Group seeks to curb urban sprawl

mgreen@newspress.com

A prominent local developer and two Santa Barbara City Council members are part of a group seeking to create a local agency to purchase open space for preservation.

Leaders of the Initiative for Land Preservation said Tuesday they hope to place on the March 2001 ballot a measure that would create an open space district stretching from the Ventura County line to Gaviota. The goal is to empower the new agency to issue bonds to buy tracts of undeveloped land and maintain them as permanent, public natural areas.

The group's brochure calls the move "a proactive approach toward addressing the issues of urban sprawl and development in sensitive areas."

Issues yet to be settled include the amount of annual property assessments that would be levied to pay for the bonds.

City Councilwoman Marty Blum and Harriett Phillips, president of the nonprofit Goleta Valley Land Trust, are among the 11 initiative committee founders. Others include: Jeff Bermant, president of Bermant Development Corp.; Councilman Gregg Hart; Grant House, city planning commissioner; and Mark Chaconas, aide to 3rd District county Supervisor Gail Marshall.

The group began fanning out this week to tout their plan to local organizations. Blum and Phillips said they want civic and conservation groups to send letters of support to state Sen. Jack O'Connell, D-San Luis Obispo, and Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara. With that demonstration of local backing, the two legislators would try to place an initiative rider onto other legislation this session.

The rider would allow for the initiative to appear on the same ballot as the district's first land purchase bond measure. It is necessary because the deadline for new legislation this year has passed.

At the earliest, the initiative and a bond measure naming a property to buy and its price would appear on the ballot next March. If not, the group's next target is the November 2001 ballot. Residents within the proposed district would be eligible to vote. Every district bond measure would require an election and a two-thirds majority in favor, backers said.

Fund-raising burnout is one reason a district is needed, Blum said. Multimillion-dollar private fund-raising efforts and the donation frenzies they produced led to the purchase and preservation of the Douglas Family Preserve in Santa Barbara and the Carpinteria Bluffs tract in Carpinteria. But, how many donation drives of that intensity can there be? And, state and federal grants are hard to get, Blum said.

The open space district, Phillips said, "is a better way to go."

Included in the property that could be purchased by the proposed district is the Bishop Ranch, hilly meadows with mountain views that sprawl between Los Carneros and Glen Annie roads along Highway 101 in Goleta. Another is More Mesa, a large parcel on ocean bluffs between Hope Ranch and south Patterson Avenue. Another could be the so-called Santa Barbara Foothills, overlooking the city east of Highway 154.

Other counties have successfully created open space districts, Phillips said. In Marin County, 12,000 acres have been preserved. In Sonoma County, nearly 27,000 acres have been purchased.

Blum said she had initially hoped to launch an initiative similar to the open space initiatives approved by voters in Ventura County. Those initiatives require voter approval before agricultural land can be converted to urban uses.

But passage of a so-called SOAR initiative would require countywide approval, something that isn't likely in Santa Barbara County, she said.

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