In four months, the majority bloc on the
Board of Supervisors of Gail Marshall, Susan Rose and Naomi Schwartz will be
history.
Only Ms. Rose will be left as her other two
like-minded cohorts retire from public office.
It will be a new political day in county
government come January, one we hope will be less polarizing and more
collaborative than what has marked the tenure of these three supervisors.
We can't help but wonder what the present
majority and county administrators have in store for the county before
Supervisors-elect Brooks Firestone and Salud Carbajal take office in January.
In particular, many people have the sense
that the current leadership is rushing through housing policies that need more
thought and reflection. The board has ignored this concern.
"Housing, housing, housing" is the
new mantra from the politicians and bureaucrats, as they abandon slower-growth
policies, eye changes in zoning and consider sacrificing agricultural spaces in
the pursuit of building homes.
Once on the South Coast the effort was to
save agricultural land. Now the trendy sentiment of the moment among the
political crowd is to create so-called affordable housing.
But the county government needs to slow the
process down, at least until the new Board of Supervisors takes over four
months from now. Decisions that will make such a lasting impact on our
community shouldn't be made in such a hurry, nor by a Board of Supervisors
controlled by a lame-duck voting bloc.
We take it from a flurry of commentaries on
these pages from top county government planning and housing officials that they
are worried about a popular uprising against new policies.
They should be.
Consider the recent thoughtful criticism of
the county's proposed "inclusionary housing" ordinance by the
Montecito Planning Commission.
The county's new inclusionary housing rules
would require builders to include below-market units in their projects or pay
huge in-lieu fees to the county government.
Inclusionary is just another name for
subsidized housing.
Recent studies by professors from San Jose
State University about inclusionary zoning in the Bay Area and Southern
California found that such ordinances produce relatively few units while
increasing the overall housing costs and home prices.
The Montecito Planning Commission tore apart
the staff's work and said the county shouldn't pursue for-sale below-market
units but instead concentrate on a rental program.
Don't expect the county Planning Commission
to do much more than rubber-stamp the staff proposal. The county Planning
Commission is too politically aligned with the supervisorial majority to take
on the shortsighted housing policies of county politicians.
That's a shame because someone needs to throw
up some roadblocks and slow down this process.
SPEAK OUT
1st District
Naomi Schwartz
568-2186
E-mail: nschwar@
co.santa-barbara.ca.us
2nd District
Susan Rose
568-2191
E-mail: srose@co.santa-barbara.ca.us
3rd District
Gail Marshall
568-2192
gmarsh@co.santa-barbara.ca.us
4th District
Joni Gray
E-mail: jgray@co.santa-barbara.ca.us
346-8407
5th District
Joseph Centeno
346-8400
E-mail: jcenteno@
co.santa-barbara.ca.us