the dearth of worker housing particularly in our ag and rural areas. Has the county, have we contemplated holding any sorts of workshops or things that people with those needs or people with you know rural lands who might want to provide some housing how they could implement that and actually put in one or more ADUs?

That's an excellent question Chair Reed. We don't have anything in our work program right now for that outreach effort, but it's a good idea and I'm happy to work. And I think you're particularly involved in reaching out with the agricultural community up there to try and assist with that. There are also another section of our code that addresses farm worker housing We have tried to get that information out to the farming community and we can certainly do some of that through the AAC.

There's been a reluctance to move forward on the farmworker housing because the sanitation has been an issue. If it's one or two or three units, it's easier but it's been challenging for a larger complex because they don't have access to municipal services But I'm happy to work with you on figuring out an approach to try and get this information out.

Yeah, it might be very interesting. I think we should pursue any alternative available to help meet that need. So Commissioner Park?

Yeah, I wanted to address the ADUs also. Before you came on the commission Commissioner Reed a few years ago I gave various workshops in rural areas and even though they were on other subjects sometimes I'd always bring this up and I gave several talks to different real estate groups. And I think you've got a good point I have a question though about those pre-approved plans. I think they're excellent. What I like is that there's four simple plans, floor plans but each one has three architectural styles that are optional and so you can and they all look very different it's kind of surprising but my question is in looking at the sizes they would be like 492 square feet and I think the biggest was 900 something square feet Most of those are under the 800 square feet, which prevents us from imposing our development standards under state law.

But in the rural areas they can't take advantage of that provision of state law because they're not strictly zoned for residential. And so in a rural area you're probably wiser to go up to the max size of 1200 square feet Yeah, and I don't see any plans for buildings that are that size. Yet I think that they're probably the most common for areas that aren't strictly zoned residential and I just wonder why that is? And it's not just Santa Barbara County. I look at them in other counties and I don't see them that are pre-approved for that size so what am I missing?

When we looked at which sizes we wanted to include in the pre-approved set, we were looking at what we mostly see coming in. So what are the preponderance of units and their size range? And then also what we were finding is that people who are building an ADU that large typically wanted to build an ADU that matched their existing structure And we talked to some other jurisdictions that had pre-approved ADU plans to see sort of what was the most popular.

And so that's how we settled on the sizes that we have now. Now if somebody finds a pre-approved plan set like in San, many of these we took from other jurisdictions they let us use them. So if somebody were to find a pre approved plan set in San Luis Obispo County or Ventura County or some other place for $1,200 Square foot unit. Our building department division would work with that applicant to shorten the plan check and we would certainly know we had to modify these plans to be consistent with local codes and local issues with respect to soils etc..

But we could certainly I think it would it would be an advantage to take a 1200 square foot plan and bring it to the county versus having one drawn up themselves. That would reduce cost.

Yeah, I'll be on the lookout and I think that you know a lot of prefab ones I see that are basically they're playing like two double wide Trailers, they look like emergency housing but they're pushing right that size. So I have another question for you. It increasingly seems to me when we look at development review projects that sometimes we're looking at things that oh maybe we don't really have to like when we used to look at dance studios and karate studios coming into shopping centers and needing a CUP and so forth And I think a good way to help the budget problems, certainly for this department is if we could invest more in long-range planning on revision of our zoning ordinances and our pretty ancient elements that are part of the general plan.

It would actually make it quicker to process some of the development review stuff. That's just a belief I have so I had to state it get off my chest.

Commissioner Park thank you for mentioning that You'll be interested to monitor the hearing on the 5th at the board. To take a look at the kinds of things we're trying to downshift so that they become truly ministerial that won't get appealed all the way up to a PC and then won't bog down development review staff with a longer processing time frame. When something's ministerial, if it meets our code and it's ministerial we should be getting those permits out quickly.

Oh, and I'm sorry, I just got a notification. We are moving that briefing to the 12th, I forgot. Supervisor Nelson wanted to be there and he's not gonna be at the 5th so the ministerial permit briefing is on the 12 of May. So make sure you make a note of that. But I think you'll be pleased to see the kinds of things that we want to do in terms of the streamlining.

Because I agree it will make, it will allow our development review staff to focus on the bigger projects and not on these small projects like a pool for instance which currently requires a land use permit and noticing and can be appealed and can go all the way to the board. So those are the kinds of things that we want take out of that process and make them truly ministerial, including single family residences.

Well very good thank you

yeah.

All right thank you for that Director Plowman. Did you have a question? No okay thank you for that Director Plowman so now well you're welcome now we'll proceed to our standard agenda Mr. Villalobos, could you read the item, ma'am?

Yes. Thank you. The following is a hearing on the request of the County of Santa Barbara Planning and Development Department for the County Planning Commission to consider adopting Ordinance Case Number 26-ORD1 and determining that the ordinance is exempt from provisions of CEQA pursuant to Sections 15307 and 15308 of the state guidelines for the implementation of CEQA as well as adopt ordinance case number 26 ORD2 and determine that that ordinance is exempt from the provisions of CEQUA pursuant to sections 15307, 15308 and 15265 of the State Guidelines for Implementation of CEQA.

Okay, at this time I'd like to ask from commissioners any ex parte reports they may want to make relative to this particular item. Commissioner Cooney?

Thank you Mr. Chair. I would like to report that Had the pleasure of meeting with several prominent representatives on this subject. The names are Katie Davis, Tara Rengifo, Haley Ehlers, Pasha Madabi and Michael Chiacos. And several of these individuals are here today.

All right. Commissioner Ford?

Thank you. I too had an excellent meeting yesterday on Zoom with Ms. Haley, Ms. Davis, Mr. Chiacos, Mr. Mondavi and Ms. Ranjitha.

All right. Commissioner Martinez?

Yes, good morning everyone. Yes I had the pleasure of speaking with Mr Ed Hazzard from NARO yesterday on the telephone. I also had the pleasure of speaking with Charlie Katherman prior to that. I would also say that I spoke to a lot of people in my community Santa Maria about what this is about because I believe that if the law provides that we're supposed to look at what the needs of our community And I spoke to a lot of citizens of Santa Maria, and I would say 20 probably of them are just discussing them. Thank you.

Commissioner Park? You know we're actually not required to do ex parte disclosures on legislative items but since you've asked and I'm fine to discuss it, I'm not going to disclose any And try to remember every one of the kind of casual contacts I had, just like Commissioner Martinez does. You walk down the street you go in the grocery store and and you talk to this person or that person but there's a lot of folks let's put it that way and I agree with Commissioner Martinez that are very interested in all the different communities and I did meet with The EDC offices with the various people that Commissioner Cooney named.

Okay, great I discussed this with Commissioner Cooney before we gone who's my vice chair. We both thought it appropriate to ask for these information. I met with Ed Hazard in Naro California and Andy Caldwell at CoLab Santa Barbara County Tom Widrow of Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Association, Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Advocacy Center. Mr. Ramon Elias formerly of Santa Maria Energy, Claire Weinman of the Grower Shippers Association Eric Vasquez of Asfalta Mary Hayden of Chamberlain Ranch and probably about a hundred other ranchers farmers So that's that so staff if you are ready, you can proceed.

Thank you Mr. Chair, members of the Commission Alex Tuttle with Long Range Planning and I'm joined here today there's been several folks involved with this work effort per the board's direction so just working down the line here we have Aaron Briggs with our Energy Minerals Division who can provide some Technical insight on all things oil and gas. And then to my left, Kathy King, Supervising Planner and Karina Martin, Staff Planner on the project. And then behind us sitting in the audience there we have staff from CSD who we've been coordinating with on this project as well since it's part of a larger effort under the direction of the board.

With that I'll turn it over to Karina.

Thank you. Good morning chair Reed and commissioners again for the record my name is Karina Martin and I will be giving today's presentation on the phase one oil and gas prohibition amendments. So the purpose of today's hearing is to review and recommend approval of the board-directed onshore oil and gas prohibition amendments. And to summarize, last October the board directed P&D staff to initiate amendments to the LUDC as well as to the Coastal Zone Ordinance to prohibit the drilling of new onshore oil and gas wells in the inland area and in the coastal zone.

These proposed amendments are in response to the measures and goals contained in the 2030 Climate Action Plan that address greenhouse gas emission reductions. And these amendments are also consistent with Assembly Bill 3233, which was signed into law in September of 2024 and authorizes jurisdictions to impose restrictions by ordinance to prohibit oil and gas operations or development Or impose regulations, limits or prohibitions that are more protective of public health the climate or the environment than those prescribed by state law.

And to just briefly recap, the boards or during the board's adoption of the 2030 Climate Action Plan back in August 2024. The board adopted a resolution directing Community Services Department known as CSD to identify viable measures and goals to address greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas extraction and processing And in response to the board's resolution, CSD returned to the board in May of last year and presented several options.

CSD identified that prohibiting new oil and gas drilling to be the most viable and least resource intensive option to develop, to adopt, and to implement to ensure no net increase in onshore oil production from new drilling. At that hearing the board then redirected staff to return with a framework to develop ordinance amendments as well as a long-term plan to phase out existing oil and gas facilities and operations. So due to complexity, the effort to prohibit and prepare a long term plan was divided into a two phase approach Phase 1 focuses on preparing amendments to the LUDC and CZO to prohibit new drilling of onshore oil and gas wells.

Staff estimates that these amendments would be adopted this summer and submitted to the California Coastal Commission shortly after for review and certification, and this process could take anywhere up to 9-15 months. Well phase two includes the preparation of an amortization study for existing wells, oil and gas facilities in operations which will be led by CSC staff.

Staff also anticipates that Phase 2 may include the preparation of an environmental impact report, as well as consideration and preparation of amendments to effectuate the phase-out period to seize existing operations. And staff anticipates that this process could take approximately three years to complete. On October 21st of last year, P&D staff provided the board with a status report on the number location and condition of orphaned and idle wells in the county.

And this status report is included in your staff report package as attachment G. And at that hearing staff reported that as of September 2025 the California Geologic Energy Management Division known as CalGEM Records indicated that there are approximately 1,039 onshore oil and gas wells categorized as active and 1,221 as idle within the county's jurisdiction. The county last approved an oil drilling and production plan in March of 2014 known as the North Gary Production Plan And more recently, a land use permit was granted in September 2019 for an oil drilling and production plan exempt project known as the Amrich Project. Moving on to the ordinance amendments The proposed amendments to the LUDC and CZO revise existing standards to prohibit new drilling oil and gas wells as well as prohibit re-entering previously abandoned wells, and revise the applicability and development standards to be consistent with the proposed prohibition.

The proposed changes will not apply to existing facilities and operations with a vested land use permit or an approved oil drilling and production plan that authorized the future drilling of new wells. And a summary of the proposed ordinance amendments begins on page 4 of the March 31st staff report, and I'll just briefly outline them in the next two slides.

So, the proposed amendments do revise section 3552.50 oil drilling and production again to prohibit new onshore oil and gas drilling activities in all zones as well as in section 3553.40 to remove drilling operations and drilling and production facilities In Section 3553-60, Conditions, Restrictions and Modifications under Approved Plans. The amendments remove drilling only option from modifications of development standards. And finally in Section 3555-30 the amendments revise applicable findings to remove proposed oil drilling.

Similar amendments are also being proposed to the coastal zoning ordinance and they're listed on this slide as well as summarized on page 5 of the staff report. And the proposed ordinance amendments to the LEDC and CZO are recommended to be determined categorically exempt from environmental review. As further explained in Attachment B, Class 7 and 8 categorical exemptions apply to actions carried out by a regulatory agency for the protection of natural resources or the environment.

And as a result, no significant environmental impacts would occur as a result of these ordinance amendments pursuant to Sections 15307, 15308 and 15265. And the recommendations for today's ordinance amendments can be found on pages 1 through 2 of the staff report dated March 31st. And to summarize, they are to make the required findings for approval including CEQA findings found in attachment A to the staff report.

To determine that proposed LUDC and CZO ordinance amendments are exempt from the provisions of CEQAs And finally to adopt a resolution and recommend approval of the LEDC and CZO amendments found in attachments C and D. And this concludes staff's presentation, and staff are available for questions. Thank you.

All right at this time do we have questions for staff from commissioners? Commissioner Park

Yeah, I have a lot of opinions on this that I'll mention later not now. But I do have a question on the proposed amendments. I looked through them to see if there was a definition of what new drilling means and I didn't find it. So is that me or is that there's nothing in there? Is there a definition?

Mr. Chair and Commissioner Park We don't have a definition of new drilling.

Okay, let me tell you why I'm asking. Several years ago when we're addressing Cat Canyon, you remember that? And I would tour local facilities, ranches and farms and see what the oil industry was doing kind on the local basis And I remember seeing a facility, I think it was at your ranch and it was with you that was Vaquero. Was Vaquero there? And it's very sophisticated. It is very impressive. You know basically you walk in an office and see these big computer screens and they could show each well and what was going on in it And so many of these wells had lateral branches, because that's been the big story in American oil drilling in the last couple of decades is horizontal drilling and so forth. So what I'm wondering is if somebody has a pre-existing well, you know, the vertical hole going down and they've got all the infrastructure and all that, so they don't need new roads, they don't need new anything And they simply want to drill in a different horizontal direction or lengthen something.

Okay, just so they can better tap that oil field that they're already tapping. Is that new drilling? Is that prohibited?

Or is it okay? Commissioner Park, that is not new drilling and that would not be prohibited. So the distinction would be if an existing well has been abandoned and it needs to be re-entered That would be prohibited. Right now that is defined as essentially a new well, that would require a permit just like a new well so once a well is abandoned it kind of changes the circumstances.

An existing well that's either active or idle being re-entered reworked sidetracked drilled to a new downhole location would not be prohibited and would not require a permit

And that seems like that's intentional, not accidental. Right? Correct. And I will express opinion. I think that's a good thing because I think that will ease the burden on a lot of drilling companies and landowners to at least be able to utilize what they have for the time being. Well, very good. That was my question. Thank you.

Commissioner Martinez

Thank you, well I do have a lot of opinions regarding this matter. I agree with Commissioner Park and reserve those for later after we hear from people but my question to staff right now is the way i'm reading everything this would basically mean a complete eradication the goal is a complete eradication in this county of any oil exploration am i reading this right with the phase out and no new drilling they're

Commissioner Martinez through the chair. The prohibition, yes would prohibit any new oil and gas drilling in the county and countywide

but then we're also looking at the amortization for the phase out completely correct

that would be part of Phase 2 this project is Phase 1 so that amortization study in the phase out will come at a later time so right now we're just focusing on prohibiting the drilling of a new well through the LUDC and CCO

But it's all part of the same effort. It's A plus B equals C?

Yes, because that was board direction yes.

Okay and so then in looking at this whatever happened and I didn't hear any consideration from the staff yet in regards to what is it was about a few years ago probably five maybe even seven years We're asked the question of whether they wanted to do this and the voters of Santa Barbara County said, no we don't want to do this. Whatever happened in consideration of that by the staff?

Because the reason I ask that is because in AB 3233 it says to my quote will therefore enable communities to make decisions that align with their needs so that's the last time I heard the community speak So has the county staff done anything to look at the community needs?

Commissioner Martinez for the chair. I guess I would answer that by indicating that the board gave very clear direction to county staff, which is to prepare this set of amendments So we're responding to board's direction on this project and coming forward to the commission with it, with this set of amendments.

Okay that clears up that one thing and I get what you're saying because it is in the attachment of the board's direction so this is done at the board's direction solely not in reflection upon the community needs as AB 3233 says okay. And then we're talking about No new wells or anything. And even though you made clear that the phase-out, which is Phase 2 of this thing, has there been any consideration as to what the economic impact is upon those who own the minerals?

Commissioner Martinez, through the chair. I think yeah what you're referencing is like royalties or mineral rights associated with property owner or properties and that is something that will be considered and explored as part of the amortization study under phase two but it was not factored in with this current effort of prohibiting any new drilling

Well, I have more questions than this but that was after my preliminary questions. Thank you

OK. You know, Commissioner Park, even though we're not brown-octed on this one, he somehow divined away my first question and probably the most important one about what is because this is ostensibly a ban on new wells. What is the definition of a new well? You know, same question I asked when we had our conference earlier. So I mean you gave an excellent definition of what a new well is but I think the ordinance would be much more defensible and supportable if it contained in writing like any good contract or law what that description is of a new well.

And that should also include What it is not, as you said. Because there's a lot of practices occur in oil fields new and old involving raising the production zone sidestepping the well bore a little bit those sorts of operations that are not drilling a new well. And you know there's been concern over that I actually have concern if we look at the staff report Page 3, it says prohibit oil and gas drilling to ensure no net crease in onshore oil production. Well I know by banning new wells it will certainly result in no net crease increase in onshore wells but you can increase production without more wells by doing some of these other well maintenance procedures so that You know, I would feel much more comfortable. It says ensure no net increase in onshore oil.

You know, number of wells not on your oil production. Because yeah everything's you have more wells more production but you don't need wells to increase production if you have wells that are declining yet a well maintenance project can be performed and as Mr. Briggs mentions those are not prohibited but I think the ordinance would benefit by having that included in explicit terms okay so Thank you, Commissioner Park again.

Now I do have a few other questions though for staff since we're talking about eliminating this expansion of new wells. How many new well permits is the county issued this year?

Mr. Chair zero.

And how about last year?

Zero.

Okay. That's good, that's good. So we have a solution to a problem that is not currently extant but which as we'll get into in our questioning later could place the county in some degree of peril due to takings. Another question during the preparation of this ordinance did you actually meet or have conferences with any oil producers employees engineers those sorts of people?

No sir

Any environmental groups, people on the other side, university people?

Chair Reed no. No

okay any supervisors or their staffs?

Chair Reed no not from just the board hearings that were held previously last

year. Not CalGEM? No. Okay so you're completely of your own genesis good All right, any legal consultants? County Council oil and gas attorneys.

Mr. Chair we always work in coordinating with our county council on all matters before your commission

as we all do okay good we got to keep the county safe that's very important I mean it is it's a real issue that this is a part of and what will get into that later so thank you for that So we're going to have the, and then abandoned. Okay in terms of definition of abandon like we discussed before there's more than one definition you've got CalGEM approved state-of-the-art abandonment yet there's a lot of other wells that are abandoned perhaps to a lower level and what about the language on those?

We need to be I think consistent if they can.

So Chair Reed Any wells abandoned today or in the recent past have been abandoned to CalGEM standards. There was a time prior to CalGEM's abandonment requirements that wells were abandoned to different standards, so it would be correct to say that not all wells, not all existing wells are abandoned to current CalGEM standards. We did discuss some of the definitional issues that you're raising, we did not discuss among staff the distinction between different qualities of abandonment.

Okay because we just reviewed a project not long ago out on Clark Avenue I think Commissioner Parker, we were Browning Brown acting on that one went out there. They had a couple wells been in abandoned almost 100 years ago and they were going to be reexamined and relooked at and that's

just. And just to follow up. In certain circumstances where new development would be located near existing wells that are not abandoned to current standards or if someone's carrying out a project near wells that are not abandoned properly, CalGEM can require the formal abandonment of those wells. The re-abandonment to current standards under certain circumstances.

Yeah because I think all of us want to assure you that we don't want some old hole in the ground leaking methane or whatever okay thank you One of the questions Commissioner Martinez alluded to, any consideration of the possible liability or losses from legislative takings due to any of this?

I'm sorry, the secretary was distracting me. Could you repeat the question? Who's distracting you?

Okay, now has there been any consideration during the genesis of this ordinance of the potential for the certainty of legislative takings on mineral owners? That is people who have not yet produced yet have mineral rights thereby if it was a ban on all new wells it would automatically generate a takings. Has that been considered?

Chair Reed and commissioners, I don't think I would characterize it as an automatic taking but takings is definitely something that we've considered and worked with staff and the board on for the various phases of this project.

Okay. I just wanted to make sure everybody was paying attention to that because I know you know the financial condition of the county and we don't want them losing any more money than they absolutely have to all right so that concludes my questions at this time oh good Commissioner Ford

good Thanks. I've had a couple mentors in my life who taught me about the concept that data is king, so I'm wondering what do you think? How do we know that if we pass this ordinance it's making a difference? How do you measure success?

Mr. Chair and Commissioner Ford, given the fact that this effort rose through the Climate Action Plan process and there was some pretty heavy discussion at the board level about reducing greenhouse gas-related emissions in the county, given the genesis of where this came from I would suspect that the Board's goal was to reduce greenhouse gas related emissions in the county so I think that they might measure success in this effort and in observing real-world reductions in the county's emissions.

Makes sense, thank you. Commissioner

Park?