Planning Commission - Special Meeting

Monday, August 17, 2026Official site

The Santa Barbara Planning Commission and City Council held a joint meeting to introduce the "Pathways to Yes" initiative and initiate a zoning ordinance amendment for a "Better Buildings Pilot Program." The bodies supported moving forward with the program, directing staff to refine the point system to prioritize affordable housing and clarify its interaction with state density bonus laws.

About this meeting

Government Body
Planning Commission
Meeting Type
Planning Commission
Location
Santa Barbara, CA
Meeting Date
August 17, 2026

Published excerpts

Only published remarks appear here. The full transcript is not published.

5 sections

47:01 – 47:37•Benjamin Peterson

Oh, I'm first. Okay, great. Thank you very much for the presentation and for all the work put into this. Exciting. I have a question. Can you speak to how this is going to interact with the changes that we may be making to our inclusionary ordinance. Um, you know, we, in this program, we are going to mandate the 10% moderate, but on Thursday we're, we were potentially reviewing some changes to that. So how does that work if we make changes to our inclusionary ordinance?

47:43 – 47:54•Benjamin Peterson

And then my second question would be, how did we arrive at the decision to include the geographic area and only the geographic area that we did? Thank you. Okay.

54:06 – 56:05•Lucille Boss

All right. Ditto to all the questions so far. And I really appreciate the framing of this as do we get more housing as an overall measure? And I'd ask that we consider do we get more housing that we need the most? And if so, how do we measure that and how do we make sure that the incentives are aligned with the housing that we need the most? We have a really great housing element that I think this mirrors everything that's in the housing element already. It called for all of the measures and the pathways to yes and the better buildings efforts as well. But the housing element also notes that p

1:46:37 – 1:49:24•Lucille Boss

Thank you. I am equally excited about this. I think the Planning Commission every other week says, what's going on with the housing element? We have these programs and policies. What's going on? And now we know that you're making really incredible progress. So thank you for the work that you've put into this, and I'm looking forward seeing the measurable results. A few specific things that are really important to me, affordability focus and emphasis, especially for the people who already work downtown, that was detailed in the housing element and Council Member Santamaria just mentioned it as

2:06:25 – 2:10:11•Benjamin Peterson

Thank you. Mr. Peterson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And again, thank you, staff, to all your work and for what I think is an innovative and creative project. I echo it. I love it. I support it and it will evolve. First off, yeah, we need to make sure that it's legally justifiable and that we can't, that it's legally justifiable alternative to state density bonus law and that it doesn't compete with the program or that we can't stack it on top of there. That being said, I think my comments will operate under the assumption that this is legal and justifiable and so, That being said, first off, I woul

These excerpts are remarks by officials whose identity a person confirmed, from a transcript generated automatically from the official public meeting video and presented unedited. Accuracy may vary; view the original recording for reference.