Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the 01/14/2026 County Planning Commission hearing. I'm Kate Ford. I'm chair for just a few minutes more of the Planning Commission. So let's begin. Please stand and face the flag for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Mr. Viel Lobos could you continue with the TV coverage announcement followed by the roll call.

Yes. Thank

you Madam Chair. And good morning to the rest of the Commission and everyone else joining us today. Planning Commission hearings are televised live on County of Santa Barbara television, CSB TV channel 20 at nine a. M. In the South Coast, Lompoc, San Luis Valley, San Maria, and Orca areas. A rebroadcast of Planning Commission hearings are on Fridays at five p. M. On CSB TV channel twenty. Today's hearing will also be streamed live on the county's website, as well as the county's YouTube channel, and will be available for download in a day or two. Moving on to the roll call, Commissioner Cooney. Here. Commissioner Park. Here. Commissioner Reid. Here. Chair Ford.

Here.

And then Commissioner Martinez will be joining us in a few minutes.

Thanks very much. At this time we're going to commence with the election of the twenty twenty six Planning Commission Chair and Vice Chair. And I'd just like to say first that although my tenure as chair was short, four months long, it was really interesting, it was rewarding and it was fun. I received gracious guidance from my fellow planning commissioners and especially Mr. Villalobos and Mr. Wilson. So thank you very much. Any other comments before we go on to I'd like to make the motion. Mr. Cooney.

I didn't have a chance to indicate what I felt about your short tenure, but we do change, and otherwise I'd be voting for you to go two or three more years. Very good job. Thank you.

You're very kind. Thank you. Okay. So with that, I see no other comments. I'd like to have the honor to nominate Mr. Roy Reid for chair. He's always incredibly well prepared, thoughtful, helpful, bold, and quite clever. So that's my nomination. Do I have a second?

Yes I'd like to second the motion.

Whew.

Mr. Villalobos could you record the vote please.

Yes thank you. Commissioner Cooney. Aye. Commissioner Park. Aye. Commissioner Reid. Aye. Commissioner Ford. Aye. Motion passes four to zero.

Thank you. And now I believe that Mr. Reid can take over, preside over the election of the vice chair, as well as the remainder of this hearing. So talk amongst yourselves while we do a little musical chairs.

One improvement already. This chair has adjusted a lot better than that one. Okay. Now we need to it says appoint the, no. Elect the vice chair. And I believe that our rules of succession would indicate the logical candidate for that would be commissioner Cooney. Do we need nominations for that? Yes. So I would like to nominate Commissioner Cooney as vice chair.

Second.

I guess we'll find out if Commissioner Cooney accepts this. Commissioner Cooney, I'll start with you. It's a right and a privilege. And I'm pleased to at least start this term as Vice Chair. Excellent. Commissioner Park?

Aye. Commissioner Ford?

Aye.

And Chair Reid? Aye. Motion passes. Four to zero.

Okay. Now this next one. You have to explain this. Appointment of Planning Commission Secretary and Recording Secretary, Jeff. Mr. Wilson, I mean. Congratulations,

Chair. I think it's a congratulations. Welcome to the seat. At this point you have the opportunity to appoint the secretary and recording secretary. Myself and Mr. Villalobos have sat in those roles. But we're open to any discussion, any other alternatives if you would like. But we leave that to your discretion. But it's just an appointment so you can make the nomination and take a motion to appoint myself and Mr. Villalobos if you so choose.

Well, I for one would certainly not want to make any changes. So I would certainly like to nominate, mister Wilson and mister Villalobos, to fill the spots of secretary and recording secretary. Do we have a second?

Is it an election?

It's an appointment.

It's not. Okay. So that's it?

He's done.

No. You do take action

You're not on allowed

to vote. Yeah.

I'll second.

And a vote.

Commissioner Cooney. Aye. Commissioner Ford. Aye. Commissioner Park.

Aye.

And Chair Reid. Aye. Motion passes four to zero.

Could we please have the agenda status report? That would be a better idea. Yeah. Could we please have the agenda status report?

Mr. Chair and Commissioners, when looking at the status of the agenda today, we only have one item on our standard agenda, which is the follow-up or continues to the discussion we had in early December on the recreation master plan as it relates to plan amendments and ordinance amendments. So staff is here to follow-up on that and receive additional public comment. And I can move to the projection report. Mr. Chair, if

you'd like.

Yes please. Yes, please.

Our next scheduled hearing will be on January 28, and that will be in Santa Barbara. We have the continuation of the Peterson appeal on that date. And then we also have another appeal that's in the Gaviota area that's going to be on that date as well on January 28. Again, that's going to be in Santa Barbara on the twenty eighth. So there's three items on the twenty eighth.

Moving down the projection report, we have nothing projected on February 4. And there is a note that Commissioner Reed would be absent that day. And then moving down to February 11, we have the Plantale Nurseries. And that hearing is in Santa Maria. And then we have our next meeting after that is February 25, and that will be in Santa Barbara. And there are two items projected on that. A rezone in the area, and then the 2025 comprehensive plan annual progress report by Long Range Planning. Again, that's in Santa Barbara. Nothing else is projected until we get to March 11. And there's one item on that from Long Range Planning, which is the utility scale solar amendments project.

And that concludes the projection report. And the commission may or may not take up whether or not to keep the February 4 hearing at this date. I don't anticipate there will be any items on the February 4 hearing. Okay. So you could take it up and cancel it if you would like.

I would like to move that we cancel the February 4 hearing.

I'll second, Madam Chair. Mr. Chair.

So we have a second, a motion and a second to cancel the February 4 hearing.

Would you like to do roll call?

Sure.

Okay, great. Commissioner Cooney. Aye. Commissioner Ford. Aye. Commissioner Park.

Aye. And I'd like to point out some of these things that are less controversial we can do by acclamation. Yeah. And

Chair Reid.

Aye.

Motion passes four to zero.

I have a question.

I have a I have a question. Now on February 25, myself and commissioner Park, there is an agricultural forum going on in Santa Maria. It may be beneficial for us to attend, and commissioner Park has said he would actually like to attend. I would like to explore, if this is the appropriate time, if the items from February 25 could be moved to our open date of March 4. And then we we cancel the twenty fifth meeting to permit well, actually, commissioner Park and I would like to attend that, but any commissioner with an interest in agriculture in the county could benefit.

Although I realize we certainly couldn't sit together or talk together due to Brown Act, but I would like to ask if that's something that could be considered.

So Chair and Commissioners, that is something that could be considered. We don't have anything on the March 4 hearing at this time. The long range planning item can be adjusted. The other item we would need to coordinate with the applicants to make sure they're available on March 4. If they're not available on March 4, we'd have to just coordinate what date they're available. So if the commission cancels it, then yes, we would just relocate those to the most appropriate.

So should we revisit this on February 11? Or?

Yes, we can. Mr. Chair. Can reach out to the applicants and coordinate with that and come back on the February 11?

Let's do that. Okay.

Actually I think we have the twenty eighth. So I think we could come back on the twenty eighth projection

Okay, we do for that on the twenty eighth.

Okay. So between now and the twenty eighth we'll coordinate with staff and the applicants and just let them know that that hearing date will be canceled more than likely.

Okay, thank you. Now, I think we move to public comment. This is general public comment. Any member of the public has a comment they would like to make on an item not on today's agenda, they can at this time make a public comment either in person or over the phone. Do we have anyone in the room who wants to make a public comment, again, on items not on the agenda?

And for those of you online, raise your virtual hand if you have a comment at this time. Seeing no one rise in the room and no hands raised online, we can move on.

Okay. Well, that'll bring us to planning commissioners' informational reports. Are there any commissioners who at this time wish to make a brief report on issues, seminars, meetings, literature that might be of interest to the public or the commission as a whole? It appears there are none. So with that, we need to consider, the minutes, from our December '25 hearing Provided everyone has had an opportunity, to review those minutes, are there any additions, deletions, or corrections that need to be made?

Mr. Chair, I would move approval of the minutes, of 12/03/2025. Okay. Do we have a second?

I'll second.

Okay. So all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay. The minutes of the

Thank you.

Are approved. Okay. Director's report. Do we have a director's report?

You do. I'm online. Proceed. Happy New Year. I welcome commissioner Reed to the chair position, and thank you for your service and and appreciate our former chair.

She did a great job, in her first term as chair, and she will come back around. No doubt. I have a few things to report today. There were a number of actions that the board took in December that included the adoption of the department's updated fee study, and that was heard by the board on December 9. And that's gonna be going into effect in another thirty days roughly.

They also heard the Sutar appeal that was in Isla Vista, the Mission IV project on the December 9. And, there was a great deal of back and forth between the applicant and the appellant. And, ultimately, the board ended up approving some changes to the project, and ultimately resolved the appeal, I think was a positive thing in the long run. But the applicant is still in the process of working out some of the details on that particular design change, making sure that they can meet fire department requirements. And then on the December 16, the board heard the single item, the transfer of ownership, and also heard the streamlining ordinance amendment package for the housing element implementation items that the planning commission already heard.

That item was continued to the January 27 because of the density of the package. They felt like the first, hearing was more like a workshop like we did with the planning commission. And and we went through a great detail what those changes would be, and they continued it to the twenty seventh to take action. And so we'll be going back at the end of this month for that. Future board items include a general cleanup package that will be going to the ordinances.

They'll be going on February 3. And then environmental justice element would be going on February 10 to the board. And that concludes my report. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Apparently, I see no questions. So thank you very much.

Yeah. Thank you.

Well, that will bring us to our standard agenda. So Mr. Villalobos, could you read that one in?

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. The County Planning department and county parks division will conduct a workshop with the county planning commission regarding the upcoming comprehensive plan and ordinance amendments related to the recreation master plan. Workshop will include a presentation from planning and park staff. Opportunities for public comment and questions. Questions from the planning commissioners.

I presume I will just jump in. Okay. Good morning, Chair Reid. Congratulations on your appointment to the chair, and good morning, commissioners. This is a continuance from the December 3 Planning Commission meeting, where we started to host a workshop in order to get feedback from your commission on the amendments proposed to the county land use element, adding policies and language supporting of recreation, and amendments to the land use development code to add additional uses that support recreation, and to create a new chapter in the land use development code for the recreational benefit program.

At December 3, we discussed these items, and we took public comment. Today we're here to do a short presentation on a few more items, answer some questions from the first round of discussion, and to take additional public comment today. As a reminder of where we are in the process, this is a workshop. We're not asking for any action by your commission today. We will be taking the comments from today, and comments that we've had over the last months, and refining our proposal on the land use element amendments, and land use development code amendments.

And we will be bringing those back to your commission for consideration a little bit later this year. We are developing a programmatic EIR for this entire program with the information that we gather this month from these comments. We intend to finalize that project description and are anticipating a public draft of the EIR in probably March. And that will help understand some of the impacts and implications of the proposals that we're making when we come back to your commission. So that's where we are, and from there, I'll launch into it.

I suppose I should introduce myself, Jeff Lindgren, Assistant Director with the Parks Division of Community Services. Our team is composed of Jeff Wilson, Assistant Director from Planning and Development Tina Mitchell, planner with planning and development and then not with us today, but Taylor Lane is our environmental consultant with WSP and Erica Leachman is our consultant helping us finalize the recreation master plan with Bornstadt Consulting. So since our last meeting on December 3, we had a couple of outreach efforts. We did meet with the Craytac Rec Master Plan Subcommittee, which included members from Montecito Trails, and I didn't put it up here, but also, of course, the Trails Council, discussing some of their comments. We met with Claire Weinman, grower and shipper.

We met with some developer stakeholder representatives. I met with Kathy Rosenthal, I believe you're representing both We Watch and the Santa Ynez Valley Riders, discussing some of their questions and concerns, bringing us to today. We'd like to start with some clarification and some reframing of the trail development standards that we are proposing throughout this process. I'll go through these pretty quickly, but the current options for trail development fall into three general categories. The orange bucket is county parks projects.

Fairly simple, we own the land, we own a trail easement, and we work to build a trail. We're not subject to zoning requirements in the inland area of Santa Barbara County. We do some CEQUA and we do bio studies and often arc studies. The second type of project that we normally see is a public trail that is going to be built by some other group. This might be one of our trail partners, like the Trails Council, or Santa Maria Valley Open Space.

In those cases, either there is an offer to dedicate, or grant of an easement, or they're building it on county property, in which case it flips back to the orange bucket for permitting purposes. If not, then they need to follow the current zoning, which may allow a trail, if it's allowed under a conditional use permit. The third category, and pretty rare, is private trails for recreation. They're subject to the zoning of the property in which they want to build the trail, and the permitting requirements that exist there. Next slide please.

Excuse me. We've created a couple of different trail types to help understand the permitting process a little better. The first one is the recreational trail. This is the trail that probably most of us think of when we go for a hike. It's natural surface, it's in wild land, open area type of environments, generally used for hiking, equestrian use, cycling use, and there's no real structural support type of development.

The second trail type we've identified are multi purpose or community trails, and these are generally paved trails that are along a road right of way, and they're used for both recreational purposes, people jogging, walking, pushing their strollers, but also can be used for more of a commuter purpose, so more of a transportation purpose. If you want to travel from one part of your community to another, one of these nice paved paths can be a good alternative to driving. In the cases of these two trails, we're really focusing on simplifying the recreational trail permit path. So that's what you'll hear mostly about this morning. Next slide, please.

So the new permitting standards that we're proposing are as shown here. Again, we have county parks and rec trails on county land or on county easements. Those won't really change very much. But we should note that any trails that we build or built on our behalf, we ask that they are built to U. S.

Forest Service standards, and I'll talk a little bit about more of those in a moment. The other type of trails are these private recreational trail projects, and in this case, we are looking, if they're building, looking to allow in our proposal, if they're looking to build a low impact recreational trail, as we described just a moment ago, then they'd be eligible to build that trail using a zoning clearance, or potentially a land use permit if it's a little more complicated type of trail. Again, these trails would need to be designed in compliance with the new development standards, and using the U. S. Forest Service construction standards that we currently use.

Okay, next slide. Mentioned a couple of times the U. S. Forest Service standards, and they call out sustainable trails in their standards. And what that means is that the trail is able to withstand heavy use and weather conditions, and sometimes extreme weather conditions like you might see from a natural event like a forest fire or debris flow.

So in following the US Forest Service standards, you get a set of construction standards for guidance on how to build the trail so that the trail will be safe and be maintainable long term, and will withstand conditions. And I really like the last bullet where it talks about hydrologically invisible. So, in days gone by, when trails were built, they had things called water bars, and they had all sorts of devices that were inserted into the trail to direct water off of the trail so that there was no erosion on the trail. Now, there are new modern construction techniques that remove a lot of that, and you have more of a seamless trail that uses other techniques to keep water from pooling or eroding the actual trail surface. So this is part of the reason that we embrace these US Forest Service standards.

And if you want to take a look at the Santa Barbara Trail Council website, they have a really nice summary of all of that information on their website to do a great job sharing information about trails. Next slide, please. So in order to facilitate all of these new trails, we also needed to develop siting standards, so trail development standards. So of course, the first one is you follow the US Forest Service and you create a sustainable trail. And then you can see on this list, we have a few other things.

A 200 foot buffer from active agriculture on adjacent properties. Avoid biological and cultural resources. If there is lighting, which would probably only apply in limited circumstances on maybe on a, what we call the community trail, or the multi purpose trail that are more urban, then those would need to comply with the existing lighting standards for that community. And then some other standards that you see on this slide. And next slide. I'll pass this one over to Mr. Wilson.

Chair and commissioners, in this slide, and I think Commissioner Park has alluded to this as well in prior hearings. One of the opportunities and challenges that we have in doing a project of this size is we have to make sure it's internally consistent with all of the county policies and ordinances. And as we've been meeting with stakeholders and other interested groups, we've identified that we also want to look at the agricultural element to make sure that's internally consistent with the goals and policies that we're presenting in the land use element. As the commission may be aware of, the long range planning division is already looking at the open space element and making amendments to that per state law. So that's not part of what we're doing because it's already being done through the long range planning division.

However, we think it's beneficial to look at all the elements to make sure that we're being consistent and we don't have conflict internally with the different elements. And so we identified that there could be an opportunity for us to include an additional policy or goal in agriculture element just to make sure that it supports the policies that we're introducing in the land use element. So that way the elements are internally consistent and are talking to each other. And some of the things that we are considering and we're exploring is a policy that relates to supporting outdoor recreation. But that it complements farming operations and agricultural productivity.

And is trying to find that balance between recreation and agriculture. And protect agricultural activities while allowing recreation benefit incentives. Then just avoid fragmentation of agriculture and or recreational uses. So these are some of the things that we're considering as far as the agriculture element. We did, based on the last workshop, we did hear a comment about Williamson Act and how does this relate to the Williamson Act.

As we've explored that, preliminarily what we're thinking or considering is that the purpose of agriculture is to do agriculture. There are some opportunities for recreational uses in the agricultural areas. If a property is under Williamson Act contract, we're recommending that the Williamson Act contract is going to rule or supersede anything else. So any proposal on contracted land would need to be consistent with that contract. Through the Ag Enterprise Ordinance I believe they made some changes as far as uniform rules, as far as allowing additional uses to be considered compatible.

But any recreational benefit project or anything that we're proposing would need to be consistent with those contracts. Now the contract holder has opportunities as far as going into nonrenewal or canceling their contract. But that's going to be under the contract holder's purview to make those decisions. So that's, when we talk about conflict with the Williamson Act, agricultural land Williamson Act's going to rule. And then there are opportunities for compatibility that's already included.

So that's what we're recommending in regards to finding any conflicts with Williamson Act. So that's, we just want to present that to the commission, to the public that we are looking at making sure that we're internally consistent with all the elements of the comprehensive plan. And with that I'll turn it over to Mr. Lindgren to highlight a potential recreation benefit project that they're looking at in the future.

Thank you, Jeff. During our December 3 meeting, did spend some time talking about the rec benefit program, and we did have some kind of sketchy, sketched out types of examples that we presented. So we thought we would create an example that's a little more robust, and you can kind of see how this might work a little more in the real world. So in this case, we want to share with you a project that's identified in the recreation master plan, the current draft. It's a Guadalupe community park and campground.

Next slide, please. You can see Highway 1 through the City Of Guadalupe functions as Guadalupe's main street. Leroy Park is the green rectangle that is a city Of Guadalupe Park that was recently renovated. Did a very nice job in their community center and the whole renovation. Surrounding Leroy Park and around the edge of the city are a couple of ag parcels that have not seen a lot of agriculture in some time.

So we are contemplating how we might utilize these for the REC program. Next slide, please, shows oh, look at that, animation. The parcel at the top has both some we'll propose both some campgrounds and some trail connections, and then the parcel towards the south will have a community sports park. And next slide, please. Okay, this is the one I was looking for.

Thank you. Here is a concept for both of these things. The Leroy Park is still there in the middle of your screen. Wrapping around it on the north is the potential campground that we had preliminary concept design prepared for. And then we also show a community park with some sports fields and some space from some other types of events that could benefit the city of Guadalupe.

We've had discussions with the mayor and staff at the city of Guadalupe. You know, they see this as an economic development tool, as well as a recreation facility that could serve their community. We also know from our extensive public outreach that folks that live in Guadalupe who want to play competitively have to travel to Santa Maria to find good fields and good leagues for any of the sports that they're interested in playing. So this would allow them to stay home, take some trips off the highway, and be able to stay in their own community. There's a pretty substantial bicycle touring component that travels up and down Highway 1 through this area.

And they would benefit also from having some campgrounds in the area. And it also would support the Guadalupe downtown. Next slide, please. So there's two ways this project might happen. Well, there's probably more than two, but these are a couple of obvious ones.

The first one is it's a county project. The county finds funding, goes through the land acquisition process. Then we advance the design, find funding for the design, and move the design forward, and get into construction. And then we operate both the campground and the sports park as a revenue opportunity for the county parks and also supports the city of Guadalupe. That's the more traditional approach.

Through our rec benefit program, we can initiate a public private partnership with the landowners where they would have the opportunity to say build the campground and operate the campground as a revenue stream for themselves. And the substantial in kind contribution to the county could be the construction and dedication of the sports park component. And that would be operated by the county or possibly city of Guadalupe in the future as a public facility. So I just wanted to give you a little breakdown about how those two approaches might look and how one of them might be beneficial in certain circumstances, in this case, you know, utilizing our rec benefit program. Okay, next slide please.

So last time we met, there was a lot of question about substantial. Because we use this term substantial in kind public recreation benefit contribution, which probably needs an acronym of its own. But that is the component of a rec benefit project that would be dedicated to the county in exchange for the incentives that are available through the rec benefit program. So there's a lot of questions about what does substantial mean. So I went to the trustee Funk and Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary.

Everyone uses Webster's, I know, but, or their computer. But my grandfather had a giant version of Funkin' Wagnalls on the table. Looked very, that's not his, but it looked very similar to that one. And always referred us to the Funkin' Wagnall. So, I thought I'd use a couple of their examples of what substantial means.

Considerable, important or essential, having substance, material or real. So that's the direction we're going when we use the word substantial in the working definition for a recreation benefit program. So essentially, the contribution needs to advance the development of an identified public recreation project that's part of that rec benefit program. So I hope that helps clarify what we mean by substantial a little bit. Of course, we're still open to refining that in many ways as we move forward. And next slide please.

Okay. So I'm going to jump in here at the end and we don't want to take too much more time. But just to close this out, I want to give a brief explanation of the two tables that were provided along with the staff memo for the workshop today. So I'm gonna go to those in Word really quick if I can.

There we go.

Larger. So table one summarizes the various standards and parameters that we are considering for the additional rec benefit project uses. So as a reminder, these are the uses that would be available as an incentive to eligible recreation benefit projects. And so everything in this table here is the same information that was in the summary document and the presentation slides in December. But just in a table format to help facilitate the discussion.

There are some blank spaces in blue. Try to make that bigger. So like for example, country and max floor area, we're still trying to figure that out. So, you know, we welcome any input on anything on this table especially those blank spaces. And then table two, moving to that.

So that summarizes the trail permitting reframe that mister Lingren walked us through a few minutes ago. And so it explains the differences between recreational trail and then multi purpose or community trail. And that's about it. I just wanted to explain that we have these two tables open in word. And we can make comments direction from the commission and put them in this table live if that would be helpful.

We'll take the commission's lead on when you might want to do that whether it's before or after public comment. And overall, the big picture objective here is to hopefully finalize some of these details so they can go into the EIR that we are finishing up. And I believe that concludes our presentation for today and we are available for questions.

So any questions from commissioners? I oh. Hello? Hello? Now we we're in full force. Yes. Commissioner Park.

I want to talk to you about the trail standards. And as you know, usually I'll find some way to disguise my comments as questions. I'm too tired today. So I'm just going to go at it. If you could go back to these trail standards slides, one or two of them.

My recollection from just a few minutes ago is you talk about making them hydrologically invisible. I like that phrase as well. And I think that's very important. It's very important how you construct a trail. But I want to bring up something else that is maybe even more important and is something that is a form of a solution or mitigation to a problem that I think several people in the audience are going to bring up today.

A problem that we have with trails is who uses them and how. Okay? When we have the classic multi purpose trail it's everybody and his dog and everything uses it. But a lot of trails that we have, they've historically been used for hikers or maybe they were equestrian or maybe they're an important mountain bike trail. It's when we try to combine all those uses, we get conflict sometimes.

And sometimes those are unfortunate. I think we have folks in the mountain bike community that feel excluded at Live Oak. I can point out that if you go to several places including say Johnson Park property on San Luis Obispo County, you'll see that horses have basically been excluded by mountain bikers. Because they don't want to, those communities, the biking community doesn't want to have to deal with the problems, and so it's just easier to convince the powers that be to take those small number of horse users and just prohibit them. So it can work both ways is what I'm saying.

But there's another way of handling it aside from just dividing groups up and having them comment on what, who should be allowed on the trail and who should not. And that goes to the design of the trail. That's what I'm getting at. If you go to Live Oak, and I go there all the time, and I put on events there, and so I'm familiar with how people use it, what's compatible, those trails, the official ones, are essentially old farm roads. If if I was to deliberately design a trail that's dangerous because it's a potential conflict between bikers and horses, I would use that trail as a pattern because there's all sorts of blind spots, steep grades, things like that.

If on the other hand you go to a place, and I'll give you an example, the Pismo Preserve where those trails are all only a few years old, They have tremendous sight lines. So if you're on a horse you can see that bicycle coming around over here. You can see them. They have a lot of switchbacks, but they're switchbacks that are the modern kind where it's more of a curve instead of a tight angle. And they have really mellow grades, which means that nobody can really build up speed.

They're much safer if you're out on those on horse and and you're seeing mountain bikes than you are in other places. And I think anybody who's using trails and designing trails should be aware of these differences and you should, in this, this product right here, to build that into your sustainable trail standards. It goes beyond forest service and build in trails that are as compatible as possible. That doesn't mean I favor letting all users use all trails. I think we need to be more sophisticated. But, let's take the trails that we are going to put in and make them the best they can be. And, that's a way to make them better. I'm glad to take people out on horse or bike or whoever to to show you just what this looks like. Anybody.

Commissioner Ford.

Thank you. Mr. Lundgren, I don't know if this is possible, but I'm interested in knowing what modifications, suggestions, ideas you're considering, or you already have inserted here as based on the meetings that you held. And I'm very glad you did.

Chair Reid, Commissioner Ford. You know, we're still going through that process as we collect comments. And I'm sure we've, in the last day, we received, you know, a handful more of Sure. Letters. So we'll be looking at all of those, and then looking where we can incorporate a lot of those.

Some of the comments were, you know, pretty substantial type of ideas that, you know, we might not be able to accommodate in the scope of the work that we're doing. And then on the other end, there are kind of language changes in the policies, and a lot of those I think are reasonable and can be accepted, but we need to look at them kind of each on case by case basis. And then we're going to be publishing our proposals again. Right. And when we bring them back to you for your consideration, you'll see everything that was added or changed in that version of it.

Sounds great. And if there's a way that you can actually highlight those, I think Yeah, we'll see how in your proposal. Just because I think people have, the different groups have, you know, have a right to see where they, where their ideas were accepted and, considered seriously. That would be something I would suggest is either, you know, in a different font or a different color or something like that. So it's really obvious not only to the commissioners here, but to the public

what suggestions were actually taken. And then I will add in the EIR process there are, there's a comment period and then in that process there is a response to comments. Which will also be more fine tuned on each comment and responding to each of those. So there'll be a couple different ways, I assume, that we can share the changes that we're looking at.

Thank you.

Mr. Wilson, wonder if you could just be a little more specific about what you mean. Just maybe it's just me, but what you mean when you say you're really seeking this balance. What does balance look like to you? Or is it just sort of like, you know, a little demon sitting on your shoulder telling you to keep this balance between agriculture and recreation?

What does balance look like?

I'm Chair Reed and Commissioner Ford. What we're talking about is prior workshops and coordination with important stakeholder groups. And lessons learned through going through the ag enterprise ordinance amendments as well. Is that making, trying to ensure that uses that are in agricultural land, especially productive agricultural land when we talk about row crops, we're not introducing conflicts that could potentially impact those agricultural operations. So that's when we're talking about balances.

The goal of this project is this is not an agricultural project. This is recreational based. But at the same time we need to be cognizant of what other potential conflicts there could be by adding uses or encouraging uses in agricultural land. And there may be areas like grazing lands or even orchards where some of those property owners want to include these type of recreation activities. And so it's making sure that we can incorporate these uses, as well as preserve agriculture at the same time. So that's what we're talking about, trying Thank to find that

you. If I might add a little bit to that. Please. On the surface, you know, we're asking to, you know, create some new language that supports recreation. Seems like a very simple, kind of straightforward idea that most people would want and support. But we are balancing a lot of different concerns. I use balancing to describe our balancing effort. Sorry about that. But we are trying to bring all of these considerations in. There are concerns about neighborhood compatibility, about compatibility with other types of existing land uses.

Within recreation there's competing interests, so

all

of those things are trying to be addressed throughout this process. And, you know, the challenge, of course, there is creating a program that can still work, but supports all of those different interests.

Thank you. And just one more quick question, and a note of gratitude. Thanks for giving us the actual sample of what the RBP might look like. And I just, you used the word outreach, and could you just review for all of us what kind of outreach you did with the city of Guadalupe?

Oh, sure. I think we maybe had three visits on-site with the mayor and the park staff there talking about the project. Had several communications with the mayor of Guadalupe about trying to reach those individual property owners. They're older families and don't appear at this moment to be willing to sell or find a different use for their land. So we're trying to use the local network and the local connections to figure out how we might find a way to have this discussion with those families.

So the mayor of Guadalupe has been pretty involved in all of that. He took us to a nice taco shop And in we've had some good discussions with him. We also looked at another campground in Guadalupe that's not in that location, but turned out to not be feasible out by our Guadalupe Dunes Park. Very sandy, very a lot of issues with constraints out there. So, yeah. Great.

Thank you. That's it for me.

Wow. Oh, you look like you were getting ready. No. No. Okay. Okay. Okay. I have a few. First, I'll start at the end since we're talking about the Guadalupe Park. Since that could be developed, since we have the nice little park out at the end of West Main Street at Guadalupe Beach, Have there ever been thoughts of perhaps linking those two with some sort of a trail down the riverbed?

Great question. Leads us right into our rec master plan. We do have a project in the plan that is Guadalupe To The Sea Trail. It's been studied by the coastal conservancy to some degree. They've at probably seven different alignments. All of them present a lot of challenges. But it is something that has been studied and continues to be looked at, and how it might work. But this project could be, you know, one of the anchors for a Part trail like

of that, and then keeping in mind, we don't want to duplicate the levee trail.

Right.

That's under preparation. And with all the attendant real and potential conflicts that that has, which brings me to my next point. You know, we spent, was it eight or nine hearings on the AEO agriculture enterprise ordinance, and a great deal of that was related to the undeniable need to provide proper setbacks from agriculture, particularly row crop agriculture. I noticed in the presentation it was made, the point made that, it was important to have consistency with counties other ordinance as etcetera. Yet I see consistently 200 foot buffer throughout this.

I would just suggest that it would be very important to include an element of consistency, such that beneficial elements of this plan wouldn't conflict with with agriculture. We need to respect, the industry and then the amount of work that was done by planners and industry, in coming up with the AEO. I wouldn't wanna short circuit, the setbacks that were established as that and and have this, seen or used as an avenue to to bypass some of those important safety considerations. Just something to keep in mind because I will be revisiting it every meeting, which is vitally important to the 4th District and to a lot of parts of the 3rd District.

Okay. Yes, thank you, Chair. Yes, we are looking at some of the pertinent elements of the AEO and particularly the things surrounding the protection of agriculture and how they might work with our program. So that has been a consideration.

Okay. I noticed also in looking at, well, on the county website, and some of the other elements, published about trail side fences. And it seems like the fence design the county likes is the bottom rail no lower than 18 inches above ground level. Seem to find the concrete split rail type design attractive as demarcation of the edge of the trail area. Is that correct?

Chair Read, I don't think we have an absolute on any sort of fencing. Okay. We like it to have a rural character to match the community where it's being located?

I think what I'm getting at is I noticed also it says an element is part of the presentation, I believe today, was control of dogs. You know, and if you had a one rail 18 inches above the the ground does nothing for dogs, particularly in ag areas. I mean and if you're talking about wildlife, deer, and things, they could care less what the fence is. They jump over it. But, in areas of more intense agricultural use, like row crops, you have the trail.

Would some sort of a more intense, like a hog wire type fence, at least for the lower few feet, be acceptable? Or how would you consider things like that where you have a valuable trail you want to build would be a real asset, but you also have row crops where a more intense fence could solve your problem? Would that be an acceptable element?

Absolutely. Chair Reid, I think that the type of fence would fit the situation. I I understand where your comments are going now. At first, I didn't I didn't Okay. Follow. But, yes, we do use old split rail fence a lot. We have other types of fences in various locations. The Franklin Trail in the Carpinteria area has it's a six foot chain link fence. Okay. Sections of the Hot Springs Trail and Montecito have

So that is adaptable?

So it is adaptable.

Okay. That's

great. Thank you. Also, what is your it seems in here, in looking at table two that you've provided, it looks like the threshold for a trail in going from a zoning clearance to a land use permit is a 7% grade.

Yes. Chair Reid. We were looking at the information in the forest service standards, and as trails get steeper, they require some more sophisticated construction techniques. It might not that sophisticated, but, you know, could be stone retaining walls. It could be Alright. Some other features that require a little more construction than just brushing and clearing a pathway on natural dirt surface. So, as the trail gets steeper, we might look for a higher level of permitting. Still LUP, which is fairly easy to attain.

Okay. Well, was just looking in the Forest Service It's in, one of your publications talks about the standard trail would be 10% with occasional excursions to 15%. And the USFF standards tend to embrace that. That's why I was wondering why you made the cutoff at 7% instead of 15%.

I'll have to check that.

Yeah. Because, mean, if you made the cutoff at 15%, that would simplify creation of a lot of see, in my little mind, a lot many more trails, of lower slope. And I did refer to the to the US Forest Service documents on trail construction. Fascinating. Handbook, all the different. We won't discuss that here, but it's really fascinating stuff.

It's really valuable, Chair Reid, for our private land development partners. Because the Forest Service provides construction cut sheets for all sorts of different types of trail segments. They can be handed sheets on how to build a trail.

Alright, I do have some other, I'll reserve most of my other comments. I did have one about the trail side cafe, particularly the floor area and things. But one of our public commenters who wrote, and I believe he's going to be speaking here today, has some pretty substantive comment with respect to that. So I'll just, I'll reserve that. So with that. So so chair, would it

be possible to take a break before public comment?

Good idea. Yes. Let's take a break. Ten minutes? That's it. We want more? No. Ten minutes. So we'll be back at where's the clock on the hill? October we'll take till 10:15.

Okay. Welcome back to the January 14 meeting of the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission. We're discussing the rec master plan. This is our workshop. I believe now it's time to move to public comment.

Let's yes.

I think you have the slips.

Okay. I'd like to begin, with Otis Kalif of Kraytak.

And, mister chair, how much time would you like for Kraytac?

We're cumulatively gonna give them fifteen minutes.

Okay. Okay.

We're flexible, though.

Leave it off. Yeah. Oh, set it for fifteen. Good

morning, chair, commissioners. My name is Otis Kaliff. I'm chair of the Kraktak, the Hounty Riding and Hiking Trails Advisory Committee. Members of the committee are appointed by the Board of Supervisors, and our job is to advise the board. And today I'm representing we have a subcommittee on the rec master plan.

We're very grateful to have this opportunity for the workshop, and we hope that this will be a genuine workshop, an interchange of ideas. Interesting, when the rec master plan started, we were very enthusiastic, because we thought, well, here's a chance to maybe promote trails. But we also knew that there were a lot of other recreational interests in the county. Well, through the surveys on the master plan, we found out actually that outdoor, for outdoor recreation, hiking or walking on trails, is half the outdoor, 50% of the outdoor recreational activity of the citizens of Santa Barbara County. So that's the important, you know, it's pretty important.

On our subcommittee here, we have Dan Giraud, who's a professional planner, he's worked for the county, worked for an international contractor, and actually he'd worked a lot on the master plan for the contractor. He retired two years ago from that. We have John Karametzas, also a county planner, I'm sure many of you know, who's a lot of planning experience. Kevin Wallace, who is, Kevin Wallace, Kevin Snow.

We have Kevin Wallace.

Yeah, who's a rancher from, ranch owner from Nukuyama, passed president two or three times of the Montecito Trails Foundation, with a lot of experience in trail design and securing trails, and has worked a great deal with the county on acquiring trails there. And myself, I've been active with trails in Santa Barbara County for forty years. I've actually been out there physically working on them a great deal. I've been hired by the Forest Service. I used to, I was hired by the Forest Service to pack mules to support trail construction.

And so, we have, in our group, have a tremendous amount of expertise. So to start off, Dan Giraud is going to, he's going to start off. Thank you very much.

Thanks Otis. Mr. Chair, members of the commission, it's great to spend the day here with you today. This is probably my one hundred and fiftieth hearing in this room, dwarfed by the 300 or 400 in the South County Room. Before I go into a quick presentation, I just want to note some of your conversations in the vein of workshopping. The Trails Council, per some of the equestrian discussions, not Trails Council, Craytaq has drafted a policy that gets at the multi use aspect and protecting the equestrians. I forwarded that to Mr. Lindgren. He's aware of it. We're working on it, where best to incorporate it, how to address it.

But we're very well aware of the trail safety issues. I'd also like to note that Craytaq had one of our best attended meetings in Guadalupe. We're able to travel like that. It's hard for your commission to go to a venue like that. But we probably had 30 people attend this here, and the people in Guadalupe were so happy for the county's attention, because they often feel neglected. And we actually picked up our newest member, who I think is 20, and a resident of Guadalupe, a pre med at UCSB. So she's now a Craytek member, 5th District. So it was a very productive meeting. It was on the Guadalupe link to the dunes. Two city council people were there, staff was there, and a lot of citizens, including business people, who were very excited about potential assistance from the county on this stuff.

So that was great. And then the final thing I wanted to mention, which I've probably forgotten already, because I'm so sleepy today. Yeah, I'll just go into the presentation. Oh, I wanted to apologize for the primitive nature of my presentation. As a retired planning manager for the county and consulting firm, I usually have people to help me with these things, but I put it together yesterday quickly, so it doesn't match the fancy one you saw from Mr. Lindgren, which I designed with my consulting team for the campground proposal. No automation in this PowerPoint. So I want to say, let's go to our recommended action. Am I operating the slides? I probably can't do this. Okay. So Craytac

You can if you wanna

Yeah, I'll fail. Yeah, thank you. Craytac recommends that we have three basic recommendations. We recommend that the commission direct and work with PND and Parks to address the comments from our two letters dated March 11 and December 3. The March 11 letter was pretty wide ranging, we'd like to thank Parks. Many of those comments, I don't know how many, I haven't looked at it yet, been incorporated into the master plan. Particularly in trail descriptions and things like that. So we wanted to thank Parks for that. We haven't had a chance to go back and see what exactly was incorporated and what wasn't. So we thank you for that.

We have now before us this December 3 letter, which you all have a copy of, and it has considerable red lining. Perhaps a total of three pages of text, two and a half pages of text, for recommended amendments to the policies and the ordinances that you have before you are the subject of our meeting today. We would request that the commission identify and work with PND and Parks, what can be incorporated now. My grandmother used to say, don't put it off till tomorrow, which you can do today. We have readily written language, John and I have written substantial portions of the county's comprehensive plan.

We think a motion from the commission to identify what can we just incorporate now would be great. Of course, my grandmother also said my hair looks like a bird's nest, so take that at face value, and it did, or does. We also like to identify amendments that should be refined at Craytack. And I'll come to these in a second. For example, the trail design standards and the mitigation standards are something best done at Craytack with county parks and PND staff, because we have a lot of people who build trails.

And I was going to note that the Trails Council was built, and Otis is also president of the Trails Council, built 18 miles of trails for the county in the last decade or so. The lower elevations are much easier to do, the modern design standards on, than the upper elevations where we encounter some rock faces and stuff like that. But we look forward to working with Parks on that and PND on that. But we think there's a role for Craytaq going forward in the next year before we come back to this commission to sort of refine some of the development standards, ordinance provisions, trail construction standards, etcetera. And then there may be some things that we just don't concur with.

We'd like to get some closure on this, because we've been working on it for so long, and not put it off, all of it, until tomorrow, we don't know what the outcome is. Next slide please. So we'd like to thank Parks and PND for taking two hours out of their busy schedules to meet with the KRAYTAC subcommittee in December, and the letters and the recommendations. There were some very productive things that came out of that meeting. For example, PND invited Parks to, invited Kraitak to train P and D staff on trail issues.

I think that's very important, because they are relatively complex and the staff is so busy that often times it can fall off the radar. They also recommended dropping grading plan for trail construction, projects that are consistent with the U. S. Forest Service standards. Grading plans are ruinously expensive. And permitting, as I think I told you before, permitting and planning and all that takes up a huge part of trail budgets, sometimes more than the actual trail itself, in our experience, where you're in the discretionary permit process. And they also considered further downshifts. And you saw some of that today in Mr. Wilson's presentation. We're very thankful for that.

Because, you know, CUP, except for a group like the Trails Council, which can raise money and has experience with this permitting, a CUP is a death knell for many a trail project, because it's just too expensive. You get into sequel review, discretionary review, it can be $100,000 or more, which oftentimes exceeds the cost of the trail. So we're very thankful for P and D staff and parks to continue to look at this matter. However, we didn't have sufficient time to go through almost any of our other recommendations. We went through a few.

And I'm going to talk about those today. County staff did not support improved trail noticing signs, trail thresholds of significance, recreational benefit project ombudsman, or stronger policies for acquiring trails that we had recommended, or dealing with the right of way encroachment issue, which is huge in some communities. So, next slide please, guys. So I think our recommended next steps are we're hoping the commission can provide some clear direction to county staff on what to incorporate now, if that's possible. Hope the commission would support PND and Parks working cooperatively to workshop certain ideas at Craytaq.

Not rework the whole thing, but certain ideas like the trail development standards, trail design standards, things like thresholds of significance for trails. And then adopt these changes during the approval process, and they cover a variety of issues as noted below on this slide. Okay, in regards to noticing of trail projects, you see here can we go to the next slide please? You see here, this is a typical county notice above. This is for a project that would pave over about 1,000 feet of a heavily used trail, cut down mature trees and vegetation all along the trail, and have construction go on for three months, for three years, interrupting trail use and maybe closing the trail periodically to trail use.

So pretty huge impact. Impacting over the three year construction period, 300,000 trail users, based on average trail use standards. I think any project in the county that impacts 300,000 people, the people deserve to be noticed about that. But here you see an example, the county sign above, and here down below you see a city of Galita sign, where they actually explain what's happening. And the tilt up sign alone has a QR code, it has how to participate, how the trail is affected.

The county simply doesn't do that. This sign above for the project, which would effectively destroy a section of the Hot Springs Trail, just says there's gonna be a new house in a driveway, call this number. Well that doesn't seem like an effective notice. What we're really asking is that they just post a simple tilt up sign with basic information how the trail would be impacted. This cost about $150 It doesn't seem like too much to ask the developers that are impacting major trails, that the public be noticed.

I think trail users deserve to be noticed, where, to get to Jeff's favorite term, there's a substantial impact on the trail. I don't think every project needs to do this, but projects that significantly interrupt prolonged closures, cut down a lot of vegetation, or pave over the trail. We're gonna give you some examples of those in a second. Next slide please. Thresholds of significance.

For the most important public recreational resource in the county, and one that's used by tens, hundreds of thousands of people a month in the county, we don't have any standards for what is the significant impact of the trail from new development. So there's many examples of past and pending projects that have done significant damage to heavily used trails. I bring to you the Orchid Valley View Trail, which was, in the opinion of Santa Maria Valley open space, was basically destroyed by a reconfigured development project for which no notice was provided to the public. It went from the most popular trail in the Orchid Hills to one that is you hurry through it to get to the next section that isn't so ugly. Maybe that had to happen, maybe it didn't, but no one knew about it, and there was no standard which the staff could lean on.

The Arroyo Burrow Trail was paved over for about 3,000 feet. Now it's a wide, hot ascent up this hill on a paved road. No notice, no discussion. The tunnel trail was closed for a year, and there was no notice on the trail to tell people it was going to be closed for a year, until we fought for that. So there's a lot of examples about projects that have caused significant impacts to trails through vegetation removal, paving over the trail, or really prolonged trail closures.

So there's no clear standards to guide staff or the decision makers on when it might be a significant impact to the trail. And we're talking about impacting tens of thousands of people, and the Board has found, remind you, that trails are essential to the public health and welfare. So we should have a standard to deal with this. David, can we go to that next, the threshold slide, or Tina? So KRAYTAC has, there's a slide, it's called thresholds. It's in the, sorry, as I said, I'm It's not in the presentation. No, it's not, it's a separate document I gave to David. My presentation is primitive.

Wait a second.

Okay. Sorry guys. There it is. So just scroll down a little bit. So we drafted this a year ago almost. And I have the honor, at my advanced age, of having been an original author of the county's threshold manual. So I have some experience with adopting thresholds. Was a primary author at three thresholds. John Caramitos has significant experience with thresholds. We propose that the county simply consider these thresholds, direct Craytaq to work with staff to develop a recreational trail threshold, and will be done at limited expense to the county and no delay to this project.

I can guarantee you that, because I have a lot of experience with it. Tina, can we go back to the slides please. So the recreational benefit ombudsman, I won't go into great detail on this. John Park and I have been talking about this. I have a lot of respect for the staff. I like what they've done with the program. But I'm very concerned that this program is essential to getting trails, because we've lost a lot of our ability to exact trails. So we've come up with the idea of working with Commissioner Park, that maybe we need someone who's experienced at outreach, and someone who's entrepreneurial. With all respect to PND and parks, they're not necessarily entrepreneurial organizations that can work on this kind of stuff. So we urge you just to consider having a recreational benefit ombudsman that's designated.

Next slide please Tina. We have a lot of comments, the specific red lines they held you that address the comprehensive plan amendments and re zones. We have new land use on the goal themes and text amendments. And I want to remind you, and Mr. Karamizio will speak briefly to this, the majority of the county's new parks and trails are acquired through development, And we need strong policies to continue to get those parks. I bring to you Orchid Community Park and the Orchid Hills Trail System that were acquired through the general plan amendment and rezone process. Without strong policies, we won't get that. And I think it's really important that we do. We also want to address right of way encroachments. Next slide.

So these are a huge problem. And we're not talking about bike paths, on road bike paths, we're talking about road shoulder trails. It's throughout Montecito and especially San Yeddes, but every community in the county has these unpermitted encroachments which block people from using the public right of way for road shoulder trails, force equestrians into traffic lanes. It's huge problem. Now, talking about this with Mr.

Lindgren, he feels this is best addressed down the road in some other plan. I don't think we can put this kind of thing off. This isn't really important. You'll maybe hear from Faith Dieter, who's been spearheading our Sandy and Ez efforts, but two things we'd like to see at a minimum are that when someone does a major remodel, in addition, they'd be required to take out unpermitted encroachments within our right of way. It's public property, it's not their property. At least to the point that people can pass by. And second, we consider notice at the time of sale regarding encroachments, because I don't think the subsequent property owner should be dinged when they buy a house and they didn't even know. Those are things to consider. And we have some policies we've recommended to Mr. Lindgren and Mr.

Wilson. But I think we're happy to workshop those at Craytaic. They're probably not final. And to find some acceptable way to get at this issue, which is incredibly thorny and meaningful for a lot of people. So, next slide please.

So that being said, coming back to our recommendations, hopefully today we can get some clear directions to PNDM Parks on what changes to incorporate. Instead of just kicking the can down the road, we'd also like to continue to work cooperatively with Craytack at some open public workshops, which will give the public more time to wrestle with this issue than your commission has in your busy schedule. And not on the whole project, but simply on some targeted things like the thresholds, maybe noticing, maybe the encroachment standards, things like that that allow us to more fully develop these ideas. And I think that would be beneficial for the public in general. So that's my part of the presentation, Mr. Sherry. Thank you and the commissioners for your time.

All right, thank you. Next, either Mr. Snow or Mr. Karamitsos.

Thanks, Gina.

Good evening, Chair and Commissioners. My name's Kevin Snow, as someone has already pointed out. And I think from my experience of over many, many years, especially with regard to discretionary permits and land use change in Montecito, many of the urban trails that we have there and many of the extended, of existing trails, was a result of requirements that were made on the applicant to include trail and take care of problems that may have pre existed, and if not, to correct and add a trail segment where there was none. So I encourage you to pay special careful attention to the letter that we have submitted, because it is a result of many years of experience of difficulties that we've had and things to watch out for in the language. As Mr.

Wilson pointed out, we're trying to refine this recreational master plan. And what we try to do at Craytaq is to look carefully at the language to understand how it's going to be actually used to make a decision. And so it's very important that the comments that we've made be well understood, explained if they are off the mark, or hopefully incorporated into the policies, which will shape the determination of decisions being made with regard to trails as they come along. And I would hope that this document in the end would result in a greater commitment on the part of staff to be sensitive to the importance, the long existence of trails, and the benefit of adding new ones wherever possible. Rather than just simply treating it as something to be accommodated to an application, to a property owner, to a project, to a developer who has come in with a big project.

But somehow the benefit to the public from these discretionary decisions really needs to be strengthened and supported at the staff level. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Mr. Keremitzos.

Good morning Chairman Reed, Commissioners. I'm honored and I recognize the privilege of serving on the Craytek as a fourth district representative. But I do want to speak primarily to you this morning as a resident of Orchid in the Santa Maria Valley. I was instilled with a love of nature and the outdoors by my parents and grandparents. And I've tried my best to pass that on to my children and the community.

Growing up in Orchid, in the sixties and seventies, we were allowed to ride our bikes pretty much throughout the valley, from Colson Canyon to Point Sal and the dunes. Our parents allowed us to do that. And even before that, to roam the open fields of orchid. The only rule I can remember is don't cross 101. And we of course did that from time to time.

But it's pretty much a different situation now and this is just such an incredible opportunity to provide for the future and the additional people that are here. I did have the, again the honor and the privilege of working on the community plan for Orchid in my own community. Dan, I think captured what we accomplished there through the public private partnerships and the assistance of the Santa Maria Valley open space. It's a remarkable amenity. And, having spent twenty nine years with the county, twenty five years as a planner, I feel very strongly that despite the very real challenges of addressing conflicts of trail use, in particular as Chair Reid has noted, row crop agriculture.

Trees and trails do remain two of the easiest and most cost effective ways that we can provide for the health and safety of our communities. And I also believe that unfortunately these are too often not accomplished by our developments without strong leadership and support of the county. And so, I'm glad to be a part of this process. As Dan said, spent many, many hours in this hearing room working on community plans and planning issues. And it's much the same.

There was one Commissioner, Commissioner Cooney, I appeared before him. The rest of you are after my time, and I see the sign behind you. And just really appreciate the time that you're taking on this. And believe that the County Of Santa Barbara can deliver exceptional services so that all can enjoy a safe, healthy, and prosperous life. So, thanks for the opportunity to comment.

Okay, thank you. I see we have one last KRATAC member on Zoom. Faith Dieter, why don't you proceed? You'll have two minutes.

Okay, thank you very much. My name is Faith Dieter. I'm the vice chair of Craytaq. I'm a long a long lifelong resident of San Yenas, California. Grew up here.

Went to school here. Rode horses here. Walked here, etcetera. And the reason I'm sharing today is to thank you very much for speaking with us about this issue and to let you know how important it is that the roadside trails be included with everything moving forward with the recreational master plan. Not all communities have the same landscape surrounding them to where for someone in the San Ynez area, maybe Guadalupe, we don't have the ability to just go out the door and walk somewhere without a very long car ride to get to county space.

So in order to be able to get out and walk, we are in the vehicle lane, not because we don't have the county owned property already. It is there. It's been there ever since the roads have been designed. The designs were put in on purpose with road right of way easements or, in this case, in the San Yenes Valley, they're actually county owned land. And because the county has not been protecting them and educating the residents, they are being lost by encroachment.

So in order to take a walk, people, cars, horses, strollers, older folks with walkers are all in the vehicle lane. We have had people hurt. We have had people killed because of this. We have fire evacuation issues because there's no shoulder. Everybody's in the vehicle lane.

And then when the gardeners come and the plumbers come and the housekeepers come, the cars are in the vehicle lane and all the people, pets, horses, strollers, walkers are shoved over to the other side of the vehicle lane and the bicycles. So this idea that we are going to just let's just put this in another plan later when this has been in the San Ynez Valley Community Plan since 2009, sixteen years ago, it's not good enough. And we have 35,000 people between San Yenes, Montecito, Carpinteria and Guadalupe. We need the ability to be able to get out and just take a walk for our health, for our safety, for a fire evacuation. Thank you very much. Please include the roadside shoulders in the plan.

Sure. You're welcome. Thank you. That concludes the speakers from Kraitak. It sounds like Kraitak, you know, has a oh, okay. I have a comment from Commissioner Park.

Yes, you do. And a question. And I want to phrase this question. Mr. Giraud, maybe you could come back up to the microphone. It's something I want Kra Tech to address. If you're ready to address it right now and briefly, that's great as an introduction. If you're not, remember it and address it the next time we have an opportunity and there will be another opportunity. It's no secret that I've spent a lot of time working on these issues. And one issue I think is extremely important is who administers the public benefit program and how is it administered under the recreation master plan?

Because we'll have to decide, is it a true public benefit project? And is the proposed contribution in order to get incentives from an applicant, is it in fact a substantial in kind contribution? These are not the kinds of things that anybody in this room has ever worked on before. Even the new folks have been planning for years and years and years, you know that that wasn't under your purview. It's a new question. It's a new life. It's a new thing to be doing. You're sort of on the edge of it, but you you see it. And we have to do a really good job of that or this program will be an utter failure. And so we have to kind of invent a process that works.

And we can do that with theory or we can do it just based on, hey, let's look around the room and see the people that have a lot of experience and let's use them. So what am I getting at? Kraytak. Kraytak, I know a lot of people in Kraytak, and we talk from time to time, but I hardly ever run into you in in my official capacity. Okay?

Because you're just not part of the process. I think you'd like to be part of the process. And I'd like to hear from KRATAC, how do you think KRATAC can have an ongoing role in the administration of the recreation master plan, specifically as to identifying public benefit projects and the substantial in kind contribution that would be appropriate. Is that something you're ready to address now, or you want to wait?

Mr. Chair, Commissioner Park, I can give a quick answer. I know Mr. Lindgren has thought about this quite a bit, too. We've had productive conversations.

Yeah, we all have.

Craytack is sort of on the side of the county's process, often not always consulted. There's a balance, there's that term again, between like making things easy and making the process more extensive. There certainly should be some projects that could go to Craytaq that are recreation benefit projects, like a major project, and there's others that might be smaller that maybe would be appropriate to take to Craytaq because of the bureaucratic hurdles and noticing the time. So we haven't formalized Craytaq's role yet in the recreational benefit program and how we would work with PND and parks together on that. But I would suggest the substantial projects, the big ones that involve trails, could be considered for work with Kraytac.

And again, Krautac has, it is, the beauty of Krautac is we've got somebody from every community, every planning area in the county on Krautac. So it brings that balanced perspective. So I don't think right now, way, and I'll let Jeff, Mr. Lindgren, speak to the program, how they're administering it, thinking about administering it now. But I don't recall a specific role for Krautac. But I think on larger projects, like the San Yaz River Trail, just for example, or the Foxen Canyon Wine Trail, if that develops, A role for Krautac would be appropriate, because it rises to the level of hearing and that kind of work. But we haven't developed yet, we haven't really talked at Krautac about Krautac's role on benefit projects. So I'm answering extemporaneously, as is my habit.

Well, good. Well, I want to hear more later and we'll get into that. I think it's, I mean, it's just incredibly important. But I see a consulting role from many organizations that are represented here, especially Craytax, especially since it's a county operation. What we have to do is figure out who does what. Parks has to have just the major role. This cannot be something where a junior junior planner in a cubicle in Santa Barbara in the PND is deciding all these things in practice. It's got to be broader than that. So I look forward to hearing more information. Thank you.

Right. Well, think it's obvious from the comment that Kratak represents a group of people with a great depth of expertise, experience, commitment and passion towards creation and maintenance of trails in the county. And I would certainly invite or request that county parks carefully consider their points of view and their input as this development of the rec master plan continues. I'd rather have their input incorporated foundationally, than later on after the after the soup is created. It's hard to take out some of the salt, you might say.

But, I'd like to use them as a tremendous uncompensated free asset that they're prepared to contribute, that I think could be a valuable portion as this this program is developed and refined.

So I'd appreciate it if you

would keep that in mind, in your efforts. Next comment. Now we have three speakers gonna be speaking from the Santa Inez Valley riders.

Marsha can Marsha go first, please?

Oh, I I've got the yeah. No order. But total time, what? Ten minutes?

Ten minutes.

Okay. Ten minutes between you all three. So about three and a half apiece, somewhere in there. So first speaker will be Marsha Nelson.

Yes. Good morning commissioners. I'm Marsha Nelson from the Santa Ynez Valley, and I'm a resident there. Thank you for allowing me to have this time to share my thoughts on this. I'm addressing a part of what's having to do with the Santa Barbara County Master Plan, but in particular the part that addresses Kachuma Lake recreation.

Recommendations to modify recreation in this area, because it is uniquely on federal land, are legally bound to both NEPA and CEQA per the terms of legal agreements that differ from any other recreational opportunities within the Santa Barbara County Recreation Master Plan. This dual level and environmental review is significant and calls for careful, deliberate decision making that fully considers all negative and potentially negative impacts to the environment and the primary purposes of being a water reservoir and successful fire abatement purposes here. So, but to back up just slightly, why does Kachuma Lake even exist, and how was it acquired, and for what purposes, and how does Santa Barbara County even have access to recreation on this land at this facility that is a federally owned and operated water reservoir. Many people are not aware that Kachuma Lake area is so unique. Yes, it's federally owned and controlled by the US Bureau of Reclamation, the BOR.

This land used to be privately owned ranch land, but was taken by eminent domain by the federal government to create a dedicated water reservoir to provide a steady, safe, clean, and safe water supply to the people of Santa Barbara County. This was a very major dramatic action, because it was determined that water was the critical need. It was never created to provide recreation. The secondary critical need for the federal government to mitigate is fire danger to the San Ynez Valley And County, making the cattle and horse grazing lease operation that has been active from the beginning of this entire operation a primary purpose of this federally owned land as well. This was not created for the purpose of recreation, but it was obtained in a very limited manner.

So how was that obtained? A very careful plan was put into place decades ago to selectively allow a limited amount and kind of recreation that must be adhered to and did not interfere with these two operations. It was carefully negotiated between the BOR and the local Santa Barbara County government, and is documented in legal documents to the Santa Barbara County to assure their allowed terms of the public's usage for Kachuma Lake Recreation anywhere within this property. And has to make sure that it does not violate the terms of these legal agreements in order to maintain these recreational privileges. So what is the process to request changes, and what documents?

Several governing documents guide any development within the recreation area, including the Kachuma Resource Management Plan Alternative two, the Kachuma Management Agreement, and a court issued state of decision and writ of mandate, the county's land use and conservation elements, and the proposed rec master plan. Together these documents outline possible recreational options that were suggested as possible future ideas at the time, but they don't require being a full build out. They were a menu of possibilities, not a mandate. In fact, the documents clearly state that any potential options, even stated ones, must survive through a detailed environmental review to prove no negative impacts to the stated purposes of this Kachuma area. This was confirmed with the recent court ruling of a lawsuit, and even an appeal to this end.

So the Kachuma resource management plan highlighted is federally required, is a federally required long range planning document prepared by the BOR. The prepared alternative two was chosen because it strikes a careful balance, there's that balance again, between resource protection and limited recreation. But that balance depends on additional studies, management actions, and mitigated, mitigation measures that must be completed before any expansion occurs. These documents so the CRMP, or the resource management plan, only allows limited expansion of recreation. And then if the mitigation measures are proven to even be possible, to be put in place to avoid these negative impacts.

It's important to note that the recreational management plan is a programmatic framework. It does not in itself approve specific recreational projects. Any future proposals must go through site specific CEQA review. Santa Barbara County only has the authority to police county projects on this property. Santa Barbara County may approve pursuit of additions, but they have to follow the terms of the agreement.

They need to be consistent with the recreation management plan. Basically, Kachuma is federally managed land with certain conditions to the county of Santa Barbara. So that, in addition, we have our own Santa Barbara County, which is we have the conservation element, which isn't adopted, and it's in place at the time that this was approved, and are based on critical assumptions. If the policies in place at that time are changed to allow these new uses that are being suggested, biking and hiking on the North Shore, we would ask would the policy change require reopening NEPA and CEQA on a local level as well in order to conform to our own adopted guidelines. So in conclusion, it would make sense to leave these proven to be synergistic equestrian trail system on the North Shore just the way it is.

Environmentally sound with no negative impacts to either local or federal legally set guidelines, it would be incredibly expensive to attempt to make changes that are now suggested in this rec master plan to the North Shore that have already been proven to have unmitigatable negative impacts when the eighteen month failed pilot project added hikers to the North Shore Live Oak Trails. We have documented the many negative impacts that happened during that time, from deer being shot and carried out on these trails, to grazing the grazing operation being interrupted and the animals moved because the hikers were interacting with the animals. So we ask that you remove these ideas from the Santa Barbara recreation master plan. They do not synchronize with the overall stated and proven needs of the Kuchuma Lake Reservoir and surrounding land to Santa Barbara. So it would be incredibly expensive to try and go that route.

Thank you very much.

We'll have Heather Barrett.

Oh next Heather Barrett, MD.

Hello. My name is Doctor. Heather Barrett. And I'd like to address the Live Oak Equestrian Trail pilot project of the recent court ruling that protects Live Oak. In 2021 the county issued a notice of exemption for the Live Oak Trails Multi Use Program proposing to open the Live Oak Equestrian Trail long reserved for equestrian use to hikers and eventually to mountain bikers using a CEQA exemption.

Although described to riders as a pilot project, the exemptions project description did not identify it as such. This trail is not a neighborhood park. It's a remote open space trail with challenging terrain, sensitive wildlife, bald eagles breed there, and decades of dual use, dual purpose use grazing for fire protection and fuel reduction as well as equestrian trail riding. Local equestrians raised concerns early citing lack of public process, CEQA compliance issues and conflicts with the county's conservation element. Despite these concerns, non equestrian use began in April 2021.

I was riding at Live Oak regularly during that time and witnessed gates left open. Shiny signs were put up to prevent the gates left open. Horses started spooking at the shiny signs. People were hurt.

The

were loose dogs, and I personally saw hikers pestering the the bucking horses that graze out there. I had I heard firsthand accounts of swimmers in in the pond, the stream that feeds right into Lake Ochuma, hunters, and motorcyclists on the trail. A petition of writ of mandate was filed in July 2021. The court ruled that the county acted improperly by relying on a CEQA exemption and by using a problematic plan that that specifically requires site specific environmental review. The court also found substantial evidence of potential environmental impacts including sensitive wildlife, special status species, and user safety.

Excuse me. Evidence showed that accrestrian is less disruptive to wildlife than foot or bike traffic.

I can't

hear. A court later made it clear the county got this wrong. It ruled that the CEQA exemption was improperly used and that a problematic programmatic plan could not substitute for site specific review, and that there was substantial evidence of environmental and safety impacts. Importantly, the court also acknowledged that this case was brought to protect the environment and the public interest, not for personal or financial gain. The result was clear.

All approvals were vacated. Non equestrian use was stopped, and the county was ordered to complete proper environmental review and public involvement before making any future changes. The court offered an extensive explanation and ordered extensive studies to support the CEQA review. Today Live Oak has been returned to equestrian use. As you consider land use and trail policies, I urge you to consider that Live Oak Trail is a rare and irreplaceable resource and it deserves thoughtful and site specific protection.

I personally consider it the only safe place for me and my family to ride our horses that's publicly owned. Thank you very much for your time.

Okay, thank you. Next we have Kathy Rosenthal. You've kind of run over the time. Can you wrap it up in like three minutes?

I'll try to be very quick.

Thank you.

Good morning commissioners. Congratulations Mr. Chair on your new chairmanship for this year. My name is Kathy Rosenthal. I am the president of the Santa Ynez Valley Riders and our coalition saves Santa Barbara County Equestrian Trails. My background is in land use planning. I worked for the county of Santa Barbara for several years on recreational projects. Prior to that I worked for the U. S. Forest Service balancing natural resource management issues with recreation.

And I also worked for the County of Santa Barbara in the resource recovery waste management division. And also for the city of Santa Barbara as an analyst running their capital improvement program. Our comments, my comments are specific to policies and stuff. And I specifically wanted to talk about the goals in the comprehensive plan and ordinance amendments document. Number one states that recreation often has the added benefit of preserving natural resources and open space.

But the first purpose of the provisions of recreational land uses is not resource conservation. And as you've heard here there's a number of documents and guiding management agreements that pertain to the Kachuma Recreation Management Area. And as you gathered, we are concerned about our right to maintain Live Oak Trail as an equestrian trail. It's been in existence and was made by our members way back in 1989. We've been riding out there for thirty years basically without incident.

We have had no incidents. And so we feel that the Live Oak, excuse me, the Kachuma Recreation Area requires a separate portion of the EIR explaining these issues. And the goal, number one goal here is to have a qualifier that says that it applies to everything in the county but the Kachuma Recreation Area. We have in place under the county's conservation element three policies that are specific to the Live Oak area. The San Yenas River drains into Cochumo Lake at the Live Oak Trail, headwaters.

Yes, that's correct. In addition I wanted to thank, Craytack and I wanted to thank, Mr. Lindgren for including a trail policy that we have all worked on. Which is the, I would read it to you, but it is in our comments. I'm not going to go ahead and read it. I will be presenting or getting all these ideas together and some edits, other edits to the policies, in a letter to, the consultant for consideration in the EIR. And, I'm here to answer any questions that you might have on the governance of Kachuma Lake. Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. Well, next, since we are in the Santa Ana Valley, I'm going to, have call Catherine Rohr from WeWatch. Do you think three minutes will be enough or you'd rather have

I'm gonna do it in under three.

Go for it.

Honorable commissioners, Katherine Rohr representing WeWatch. Thank you for your consideration of the letter WeWatch submitted in advance of this workshop about the Recreation Master Plan, including the Recreation Benefits Projects Program, the RBP. For the Santa Ynez Valley with a population of 20 to 25,000 people and with agricultural land in rural and semi rural areas constituting the vast majority of our acreage. We watch respectfully request that the commission ensure that safeguards are built into the RBP in particular to protect against unintended consequences of unnecessarily converting agricultural land to tourism uses. Particularly in light of the recent enactment of the Ag Enterprise Ordinance, which you mentioned earlier, it's important that RBP incentives both focus where they're needed and not override the AEO safeguards and additionally not unduly impact agricultural land and other neighboring land uses.

A threshold finding for any RBP incentive determination affecting ag land really must be based on objective and reliable mechanisms that will ensure the existence of an identified recreation need, which I know Commissioner Park referred to recently. But we're concerned about those recreation needs serving residents and not being solely tourism focused as well. So in very practical terms we ask that the RBP incentives not apply to ag parcels smaller than 40 acres, that be it ag one or ag two. We ask that RBP incentives focus on the most significant recreational needs to get the biggest bang for your buck in the Santa Nez Valley. That's incentives for land and easements for the river trail.

The RBP land use permit, we ask that it have an exception built into it for either more extensive neighbor community notice, a planning commission hearing or some combination thereof. And we ask that all aspects of an RBP project, including the incentive and the project itself be located in the same recreation planning area. With respect to trails in the recreation master plan itself for the Santa Nez Valley, we would ask that you add a policy to focus first on connecting trails that use existing trail easements to obtain the long awaited trail system for both recreation and commuting. And thank you for all your hard work.

You bet. Thank you. We appreciate your input.

We have

a question. I'm sorry.

Sure, sure.

Commissioner Park, your neighbor.

There you go. Yeah. You know I've worked with WeWatch since I've been a commissioner. And I've seen just about every letter you wrote. WeWatch written. And And I wanted to compliment you folks on this latest letter. I thought it was really a wonderful letter. It was very constructive. I like it when folks not only identify problems, but provide a constructive solution. Instead of just saying, go away.

And I'm particularly enamored, frankly, with the 40 acre parcel minimum, because I think that solves a lot of problems that I've been trying to work at, but it does it in a very simple way. It's kind of like, I look at it and say, well that seems so obvious, why didn't I think of that? But it's good. I want to kind of run through, I don't mean now, but the various sample projects we have and see how that works. One thing we have in, we found here at the Planning Commission over the years is there's some weird little relic agricultural parcels.

Like we have ag parcels near Lompoc that are eight acres. And so, sometimes you'll have an eight acre parcel in the middle of a 300 acre ranch and somebody wants to put their recreational use on that eight acres, just happens to work that way. So instead of a minimum parcel size, I might say minimum premises size, which is kind of the idea in the ag enterprise ordinance. But nevertheless, I thought that was a great letter and had some good ideas and I look forward to working with you further in the future. Thanks.

Thank you. Thanks.

Yeah. Like Commissioner Park, I usually I value a lot of the We Watch letters. I do find them quite instructive and often useful, not just for the San Inez Valley, but for the balance of the county. And in particular I liked the 40 acre suggestion. Which did bring me to another question for staff.

I noticed some of the elements, among the elements listed as potentially permitted under the rec master plan, they said amphitheaters. Yet I don't see any, maybe I've just missed it, mention as to events and attendance and parking and traffic and all those other sorts of things that seem to be attendant to events. And to me, an amphitheatre does not exist without events. How would those things fit into the overall regulatory web? Maybe web's not the right word, but I'll use it. The web of the county.

Well, yes. I hope we're not thinking of the rec plan as a black widow spreading a web. But maybe Mr. Wilson can, or Ms. Mitchell can answer the event piece.

Chair Reid. Yeah. So that would definitely be an aspect of the amphitheater use. So we would need to consider that as part of the EIR and potentially come up with some development standards that would put limits on events for that type of use.

That's the EIR for the rec master plan? Okay.

So Chair Reid and Commissioners, to follow-up with what Ms. Mitchell was talking about, we are proposing to add that type of use as an allowed permitted use. Especially coupled with the recreation benefit project. Being that in this workshop setting, what we're looking for from the commission is any feedback or guidance on the scope of what would be, what the planning commission would want to recommend as far as what you're talking about. Number of events, number of attendees, all those things.

You could leave it open, or you could put some parameters around it to say, okay, in the ag zone amphitheaters are okay. And here's x number of events with x number of people. And that's what we're looking for with the members of the public as well, is to provide us any feedback or comments on these type of uses. So that way it helps us frame that in the ordinance as well as if we need to do high level environmental review on the scope of what that would be.

Okay, well we, you know, did I think a considerable amount of that under the AEO. So perhaps that could be used as kind of a baseline for these. And then, but in addition, some of these elements are clearly much more substantial than things permitted under AEO. So they would, well, I'll go back to the amphitheater. They would clearly invite, you know, additional, what do I say, standards.

Commissioner Reed and Commissioners, that is an approach we could look at the baseline as what was approved in the AEO. And again, I'm just reminding the commissioners and the members of the public. This is different from the AEO. Is that the AEO is coupled with primary ag remaining on the site. In this context, this is a recreational focus.

What isn't tied to having to have a primary ag use on the site. What it is tied to if it's coming in as a recreational benefit project is that there is a substantial in kind contribution to the county on a recreational side. And so there could be impacts to ag related to this. But so we just want to ensure that the lens that the commission's looking at these projects are framed in that context.

Well, yeah, need to, obviously, and I'm familiar with the fact this is not son of AEO or AEO revision two or anything. It's independent. But there's, you know, it still has the similar potential for causing impacts due to, recreational events happening near near rural areas. So with that, I think in the absence of any additional question or comment, we can go to Claire Weinman of the of the Grower Shipper Association for some comment, about the number the county's number one industry.

How many more speakers do we have left?

And we have we have a couple online too.

Yeah. And I don't want to discourage that. But I do want to encourage regular breaks.

Okay. Do you want a break?

Pretty soon. But Claire gets to the point, so I'll leave it up to Claire. If you think you can get done in the next ten minutes, go. But if not, just take a break. Okay.

I will aim for four minutes at the

We'll do ten. I mean, Commissioner Park is just coming back from a knee replacement surgery. So, we need to accommodate his needs since his participation is important.

Of course. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Claire Wyman. I'm the president of the Grower Shipper Association of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. We've made great progress, and, there's a lot of great content in the plan. And just wanted to continue to focus on some of the items most in need of revision of finalizing the plan and moving through next steps. First I wanted to start, as we've mentioned previously, there's all these different buckets. So I wanted to start with the recreation master plan itself. I did share with staff when we met that in Guadalupe the proposed site for the campground and the sports fields was a site of catastrophic flooding in 2023.

So there was, actually it's still in the FEMA flood hazard zone and was a feature when we took out FEMA and staff from Senator Feinstein's office at the time to view the flood damage, that entire area was completely wiped out. The only reason that the brand new Boys and Girls Club didn't get destroyed was they had a cyclone fence on the outside and all of the debris pushed up against the fence and made like a beaver dam basically, but everything else around it was completely obliterated. Is that Instead, we would encourage full utilization of the Jack O'Connell Community Park a little bit further down on West Main Street. That was not impacted by the storm events in 2023. It's outside the flood hazard zone.

And also there might be potential for using the recycled water from the wastewater treatment plant there. So again, for that site find that the full utilization of the existing community park in Guadalupe would be a much better fit. Also we've talked about this a little bit, but just wanted to highlight some of the trails that could create significant conflicts with agricultural operations. We see that the Santa Maria Rim Trail is new, a new concept, and there would certainly be portions of that that we could support, but would have concerns about the portions that are on the valley floor. And again, would need to see what the exact design of that looked like.

And then also the river trail alignment in Guadalupe. So again, it's just that alignment, we didn't oppose the alignment along Main Street, but the one that would follow the river raises some significant, again, flood hazard issues, and also food safety and agricultural potential conflicts. So just that specific alignment. And again, would love to see some more information on the Foxen Canyon and Los Olivos Swine Trails. Again, depending on the final design and alignment, you know, have some concern about those potentially presenting conflicts to agricultural operations.

And finally we've expressed significant concern about the Santa Maria Levy Trail and what that would mean for both users and agricultural operations. Next I wanted to talk about some of the LUDC amendments. We did have a chance to discuss that with my board. And we do have significant concern about adding trails, parks, and playgrounds as allowed uses in the ag zone specifically. We presented some specifics, but would definitely like to see and recommend additional design standards to reduce conflicts for agriculture.

Two mechanisms for that are setbacks. We had talked about a thousand foot setback from row crops, and four to 600 feet for orchards and vineyards, and also fencing. The topic was touched on, but would like to see adequate fencing to prevent dogs and other potential conflicts for that. So those haven't been fleshed out. Right now it's just been the design standards for trails.

So again, that's key to see some of those protective standards for agriculture before it moves forward. Next on the recreation benefits program component. We do have significant concerns with the potential impacts of allowed uses. The potential to undermine good land use planning and potential for preferential treatment and quid pro quo expectations and equal protections under the ordinance. We have very significant concerns about what that might look like and find that it isn't ready to move forward without significant revisions at this point.

And lastly, we are not supportive of reopening the ag element. It's a great document that's aged very well and would be concerned about potential cascading impacts if that were reopened and if that would end up being not beneficial to agriculture as a whole. So appreciate the opportunity to comment, and look forward to our continued engagement in this important process.

Thank you. Thank you. Next, do I have any questions? No? Okay. Well, we need that break. Let's take a ten minute break. And let's make it ten minutes. Okay? Thank you.

Okay. Great. Couple of so the Mark's phone number

Probably the only time I'll ever use it.

Alright.

Two breaks today, and I've failed my main objective already. We've run over on both of them. Sorry. But, this one was very necessary for the welfare of one of our most senior commissioners. Okay. Now back to public comment on the rec master plan. I'd like next up will be Philip Jones. Three minutes be good or do you need more?

I'm going need a couple of minutes more. I'm going try to make it as fast as I can.

We'll give you five. Okay, thank you.

It should be perfect. Great. Thank you. And good morning Commissioners. My name is Philip Jones, Phil Jones Shorten, and I'm here with my co trustee, Marty Weiss.

And we are co trustees for the Better World Trust. It's a five zero one(three) nonprofit foundation. Better World Trust was formed by Paul Garrett and dedicated this property that we own as his legacy project. Paul acquired this four eighty six acre property in 1964, passed away in 2024, and his directive to the three co trustees were to do something good for the benefit of the community and for UCSB. Was his two major concerns.

We're in transition period looking for guidance. This four eighty six acre property ranch is in the Goleta Valley region, specifically Winchester Canyon. It is a gorgeous ranch that runs the length of Winchester Canyon and currently supports habitat, farming, and farming infrastructure. I think a couple of you have viewed the property, toured the property. Would be happy to go ahead and tour whoever would like to tour the property.

Besides the farm worker dwelling units, we currently have no plans to develop the property, but we are working on reestablishing crops on the property and considering agave, coffee, and avocado orchards. We are here to support the recreational master plan proposed amendments. I have to apologize. I just had a tooth removed so I'm a little bit, you know, kind of whistled a little bit. So excuse my speech.

Specifically, we are thrilled to learn more about the new program for public private partnerships as a key strategy to acquire and develop new parks, trails, and recreational facilities throughout the Santa Barbara based on current community input and strengthening the county's commitment to recreation needs in unincorporated places. The proposed recreation master plan with three change with with these changes now makes this possible through several mechanisms. First, put my glasses on here. First, the Nutrail permits process for private entities providing a regulatory pathway that didn't exist before. This removes a major barrier that has prevented willing homeowners, landowners from opening their properties to the public.

Second, the public private partnership framework offers potential funding sources and technical assistance for trail development, signage, parking facilities, and ongoing maintenance costs that would otherwise fall entirely on the landowner. Third, the plans emphasize on connecting trail networks means our Winchester Canyon property could become part of a larger regional trail system linking to existing county parks and creating continuous recreational corridors that serve the broader community. Additionally, by allowing compatible recreation enterprises such as trail side cafes and educational facilities, the plan creates a sustainable economic model. Revenues from these modest commercial activities can directly fund trail maintenance, habitat restoration, parking area upkeep, and public safety measures, making public access financially viable for the long term. We envision participating with local nonprofit trail advocacy groups and the county parks department to design multiple use trails that would respect our agriculture operations and sensitive habitat while providing hiking, education, and nature observation opportunities for families throughout the Goleta Valley.

As we see it, it's not only the dedication of the trails that matters, but the improvement, maintenance, and management of these trails to secure a safe and enjoyable experience for the entire family for decades to come. This takes a joint effort, community support, and financial support through various private and public funding mechanisms. We would like to offer some suggestions to allow landowners to operate profitable enterprises that will in turn provide funding for building and maintaining on-site recreation such as parking lots for public trails and the lighting and security for trails themselves. Specifically, trailside cafes. We recommend that the definition of cafe be expanded to allow coffee shops that incorporate coffee roasting of local beans grown on farms along with allowing for on-site food preparation via on-site bakery or culinary preparation.

This will enhance the farm to table concept that a lot of farmers are interested in. Education for research facilities. We recommend that culinary institutes be incorporated into the definition of education facilities that would allow farmers to educate students about local products. By integrating specific farming practices with locally grown specialty crops such as coffee, mushroom coffee alternatives, and locally grown fruits and vegetables into a destination experience is what will drive this ability to create an income stream for the benefit of the public and the private sector. Lastly, if possible, we request that the Winchester Canyon area be incorporated into the recreational master plan EIR and analyzed in this document, which will help streamline permitting in the future.

There are many beautiful private ranches in Winchester Canyon that are very close to residential developments. In short, we believe these proposed programs will enhance quality of life, promote equity, and enhance climate resilience. Thank you for your leadership in making recreation a cornerstone of a sustainable community.

Well, thank you.

Thank you. Question from Commissioner Park. Jones, was glad to see you speak. You know, I came in this room and I looked around and I thought I know every single person here except for you and now Mr. Weiss. And I realized, but you look familiar, because I've met with both of you on your site.

Right, right,

Yes. Yes, this is good for my brain. But I wanted to let you know that as a follow-up to our discussion of the master plan and potential benefits for you folks with donating a public trail, which you seem interested in talking about. I've since spoken to your neighbors to the North and the South, and they have some similar ideas, maybe different timing, but that could be a real reality. And it would be something because truly the holy grail in the South Coast for recreation is to get a Goleta Foothills Trail.

We have the Barone Ranch Trail, which is the very best, you know, sea level to top of the hills trail that we have on the South Coast, but it's kind of remote. So to have something that was closer that could do that, And so you can be part of a much bigger picture. I'd love to meet with you guys again in a few We'd

like to do that too. Yeah, let's We've talked to the Dodys, the Cavalettos, Vincent, and those property owners. And I think there's an open discussion about that. I like to be able to go ahead and talk to the trail guys over here who I just mentioned I just met, and they're going to to Mike and see if they can help us with the design of it. Because, you know, like your comments about the compatibility of horses and bikes and trails and hikers and all that kind of stuff is a big concern of ours, because how do you design it so that it's compatible for everybody, but without being so restrictive? So I think there's a way to do it, I'm just not sure how.

Well, know, you go up to the Barone Ranch Trail, not far from you, that these guys designed and built, and it's got relatively light grades and great sight lines, and it's a much safer trail than what you see anywhere else, and it's by design.

Yeah, and maybe by, you know, maybe partitioning, you know, some of the uses. Know, maybe have, you know, two sides of the trail. You know, one four horses, one four hoses.

Oh, There's ways to make it all work.

You know, so all kinds of different things. But thank you. And I'd like to be involved with this whole

Glad to see you here. I hope to see you again soon.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, thank you. You have a beautiful piece of property. I think many, many people would really enjoy seeing taking Yeah, advantage thank If

any other commissioners would like to have a tour, be glad to go ahead and set that up. And so just toured Joan Hartman about two weeks ago.

And she appreciates too.

Oh, it's beautiful. Thank you. Next, I would like to hear from Glenn Hartman. How much time do you

Oh, I think three minutes is probably fine.

Okay. Thank you.

Our project, Highline Adventures, is located in the Santa Ana Valley on a property that we have there. We're relatively large properties over 1,200 acres. And the one thing that was stood out to me was the discussion about ag policies and on agriculturally zoned property. Ours is ag two zoned. And I just wanted to point out that not all ag two zoned property is viable for commercial agriculture.

It seems like the row crop agriculture wants to drive the use of recreational uses on Ag two property, where Ag two properties throughout the county, probably the majority of them are really not commercially viable for agriculture. Even though they're designated as Ag two. Maybe it's it's just you know a catch all zoning situation there. So I just wanted to applaud the the thought of making sure that the ag policies in place in the in the element portions of the plan allow for recreational uses on those Ag two parcels, such as ours, where maybe only eighty, twenty, 10 to 20% is agriculturally viable, and the other 80% could, can well be used, and very compatibly used for recreational purposes. So that was the one point I wanted to make.

We had written a letter that addresses specific issues in the new recreational benefits program. And I'd be happy to answer any questions you have regarding that letter that we put out. The one point that I would maybe emphasize is the country in peace. For us, to be viable, really, it it the to accomplish a small country in, it for us, it needs to be under a land use permit. It can't be under a CUP.

We won't be able to process that. We've been through the CUP process. It's very difficult. I think a comment was made earlier that it's easy to obtain an LUP in the county. It's not the case at all. It's not easy to obtain a zoning clearance. We've a zoning clearance through the AEO and we've gotten a 17 page letter back from the county staff and it's maybe insurmountable what you know, what we've received. So, I'm just putting that out there. I just wanted to make those points. Thank you.

There you go. I thought you made a good point with respect to, floor size for the trail side cafe. Sure. As proposed it's 1,200. You built a case for larger. Could you reiterate that briefly?

Yeah, absolutely. The, if it's only 1,200 feet, for us to make commercial kitchen use available through environmental health right now, you have to be able to serve enough people. And for us, we think that viability is probably about 3,000 feet. I don't think you're gonna see trail side cafes in very many places because it's just not viable to think that you're gonna have a small island in the middle of nowhere that's gonna be, you know, commercially viable. I I think it could be viable for us because we'll we'll have other recreational uses that can bring people to the to to be able to have that use.

But I think that's it's important that it's sized to be commercially viable and 1,200 feet really is not such for us.

Thank you. Thank you.

You're welcome. Any other, oh, Mr. Park, Commissioner Park. Yeah. I want to echo some of my own comments about the We Watch Letter, I praise as being thorough and constructive. And I think that your letter was the same thing. It touched on a number of ideas, they're all good ideas, they're very constructive. I find it interesting that both the We Watch Letter and yours addressed a problem I've been struggling with. That is sort of scalability, you know, that some things like the number of rooms in a country in might depend on the size of the premises. Absolutely.

And you went through that. I think that's a pretty clever idea and it's something we'll take a pretty good look at. And I always think ideas are better when I see them from different people of different types and they all come to the same conclusion. It makes me think, well, that's probably a good idea. So, I think you got something there.

There's been provisions in the ordinance that allows some type of rural inn or, you know, country ranch inn for the last thirty years. And I don't think any any any of them had been able to happen in the county. So that this is the it it won't happen without a little easier processing.

That's the God's truth.

Yeah.

Alright. Thank you. Thanks.

Alright. Thank you very much. Next, I'd like to bring up Jimmy Lazides. How much time? Three minutes good?

Three minutes good, yeah.

Okay, thank like

to talk too much anyway. Only when you get me in private. Chair Reid and Commissioners, thank you for having me today. Guess it's still good morning, yeah? Okay. I'm here in support of the REG master plan. And I wanted to thank John Park and Jeff and Tina and the staff for all the work they put into this and the AOE. We all went through a lot of these processes together. So I just want to talk about a couple of things. Incentives need to be clear and need to have some kind of teeth that would help this partnership work between us and the public sector.

You know, there's things like I can give some examples where, you know, my property is two twelve acres. And from the very south part of the property all the way to the tasting room, we have an Oak Country Road. And that road gets, you know, most of it I, it goes through the back part of the property through an oak forest up into my vineyards and down into the tasting room. Well, the parts that I use for the farm week, it's kept maintained over the last four years that I've had the property with all these rains. I've had to do things like culverts and mini retaining walls and things like that.

So those things can get expensive and it would be restrictive to me as I am self funded and I've owned a winery for four years, so I'm broke. And that's a joke because it's not a joke. So, you know, that's the kind of help we'd need. You know, there's also an oak forest where I'd like to think about maybe one day putting some kind of hotel or mostly campgrounds, but it's off the 101 and right now it's a dirt road off the 101. You know, getting a turn lane off the 101 is, again, very cost prohibitive.

So those are the kind of things that I would like to see with the incentives to be clear and have something to them that could really help us work together. I'm more than happy to, you know, do a trail on my property. The road itself is about 10 feet wide, so it could do a lot of different things on the road. It would need, like I said, never mind doing the maintenance. The maintenance part this is not a big deal for me.

The other thing is, this comes up with the ag ordinance too, the process needs to be clear and easy. It's still daunting, to reiterate what he said earlier, it's just, it's these things sound great, but when you start doing them it becomes very time and financially prohibitive. You know, I'm going through a process right now to get a permitting for something on the property. And I just talked to my architect yesterday, I said to him, I've been doing this for fifty years. I've built nine restaurants, and I don't know where the hell I am and what I'm doing right now.

So it gets it gets really complicated even for someone like myself that has had experience with these things. So there has to be a way to streamline these things. And maybe when the decisions are made, you include, not me, but people that are have own the properties and are in the private sector that can maybe help give some input on this. I'd be more than happy to give input, but we don't have much time with what we're doing over at Vega Vineyard and Farm. Any questions? All right, thank you.

Thank you. And our final speaker will be Gallery MacCon.

Sure. We do have two online as well. Excuse me? We do have two speakers. You two online. Yeah.

Okay. I guess you won't be the final, but

Hi. Good afternoon. Galleria Macon. I'm working with several landowners, and I feel bad because I'm representing some of the ones that are complaining about the process. So I'm clearly not doing a great job.

But I spoke at the last hearing and I had an opportunity to meet with staff. And I don't want to reiterate some of the comments that I made in terms of like numbers. But using the Funk and Wagnalls definition of substantial, I want that to also be used as it relates to the incentives, substantial incentives. It's a big deal for private landowners to give their very expensive land dedicated to the county in an easement forever. These concepts is forevermore.

Even if your business ends or you stop doing that recreational use, like you have given this land over to the county. So there has to be a substantial incentive for them to do this beyond some of the items that have been listed. I think certainly land use permits across the board should be considered. Certainly in the EIR, the outer limit of incentives should at least be studied so that your if you have to get a CUP, which I'm not recommending, but if you go that way, you should have a different set of findings specific to the rec benefit program as it relates to CUP findings. And at least have it be covered under the EIR so you're not having to also do your own environmental document.

In terms of policy consistency, we have run into this where, you know, we just need to make sure we check every different policy and make sure all the definitions align. And I know staff is working on that, but I'm just I really want to emphasize that. As it relates to the uniform rules, thank you for bringing that up. Again, I just want to add on that I think the way it would work is if the landowner can elect to go into nonrenewal sort of with their project entitlement without having that ten year right now it's a ten year tail. So if they can not have a ten year waiting period before they're out, have it be with their project and without penalty.

Right now there's a massive penalty. But I think the Board has discretion to waive that. So if that could be included with this program, that would be great. I'm here as a representative if the dialogue if you have any questions as a for landowners, I'm happy to answer any or have input. But I've been enjoying working with staff.

Of course, John Park's been fantastic to work with. And really excited to see this approved. Love all the discussion, but it would be great if it could happen this year. I'm sort of promising that to clients. Not promising it, but I'm, like, optimistic that it'll happen this year.

That's my goal.

Thank you. And Jeff Lindgren's making the same promise to his boss and Mona the board. So I think it will happen. Right, Jeff?

Great. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. So Mr. Villalobos, we have online.

Yes. We have two speakers online. Our first speaker will be Suzanne Duca to be followed by Anna Citrin.

Hi. Can you hear me? Suzanne Duca here. You can hear Yes. Go ahead. Have a one page letter. Sorta looks like this. I don't know if you see this. I've been working with Craytaq since before 2023 to amend the multiuse trail policy in the county of Santa Barbara. It is still not approved.

It was unanimously voted on by Craytaq on July 2023, and then it was amended. It took off the part about trail standards because Jeff Lindgren rightly talked about the fine standards in the forest department, and they voted on it again on 08/12/2024. And then on 10/14/2024, Jeff addressed the draft language, and he liked bullet number one of the statement, which I will read to you. But there was some talk at Craytaq, and they tabled the letter until further along in the rec master plan process. So here we are.

This seems like a perfect opportunity to insert this language into policy number 13 of goal number two on the comprehensive plan and ordinance amendments, that part. It's an exhibit. It's exhibit b in which you have policies written out. I can call let me read to you the existing policy 13 just to give you the heads up. It says, the public trail network shall accommodate pedestrians, equestrians, bicyclists, and other trail users wherever feasible.

Separate facilities for unique users should be developed only to meet unique user needs, enhance trail safety and sustainability, and or minimize user conflicts. That's pretty good. It's almost there. But Kraytak and I would prefer language that includes case by case basis. The policy that Craytaq voted on reads, the Santa Barbara County Recreational Trail Network shall serve trail user groups, including pedestrians, equestrians, cyclists, and others, and on a case by case basis.

We would like to substitute policy thirteen's language for the case by case basis language. And in the second sentence, we would like you to take out the word only. It seems unnecessary. So that's one point I wanted to share with you and hoped that you would look at this page. It's one page short, and it's all quotes from Craytax minutes.

It's not anything that I've created. And give some thought to changing policy number 13. Secondly, I wanted to address a different issue. I consider myself an advocate for fairness as far as the, divvying up trails that your that parts is planning currently planning. One of the things that they are currently planning is putting trails for additional trails for horses and a and new trails for bikes on the North Side Of Lake Kachuma.

I thought I would remind your group. This is just taken taken from the needs assessments that were done, extensive needs assessments done by the parks department. When you look at the needs assessment, chart, you will look at San Yenes Valley. Their very first need is hiker and equestrian trails. And then of the five, each district gave five, they list other needs. Not one of them is for additional bicycle trails. So they want hiking and equestrian trails in San Yeniz. So that leads us to oops. Do you hear that? There was some kind of feedback going on.

That just goes to the necessity of why are we putting or suggesting to put bicycle trails on the North Side of the the North Side Of Lake Cochuma? The community is not even asking for additional bike trails. Okay. And in fairness, you know the track has just given a $175,000 to Rancho Alegre right next door to Lake Cochuma to extend their three and a half mile biotray bike trail to 10 miles, which is 20 round trip. We so far only have five equestrian miles at Lake Cochuma.

We'd love to see the county expand our trails for horses. We would love to see you eliminate bike trails on the North Side and leave it a beautiful natural ranch. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Villalobos. The next speaker, our final speaker.

Our last speaker will be Ana Citroen.

Can you hear me?

Yes. Go ahead.

Great. Good morning or good afternoon, rather. Chair Reid and Planning Commissioners, I'm Anna Citrin, legal and policy director for the Gaviota Coast Conservancy. GCC's work to permanently protect the Gaviota Coast for present and future generations is guided by three interrelated pillars, rural character, which includes agriculture, environmental integrity, and public access and recreation. We appreciate all the work that staff has done to advance this important planning effort to expand public access and recreational opportunities throughout the county, including the Gaviata Coast.

As the discussion today is highlighted, there are protections, needed in rural areas, to ensure that new recreational development can coexist harmoniously with agriculture and the rural environment. And we really appreciate all the attention that has gone in, to addressing this issue early on in the planning process. Internal consistency between the county's planning documents is also critically important. And I wanna specifically thank mister Wilson for his comments, earlier clarifying that staff will be looking at the open space element that is under revision and other elements of the comprehensive plan, including the ag element to ensure an internal consistency, between the elements and that they are talking to each other, which is really important. In addition, we wanna specifically flag the Gaviota Coast plan, which is another component of the comprehensive plan and ask that staff evaluate consistency with the Gaviota Coast Plan and clearly explain how the two planning documents will harmonize as applied within the Gaviota Coast Plan area.

And furthermore, state parks is working on updating their general plan for the three state parks on the Gaviota Coast, and ensuring, that the county's efforts dovetail well with the state planning effort is also critically important to the Gaviata Coast and something we hope will get attention going forward. Finally, for most of the Gaviata Coast, which is zoned ag two and other ag two lands in the county, It's important that the rec master plan builds on and complements the ag enterprise ordinance and does not add conflicting or confusing incentives that apply on ag two lands or result in the conversion of agricultural land to nonagricultural use. And we really appreciate comments from chair Reid and public commenters and others on this topic, and hope that staff will give it appropriate attention going forward. So, again, we really appreciate this effort and, look forward to being involved as it moves forward. So thank you.

Still connecting. Okay.

Yeah. You should work.

Would say, can you hear me now? But that's so corny. But, alright. Well, thank you for your comments. So at this point, I would just like to ask from Mr. Lindgren, from the staff, or Mr. Wilson, any closing comments? Or what are our next steps in this process?

So chair and commissioners, we've heard a lot of comments today. And we received a lot of comments prior to this hearing. The purpose of the workshop is to gather information. And that's filtering through the Planning Commission to get guidance and direction as far as a consensus from the commission on items that we want to ensure is wrapped up into the EIR. Because we're drafting that.

And to give guidance as far as the proposed policy language. I don't know if the Planning Commission is ready at this moment to provide feedback. Because really now would be the time for deliberations. Is to go through all the comments and then have a discussion with the commission and provide direction to staff. I don't know if the commission's ready for that. Want to take a lunch break or continue it to another hearing. If you want to continue it to give time to marinate more on the comments, I would recommend February 11. January 28 has a number of items on there. Three appeals actually. And based on past experience those could take a while.

February 11 is Zaheer again in Santa Maria, and that is one item which is the plantar nursery, which I think is going to be straightforward. So a recommendation is take a lunch break and come back. Other recommendation is continue to February 11. And then what staff is looking for from the commission is to come back on that date and have the, use those tables that we've prepared as a guiding document to look at the comments that we received, what you've heard. If there's high level comments, direction you want to provide staff, for example size of trail side cafes, that would be the direction we're looking for.

Setbacks is another item that we're looking for as far as trails or trail side cafes. Size of these country inns would be great. We're looking for those components so that we can make sure that they're in the project description to finalize the programmatic EIR. I don't think we need to go into fine tuning the language of any of these things at the next hearing. We appreciate Kra Tech's passion and commitment to trails.

We would like their comment letter to be filtered through the planning commission. If there's comment specific language that the Commission would like to give us guidance on to explore more, we are happy to do that. We're happy to continue to work with Kraytak and other stakeholders to make sure that their comments are heard as we go forward. Those are some options. I think that was long winded.

No, that wasn't long winded. I would myself personally support ruminating and coming back on February 11. I would like Commissioner Park to be back and operating at full speed. I'm thinking he's a bit fatigued, but I'll invite his comment.

I hope to get to full speed someday in my life. No, I'd be off of narcotics by February 11. I think that would be a positive thing. But, the, I do favor doing that. What I personally want to do, and I think this might be instructive to other commissioners, I want to go through the correspondence and circle, you know, the conceptual ideas that I think we should pay more more attention to. And I gave an example today, the parcel size. And that's not impossible. We're talking about maybe half a dozen letters. I want to think about what I heard today. I thought we had an excellent workshop today.

Heard a lot of good things. And just in a sense forgetting what the emphasis, point of emphasis should be. I want to approach that issue I brought up today of process, which I think is really important. But I don't want to flail at it. I think if we had a more hearing today it would be kind of chaotic going through all these things.

But if we can, to use your words, Chair Read ruminate about it, I think this is going to be an example of taking some time to get organized and then we'll be more efficient. And so I like the idea of one further hearing so we can not give instructions like we do when we're getting findings for a project, but some general guidelines so we sort of funnel the ways of doing this. I think that'll be a lot easier for the actual preparation of of the ordinance and other work if we're all, as we say, on the same page on the process. And I think we can we can be there. So I think we can do all that by February 11 and it'll be a constructive thing to do.

I'm fine with that.

May I? Yes, Commissioner Cooney.

Thank you, mister chair. Well, this was an unusual opportunity to dig deeper into the issues that staff's been presented with, and I mean by staff, Planning Commission staff, and certainly Mr. Lundgren and his staff. But I think we need to have staff prepare a report on limitations because it seemed like a lot of good ideas were being presented, but they're, stalled by, county, law or, history. And, if we could, before that hearing, understand at least where those heavy conflicts are, then I think we'd be in a position to make comments and suggest changes that would be useful to staff and to the public.

But otherwise we face the possibility of just continuing to talk about, the potential without talking about how do we get there.

That's good.

So chair and visitors, may I respond to that?

Sure. Feel free.

So today we heard a lot of comments. And I think Mr. Lindgren may also want to chime in on this. This is a complex issue in that we're combining two projects into one aspect. What the commission is looking at is narrow in that it's the comprehensive plan amendments and ordinance amendments related to a county wide recreation master plan.

And so in other realities the recreation master plan could have been an element, but it was chosen that that isn't the way it's going to be. So there's a broader picture that's being occurred, which is the recreation master plan. Some of the comments you heard today are related to the recreation master plan. So it's a little confusing for the commissioners to understand where does that line occur. And so I think Mr.

Lindgren can help provide some of that information. So Commissioner Cooney's thing as far as drafting report, I would like us to go back to the hearing in December 3. That's where we're asking for input and guidance. There isn't anything more that we could provide at this point for the commission to make decisions on. We're actually asking for the Commission to go back to December 3 on that summary document that we provided and then provide guidance on that.

And then to supplement that for the hearing today we created a table that outlines some of those key points that we're looking for guidance from the Commission to Commissioner Park's point, it's really conceptual at this point and we're looking at those outer limit boundaries of what the commission would want to consider as we come back to adopt an ordinance. Which would be let's say for example you have number of rooms or height of rooms. We're just looking for a conceptual level, hey this is the realm of it. If you have an amphitheater and you want to have events, here's the outer realm of what we would want the commissioner what to be permitted. So that's what we're looking for as far as this workshop's deliverables.

So if there's questions as far as, I know there's a bunch of comments that came in as far as like Kuchuma and trails and things, those are really rec master plan things. And so where you want clarification, Is this comp plan or disrepairment related or is this rec creation master plan related? We can help to find that. So I don't know if there's anything more that we could provide other than try to help fine tune where those two concepts lay? Is that trying to help Commissioner Cooney as far as giving direction?

As usual. It does. And my concern has been, as I said, that we not spend a lot of the public's time and staff's time and our time spending in circles. And if you, as you suggest, go back in time and, relook at the point where we can actually make some decisions that go forward with our recommendation. That would be the best as far as I'm concerned.

I would certainly support that.

Chair Reid, if I might add to this just briefly.

Please.

I'm gonna try and put a kind of a practical filter on this. There I think there's maybe two sets of questions. One of them is a little bit about process. And we've got a fair amount of time to kind of work through how and the mechanics of how the rec benefit program might proceed. But we have a whole set of kind of like CEQA related questions that we need to come to some conclusion on so we can have a stable project description to finish our EIR.

And I gave you a public release for the EIR of March. You know, that was predicated on us kind of wrapping up today. If we're gonna wait until February 11 to get feedback, I mean, that's if that's the way it is, then that's the way it is. But we're losing, you know, nearly a nearly a month in the process to finalize our our EIR. So if we can come back in February and be prepared to kind of address those CEQA questions in particular, that would help me sleep.

Would it be possible for you to provide us with a pretty specific refresher on just exactly what the questions are that we're expected to address to help you proceed with the EIR?

Yes, Chair Read. I think it is the question surrounding the land use development code in particular, you know, how big are country ends going to be? How many rooms will they be? How big would a trailside cafe be? What kind of activities would be allowed in the trailside cafe? We heard today about allowing coffee roasting, for example. I don't think we contemplated that. I don't know if that's limited by what we proposed or not. But those sorts of things. We talked a little bit about amphitheaters today and special events.

You know, your thoughts and your position on special events would be appreciated so that we can analyze those sorts of matters in the EIR. What other EIR type of issues am I missing, Mr. Wilson?

So Chair and Commissioners, Mr. Lingard wraps it up superbly. To give guidance as far as to help that is I want to go back to the table we provided. The table has specific questions and standards. We're not married to any of those standards. We presented them to, as created thought process. I've lost the words. To spark some thought, questions, comments. But as far as CEQUA goes, we do need to kind of create that outer perimeter boundaries of what is acceptable for the commissioner. What you would want to guide us towards.

And so when we look in this sequence lens, it's looking at what is the environmental impacts. So size of trail site cavities, size of country ends. Those are the things that we want to look at. Setbacks, sidings. So when we go back in time, I like what Commissioner Kuni said. Go back in time, when you look at that guiding, that summary document, when you look at the ordinance amendments, and when we're proposing new uses, scope and scale of those new uses is what we want to nail down in our project description for CEQA. Size of, number of events, of special events. Those are the guidance that we're looking for from the commission on a conceptual level. We don't need to fine tune it. We don't need nail down to, you know, nth number of person that can attend.

But we're looking at a higher level because we're doing a programmatic EIR. So that's one aspect we're looking for for the commission. And then to Commissioner Park's side as well, what is the mechanics and the process? And is there some sort of consensus for the commission as far as what that would look like? Is some of it procedurally written or is some of it actually written into law? So those are the things that we're looking for from the commission.

I might add just one more thing. Left my brain. I'm sorry.

I want to speak to that.

Go ahead, Commissioner Park.

Okay. So, I think it's been well stated that what we're looking at is the scope of work, scope of the project that would be analyzed under the EAR. And we can't really do the EAR until we have that scope of the project. And I think we should understand clearly that we're looking at, as you put it, the outer perimeter. Because we don't want to say, hey, we only want 10 rooms in that country in.

And then you get the EIR and then it comes up to the board and the board says, no, we like 30. And you say, well, that gosh darn planning commission stuck us with 10 and nothing else got analyzed and we can't go there without a new EIR and another generation of planners to analyze all this. So it's important we get that right. I think it's not just the numbers, but one thing I'm looking for in this is to match the incentives with the reasonable requests, those reasonable requests that we receive from landowners of what they want to do. So if somebody wants to do some particular thing, and over the last number of years they've told us that, I don't want to leave it out because that'll be the last chance to get it in there.

And we may not get a project if we don't have that incentive written in. I'm not looking for radically different incentives. I'm not looking at, oh yeah, I want to build a coal mine or I want to have a steel foundry or a microchip plant. No. But if somebody needs a meeting room of a certain kind or something like that, let's be explicit about it. So this is a good idea.

Any more questions or comments? Or I believe we're prepared to adjourn.

No, and just in closing, no we do need

don't need to move, don't we need to, and I will make the motion move to continue this hearing to February 11.

And I think as far as, we did have a great presentation from Craytac. As far as the policy language, I think generally in the sequel lens the policies are stable. I think there's some wordsmithing that we want to go back and forth with Kraytak as far as they have some specific recommendations. On a sequel level I don't think those recommendations are going to be, will change that much on a sequel level. Because we've looked at those and we are committed to continuing to work with Kraytak as far as their letters and hearing what they have to say and incorporate it as we can going forward.

So I think we do have a motion and a second to go to February 11. Think that

I'm a second.

So we have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye.

So

we can adjourn. I think if you would like

I don't

think chair We there's anything may as well.

We're done.

Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you.