Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

We're on. Welcome to the April 8th meeting of the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission. Please join us with the Pledge of Allegiance. 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. Okay, Mr. Villalobos, will you please make the TV announcement?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning to the Commission. No, everyone else here. Today, Planning Commission hearings are televised live on County of Santa Barbara Television, CSB TV, Channel 20, at 9 a.m. in the South Coast, Lompoc, Stanninas Valley, Samaria, and Orchard areas. Rebroadcast of Planning Commission hearings on Fridays at 5 p.m. on CSB TV, Channel 20. Today's hearing is also televised 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. Shall I move on to roll call? Please. Great. Commissioner Cooney? Here. Commissioner Ford?

Here.

Commissioner Park? Present. Commissioner Martinez? Here. And Chair Reid?

Here.

Thank you.

Can we go to the agenda status report, Mr. Wilson?

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

Yes.

So our next scheduled hearing will be on April 29th, and that will be in Santa Barbara. There's two items projected on that day, a development plan for a footpath handrail in the Summerland area, and then the housing project in Los Alamos area on Price Canyon. Again, that will be held in Santa Barbara on April 29th, so we will not be meeting again until the end of the month. Then following that we begin May on May 6th and we'll be in Santa Barbara on that day. That was the date that we continued the utility scale solar amendments project. So that's the only item on that agenda and that will be in Santa Barbara on May 6th. Then moving further down into May, we canceled the May 13th hearing. And then our next hearing after that will be May 27th. We had continued the Chick-fil-A project on to that date. And there's also an appeal of a parcel map on that date as well. And that will be in Santa Barbara on May 27th. And then in June, no items projected for June 3rd, but then we will be returning to Santa Maria finally on June 10th. And there's two items projected for that date, a tentative parcel map, and then a development plan permit transfer on the Asphalt Refinery in Santa Maria. And again, that's June 10th in Santa Maria. There's no other items projected in June or in July, but I'm sure that will change as we progress. So that concludes the projection report, Mr. Chair.

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

And for those of you online, if you'd like to speak, okay, we do have one hand. And then for those of you joining us by phone, it's star nine to raise your hand. So our first speaker will be Jason Marshall.

Marichal can you hear me.

Perfect go ahead.

Okay great thank you- good morning planning commissioners- thank you for the time my name is- Jason Marichal and I I'm a vice president of Kimberly Garner a national engineering and planning consulting firm- I just want to briefly speak about- housing needs in Santa Barbara County- I reviewed the- the- twenty twenty three county hat county housing element and really identify two critical facts one is that in twenty twenty two. The county had the sixth highest average cost rental housing in the United States. And then number two, in the past two decades, the annual average permitting of new housing in the county decreased by approximately 37.5%. The housing element that was drafted by the county and approved responded to a state RENA allocation of about 5,600 units by identifying potential housing sites across the county, doing some rezoning and some code modifications and I believe that the Planning Commission would be really doing a great service by reporting the number of units permitted in unincorporated county on a regular basis to evaluate the effectiveness of the measures that were identified in the housing element. Kimberly Horne's consulting presence in Santa Barbara County continues to grow. We're working on the airport. We have some hospital projects, some housing projects, and a lot of exciting things happening. And we're really honored to help improve the infrastructure and help build communities in the county. We're also strategically opening offices across the state, and we've identified Santa Barbara County as an area we'd really like to open a physical office, but I will say that access to affordable and available housing for our employees is really a strong barrier to entry for us. We have great desire. The opportunity is difficult in part because of, you know, ongoing housing issues that I know you're all aware of. Kimberly Horne is helping to build communities, helping communities across the state address housing issues that are endemic to California with our planning and engineering efforts. We actually write housing elements as well. We do strongly encourage the Planning Commission to continue to support housing projects, willing to offer our services, our planning and engineering services to the county and to builders within the county to help develop affordable and intelligently planned housing that we really feel is critical to sustain the high quality of life that you all have in Santa Barbara County. And thank you for the time.

Well, thank you. Any additional?

No additional. Hands up, Mr. Chair.

Okay, so this time we proceed to Planning Commissioner's informational reports when individual commissioners can present brief reports on planning issues, seminars, meetings, literature, any other item they feel would be of interest. Any informational reports? Okay, with that, I will make one. uh i believe two weeks ago i had the opportunity to observe the scoping hearing held by county staff on the solomon hills development it was well attended it was very informative and very well managed by staff so i appreciate their effort in conducting that hearing that workshop I suppose so now we move on to minutes have the commissioners had an opportunity to examine the minutes of our meetings of March 4th and March 25th and if so are there any corrections deletions or additions that anyone would recommend well given the absence of any uh recommendations on uh or noticing of corrections uh omissions or deletions do we have a motion to approve the minutes of march 4th 2026 and march 25th 2026 motion to approve uh would you second i will second mr and all in favors AYE. AYE. AYE. OKAY. SO DIRECTOR'S REPORT, DO WE HAVE A DIRECTOR'S REPORT THIS MORNING?

WE HAVE TWO SETS OF MINUTES.

EXCUSE ME?

I'M SORRY, WAS THAT MOTION FOR BOTH SETS OR JUST THE MARCH 4TH? BOTH SETS. OKAY, GREAT. THANK YOU. SORRY, LISA.

THAT'S OKAY. GOOD MORNING, MEMBERS OF THE COMMISSION. GOOD MORNING. I want to report on the board hearing yesterday. We had the presentation of the long long range work program for long range planning. It was well received. The board did not modify any of the recommendations we made on how we allocated staff. If you have if there are members of the commission that are interested I'm happy to share copies of the presentation that we made to the board so you can get a sense of how staff would be allocated with respect to the programs in the next fiscal year. But suffice it to say, we're spending quite a bit of time on state mandated items such as the open space element, the circulation element, and the safety element, and then implementation of the housing element. in response to the question that we received and i want to touch on this respect to the housing element the county has approved over 2 000 new housing units which is quite substantial given uh um the history of the county and and the level of housing units that we've approved in the last couple of decades so i think it is The actions that were taken by the board and recommended by the Planning Commission have been quite significant with respect to the production of housing. And we have about 5,000 more sitting in the pipeline. So that's good news with respect to housing. In terms of other items on the long-range work program, we have a number of things we'll be working on with respect to the ordinance. And one of them is creating more ministerial permits. So simplifying the process for types of projects that are more simple. And that is going to the board, a briefing, making sure we're going in the right direction on the 5th of May. As Chair Reid indicated the Solomon Hills scoping hearing was held for the EIR. That's a substantial project. That's around 4000 units and. Several 100,000 square feet of commercial development in the Solomon Hills in the Orcutt area, and then there were a lot of comments about the cost of housing now in the North County. Traditionally it had been more affordable than the South County and it still is more affordable, but it is become unaffordable for the community there and we heard from, I think it was Marion Medical, indicating that they've been having a hard time recruiting and retaining staff because of those issues. And so that's something that I think the county is paying attention to and wanting to make sure that they get the similar kind of focus that South County has been getting with respect to housing costs. And then one other exciting thing is we launched our pre-approved ADU plans. They're free and they are completely 100% plan checked, except for any site preparation work that needs to be done for an ADU. So anybody who wants to build one can go on our website and look at these plans. We have a couple of different architectural styles and we have a number of different sizes. And so that can save a homeowner tens of thousands of dollars in terms of hiring an architect to draw up a set of plans. So I'm excited to see how many people will take advantage of that. And then in terms of future board items, next week are the budget workshops. We are on the 13th. of April, so that's the Monday, if you're interested in watching that. One thing to note for planning and development, and I may have mentioned this at our last meeting, there is an effort by all county departments to address the budget shortfall that we're going to be facing. And one of the ways in which we are doing that is we are keeping a couple of positions that are currently vacant open. Two of those happen to be in long-range planning. We have requested the restoration of one of those positions in long-range planning so we can keep moving the programs forward at a faster clip. But that's a decision that the board will make during the budget hearings, ultimately. And there's a lot of demands and a lot of needs out there. So the board will do what they think is best. And we will accommodate it. I also wanted to mention that we are moving the concept for local preference for marketing. It's requiring a marketing plan of developers and that's for market rate units. That's going to be going to the board on the 21st of April. There's, as I've mentioned previously, there's not much we can do in terms of demanding that market rate units be offered at a first refusal for market rate use because of the state laws that protect against discrimination. So fair housing laws, federal and state laws. And so we're trying to navigate a path so that we can give our local community the best shot at getting access to these new units. And I think, uh, hopefully, uh, it'll, it'll make a difference. It's not, I think what we would all like to see, but that's our goal is to make a difference and give people an opportunity to get into these units. And then we are, as I mentioned, we're working on this ministerial, um, permit process and we'll be briefing the board on the 5th of May. And I'm happy to answer any questions.

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

That's an excellent question, Chair Reed. We don't have anything in our work program right now for that outreach effort, but it's a good idea and I'm happy to work. And I think you're particularly involved in reaching out with the agricultural community up there to try and assist with that. There's also another section of our code that addresses farm worker housing. And we have tried to get that information out to the farming community, and we can certainly do some of that through the AAC. There's been a reluctance to move forward on the farm worker housing because the sanitation has been an issue. If it's one or two or three units, it's easier, but it's been challenging for a larger complex. because they don't have access to municipal services. But I'm happy to work with you on figuring out an approach to try and get this information out.

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

Yeah, I wanted to address the ADUs also. Before you came on the commission, Commissioner Reid, a few years ago, I gave various workshops in rural areas and even though they were on other subjects, sometimes I'd always bring this up and I gave several talks to different real estate groups. I think you've got a good point. I have a question though about those pre-approved plans. I think they're excellent. What I like is that there's four simple plans, floor plans, but each one has three architectural styles that are optional. And they all look very different. It's kind of surprising. But my question is, in looking at the sizes, they would be like 492 square feet, and I think the biggest was 900-something square feet. Most of those are under the 800 square feet, which prevents us from imposing our development standards under state law. But in the rural areas, they don't they can't take advantage of of of of of that provision of state law because they're not strictly zoned for residential. And so in a rural area, you're you're probably wiser to go up to the max size of twelve hundred square feet. Yeah. Yeah. And I I don't see any plans for buildings that are that size, yet I think that they're probably the most common for areas that aren't strictly zoned residential. And I just wonder why that is. And it's not just Santa Barbara County. I look at them in other counties and I don't see them that are pre-approved for that size. So what am I missing?

When we looked at which sizes we wanted to include in the pre-approved set, we were looking at what we mostly see. coming in. So what are the preponderance of units and their size range? And then also what we were finding is that people who are building an ADU that large typically wanted to build an ADU that matched their existing structure. And we talked to some other jurisdictions that had pre-approved ADU plans to see sort of what was the most popular. And so that's how we settled on the sizes that we have now. Now, if somebody finds a pre-approved plan set like in San, many of these we took from other jurisdictions, they let us use them. So if somebody were to find a pre-approved plan set in San Luis Obispo County or Ventura County or some other place for a 1200 square foot unit, our building division would work with that applicant to shorten the plan check. And we would certainly, We had to modify these plans to be consistent with local codes and local issues with respect to soils, etc. But we could certainly, I think it would be an advantage to take a 1200 square foot plan and bring it to the county versus having one drawn up themselves. That makes sense. That would reduce cost.

Yeah, I'll be on the lookout. And I think that a lot of the prefab ones I see that are basically, they're pulling like two double wide trailers. They look like emergency housing, but they're pushing right that size. So I have another question for you. it increasingly seems to me when we look at development review projects that sometimes we're looking at things that oh maybe we don't really have to like when we used to look at dance studios and karate studios coming to shopping centers and needing a cup and so forth and i think a a good way to help the budget problems certainly for this department is if we could invest more in long-range planning on revision of our zoning ordinances in our pretty ancient elements that that are part of the general plan. It would actually make it quicker to process some of the development review stuff that's just a belief I have so I had to state it get off my chest.

Yeah, yeah, Mr. Park, thank you for mentioning that I think you'll be interested to monitor the hearing on the 5th at the board to take a look at the kinds of things we're trying to downshift so that they become truly ministerial that won't get appealed all the way up to a PC and then won't bog down development review staff with a longer processing timeframe. When something's ministerial, if it meets our code and it's ministerial, we should be getting those permits out quickly. Oh, and I'm sorry. I just got a notification. We are moving that briefing to the 12th. I forgot. Supervisor Nelson wanted to be there and he's not going to be at the 5th, so the ministerial permit briefing is on the 12th of May. So make sure you make a note of that. But I think you'll be pleased to see the kinds of things that we want to do in terms of the streamlining. Because I agree, it will allow our development review staff to focus on the bigger projects and not on these small projects like a pool, for instance, which currently requires a land use permit and noticing and can be appealed and can go all the way to the board. So those are the kinds of things that we want to take out of that process and make them truly ministerial, including single family residences.

Well, very good. Thank you.

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

Yes. Yes, thank you. Thank you. The following is a hearing on the request of the County of Santa Barbara Planning and Development Department for the County Planning Commission to consider adopting ordinance case number 26-ORD-1 and determining that the ordinance is exempt from provisions of CEQA pursuant to sections 15307 and 15308. state guidelines for the implementation of CEQA as well as adopt ordinance case number 26 ORD 2 and determine that that ordinance is exempt from the provisions of CEQA pursuant to sections 15307, 15308 and 15265 of the state guidelines for implementation of CEQA.

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

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

all right commissioner commissioner ford uh thank you i too uh had an excellent meeting yesterday on zoom with ms haley ms davis mr chiacos mr mandavi and ms ren hefo all right commissioner martinez

yes good morning everyone um yes i had the pleasure of speaking with mr ed hazard from naro yesterday on the telephone i also had the pleasure of speaking with charlie catherman prior to that i would also say that i spoke to a lot of people in my community santa maria about what this is about because i believe that the law provides that we're supposed to look at what the needs of our community and I spoke to a lot of citizens of Santa Maria and I would say 20 probably of them are just discussing them. Thank you.

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

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

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

Thank you. Good morning, Chair Reid and Commissioners. Again, for the record, my name is Karina Martin and I will be giving today's presentation on the phase one oil and gas prohibition amendments. So the purpose of today's hearing is to review and recommend approval of the board directed onshore oil and gas prohibition amendments. And to summarize, last October the board directed P&D staff to initiate amendments to the LUDC as well as to the coastal zone ordinance to prohibit the drilling of new onshore oil and gas wells in the inland area and in the coastal zone. These proposed amendments are in response to the measures and goals contained in the 2030 Climate Action Plan that address greenhouse gas emission reductions, and these amendments are also consistent with Assembly Bill 3233, which was signed into law in September of 2024 and authorizes jurisdictions to impose restrictions by ordinance to prohibit oil and gas operations or development or impose regulations, limits, or prohibitions that are more protective of public health, the climate, or the environment than those prescribed by state law. And to just briefly recap, during the board's adoption of the 2030 Climate Action Plan back in August of 2024, The board adopted a resolution directing community services department known as CSD to identify viable measures and goals to address greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas extraction and processing. And in response to the board's resolution, CSD returned to the board in May of last year and presented several options. CSD identified that prohibiting new oil and gas drilling to be the most viable and least resource intensive option to develop, to adopt, and to implement to ensure no net increase in onshore oil production from new drilling. At that hearing, the board then redirected staff to return with a framework to develop ordinance amendments, as well as a long term plan to phase out existing oil and gas facilities and operations. So due to complexity, the effort to prohibit and prepare a long term plan was divided into a two phase approach. Phase 1 focuses on preparing amendments to the LUDC and CZO to prohibit new drilling of onshore oil and gas wells. Staff estimates that these amendments would be adopted this summer and submitted to the California Coastal Commission shortly after for review and certification. And this process could take anywhere up to 9 to 15 months. Well, phase two includes the preparation of an amortization study for existing wells, oil and gas facilities and operations, which will be led by CSC staff. Staff also anticipates that phase two may include the preparation of an environmental impact report, as well as consideration and preparation of amendments to effectuate the phase-out period to seize existing operations. And staff anticipates that this process could take approximately three years to complete. On October 21st of last year, P&D staff provided the board with a status report on the number, location, and condition of orphan and idle wells in the county. And the status report is included in your staff report package as attachment G. And at that hearing, staff reported that as of September 2025, the California Geologic Energy Management Division, known as CalGEM, records indicated that there are approximately 1,039 onshore oil and gas wells categorized as active and 1,221 as idle within the county's jurisdiction. The county last approved an oil drilling and production plan in March of 2014, known as the North Gary Production Plan. And more recently, a land use permit was granted in September 2019 for an oil drilling and production plan exempt project known as the Amarich Project. Moving on to the ordinance amendments. The proposed amendments to the LUDC and CZO revise existing standards to prohibit new drilling oil and gas wells as well as prohibit reentering previously abandoned wells and revise the applicability and development standards to be consistent with the proposed prohibition. The proposed changes will not apply to existing facilities and operations with a vested land use permit or an approved oil drilling and production plan that authorize the future drilling of new wells. And a summary of the proposed ordinance amendments begins on page four of the March 31 staff report. And I'll just briefly outline them in the next two slides. SO THE PROPOSED AMENDMENTS DO REVISE SECTION 355250, OIL DRILLING AND PRODUCTION, AGAIN, TO PROHIBIT NEW ONSHORE OIL AND GAS DRILLING ACTIVITIES IN ALL ZONES AS WELL AS IN SECTION 355340 TO REMOVE DRILLING OPERATIONS AND DRILLING AND PRODUCTION FACILITIES. in section 35 5360 conditions restrictions and modifications under approved plans the amendments revise or the amendments remove drilling only option for modifications of development standards and finally in section 35 55 30 the amendments revise applicable findings to remove proposed oil drilling Similar amendments are also being proposed to the coastal zoning ordinance and they're listed on this slide as well as summarized on page 5 of the staff report. And the proposed ordinance amendments to the LEDC and CZO are recommended to be determined categorically exempt from environmental review. As further explained in attachment B, class seven and eight categorical exemptions apply to actions carried out by a regulatory agency for the protection of natural resources or the environment. And as a result, no significant environmental impacts would occur as a result of these ordinance amendments pursuant to sections 15307, 15308, and 15265. And the recommendations for today's ordinance amendments can be found on pages one through two of the staff report dated March 31st. And to summarize, they are to make the required findings for approval, including CEQA findings found in attachment A to the staff report. To determine that proposed LUDC and CZO ordinance amendments are exempt from the provisions of CEQA. And finally, to adopt a resolution and recommend approval of the LUDC and CZO amendments found in attachments C and D. And this concludes staff's presentation and staff are available for questions. Thank you.

All right. It is time to have questions for staff from commissioners. Commissioner Park.

yeah i i have a lot of opinions on this that i'll i'll mention later not now but i do have a question on the on the proposed amendments i looked through them to see if there was a definition of what new drilling means and and i and i didn't find it so is that me or is that there's nothing in there is there a definition uh mr chair and commissioner park

We don't have a definition of new drilling.

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

that would be prohibited right now that is defined as essentially a new well that would require a permit just like a new well so once a well is abandoned it kind of changes the circumstances an existing well that's either active or idle being re-entered reworked sidetracked drilled to a new downhole location would not be prohibited and would not require a permit

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

Commissioner Martinez.

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

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

But then we're also looking at the amortization for the phase-out completely, correct?

That would be part of phase two. This project is phase one, so that amortization study and the phase-out will come at a later time. So right now we're just focusing on prohibiting the drilling of a new well through the LUDC and CZO.

but but it's all part of the same effort it's a plus b equals c yes because that was board direction yes okay and so then in looking at this um whatever happened and i didn't hear any consideration from the staff yet in regards to what is it it was about a few years ago probably five maybe seven years ago um it was the voters were put to were asked the question of whether they wanted to do this, and the voters of Santa Barbara County said, no, we don't want to do this. Whatever happened to consideration of that by the staff? Because the reason I ask that is because in AB 3233, it says to, and I quote, will therefore enable communities to make decisions that align with their needs. So that's the last time I heard the community speak. So has the county staff done anything to look at the community needs?

Commissioner Martinez for the chair. I guess I would answer that by indicating that the board gave very clear direction to county staff, which is to prepare this set of amendments.

so uh we're responding to board's direction on this project and and coming forward to the commission with it with this set of amendments okay that that that clears up that one and i get what you're saying because it is in the attachment of the board's direction so it's this is done at the board's direction solely not in reflection upon the community needs as ab 3233 says okay and then we're talking about no new wells or anything And even though you made clear that the phase out, which is phase two of this thing, has there been any consideration as to what the economic impact is upon those who own the minerals?

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

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

okay uh you know commissioner park even though we're not brown octet on this one he's he has somehow divined away my first question and probably the most important one about what is because this is ostensibly a ban on new wells what is the definition of a new well know same question i asked when we had our conference earlier uh so i mean you gave an excellent definition of what a new well is but i think the ordinance would be much more defensible and supportable if it contained in writing like any good contract or law what that description is of a new well and that should also include what it is not as you said because there's a lot of practices occur in oil fields new and old involving raising the production zone sidestepping the well more a little bit those sorts of operations that are not drilling a new well and you know there's been concern over that i i actually have concern if we look at the staff report Page 3, it says prohibit oil and gas drilling to ensure no net increase in onshore oil production. Well, I know by banning new wells, it will certainly result in no net increase in onshore wells. But you can increase production without more wells by doing some of these other well maintenance procedures. you know, I would feel much more comfortable. It says ensure no net increase in onshore oil, you know, number of wells, not onshore oil production. Because, yeah, everything's, you know, more wells, more production, but you don't need wells to increase production. If you have wells that are declining, yet you can, a well maintenance project can be performed. And as Mr. Briggs mentions, those are not prohibited, but I think the ordinance would benefit by having that included in explicit terms.

Okay.

So thank you, Commissioner Park, again. Now, I do have a few other questions, though, for staff. Since we're talking about eliminating this expansion of new wells, how many new well permits has the county issued this year?

Mr. Chair, zero.

And how about last year?

Zero. Okay.

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

No, sir.

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

Chair Reid, no. No.

Okay. Any supervisors or their staffs?

Chair Reid, no. Not from just the board hearings that were held previously last year.

Not CalGEM? No. Okay. So just completely of your own genesis. Good. all right any legal consultants county council oil and gas attorneys uh mr chair we always work in coordinating with our county council on on all matters before your commission as we all do okay good we got to keep the county safe that's very important i mean it is it's a real issue that this is a part of and we'll get into that later uh so thank you for that so we're going to have the and then abandoned okay in terms of definition of abandon like we discussed before there's more than one definition you got you got cal gym approved state-of-the-art abandonment yet there's a lot of other wells that are abandoned perhaps to a lower level and how about the language on those we i just we need to be i think consistent if they can so uh chair reed

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

Okay, because we just reviewed a project not long ago out on Clark Avenue. I think Commissioner Park, we were browning, brown acting on that one, went out there. They had a couple wells been abandoned almost 100 years ago. And they were going to be re-examined and re-looked at.

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

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

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

Okay, no. Has there been any consideration during the genesis of this ordinance of the potential, well, the certainty of legislative takings on mineral owners? That is, people who have not yet produced, yet have mineral rights, thereby, if there was a ban on all new wells, it would automatically generate a takings. Has that been considered?

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

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

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

MR. CHAIR AND COMMISSIONER FORD, GIVEN THE FACT THAT THIS EFFORT ROSE THROUGH THE CLIMATE ACTION PLAN PROCESS AND THERE WAS SOME PRETTY HEAVY DISCUSSION AT THE BOARD LEVEL ABOUT REDUCING GREENHOUSE GAS-RELATED EMISSIONS IN THE COUNTY, GIVEN THE GENESIS OF WHERE THIS CAME FROM, I WOULD SUSPECT THAT THE BOARD'S GOAL WAS TO REDUCE GREENHOUSE GAS-RELATED EMISSIONS IN THE COUNTY. I think that they might measure success in this effort in observing real-world reductions in the county's emissions.

Makes sense. Thank you. Commissioner Park?

I want to ask about something, and I don't know if my question makes any difference at all, but both staff and Commissioner Reed brought up when were the last oil wells in this county permitted. And I do recall within about the last 18 months or so, we approved, or rather this commission did, an exploratory well out on Schoolhouse Road. Yes, sir. near New Koyama. Does that matter to anybody? I don't know.

Mr. Chair and Commissioner Parks, so yes, the commission did approve that exploratory well. That well was located outside of established oil field boundaries. So when we use the term exploratory, that is very true in the sense they did drill that well and it was a dry hole. It did not produce, so it's been abandoned.

You jogged my memory. One question I had, how come in the coastal zone these ordinances seem to emphasize no exploratory drilling, yet in the inland zone it doesn't seem to have the exploratory part, doesn't have that emphasis, at least in the way I see it in the ordinances?

Chair Reid, I don't know for sure the answer to that question. I suspect it's really just a relic of when the ordinances were written. They were written at different times. Doing things in the coastal zone and their potential interaction with the ocean brings upon all kinds of complications and variables. So I'm thinking maybe that when producers were, you know, exploring for oil in that area, it was truly more an exploratory nature rather than onshore in the North County where the field boundaries and the petroleum reserves are more well known.

okay and just one final one then i will be quiet uh commissioner ford's question about you know what will the measurable beneficial effect be and i i realize it might help the county meet its greenhouse gas goals by reducing local emissions from these wells but you know there it seems like the greater concern is global climate change sea level rise so what would be the measurable effect of this ordinance on those? I mean, this is a nice laboratory value. I came from the medical world, a lot of lab values, but the other question is what is the practical effect on the health of the patient?

That's it. I didn't mean to put you on the spot. No, I mean, I see where you're going with that question. And, you know, global warming, greenhouse gases, climate change, these are cumulative global issues. They're not local issues, right? So emissions generated in Santa Barbara County in this regard are the same as emissions generated halfway around the world. whether it be China, the Middle East, Europe, you name it. So a ton of CO2 is a ton of CO2. And so what effect does this effort have in the global context? Very, very, very little.

good answer yeah i mean yeah i appreciate the ton of cn2 anywhere it's here today and in bakersfield tomorrow then theirs comes to us so it's a and you know i appreciate i don't make light of people's real concerns about global climate change when i was in graduate school we were convinced the earth would be a popsicle by now but nonetheless so thank you Any more comment from staff? Well, with that, I suppose we're ready for public comment.

All right. I've got seven slips and there's a lot more people out there.

I've got a few. Somebody needs to submit it.

Do it now.

Okay, we're ready.

Let's see.

I have a request for a five minute break. We will do that and we will be back in, is five minutes gonna be good or do we need a couple more?

Chair, we say five and we usually take 10, so. Okay, we'll be honest about it, okay. Let's go 10.

We'll opt for a five minute.

How many are online?

I don't see my welcome back to the April 8th hearing of the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission. We will now begin public comment. We're going to give each speaker three minutes, but as is our custom, if there are people who have a want to make a brief statement and can wrap it up in one minute, you can come up to the podium and be in front of the line. do we have any takers oh we all have oh here we go oh we've got one mr just announce your name uh city of residence and have at it my name is ramon elias i'm a resident here in santa maria i'm a business owner and a ranch owner in the area

I am here representing Council 3252 of the League of United Latin American Citizens. I want to express on their behalf, the local chapter that we are completely opposed to this effort altogether. Not only do we feel that this body is not qualified to render these kinds of decisions with respect to industry and natural resources, but we also feel that the work that has been done thus far has ignored people who have PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH INCOME, LIVELIHOODS, BECAUSE OF THE JOBS THAT ARE BEING ELIMINATED THAT HAVE BEEN 60% MANNED BY HISPANICS. THANK YOU. NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU.

NEW SPEAKER SHOULD WE CHECK ONLINE IF WE HAVE ANY TAKERS ONLINE? NEW SPEAKER CHECK PLEASE. NEW SPEAKER FOR THOSE OF YOU ONLINE, IF YOU want your full three minutes go ahead and lower your hand for the moment but if you would like to speak if you can speak in one minute keep your hand raised and again if you're joining us on phone it's star nine to raise and lower your hand okay uh looks like we do have two hands up okay our first speaker will be stella simmons

Good morning members of the Commission. My name is Stella Simons and I'm a programs associate with the Clean Coalition. The Clean Coalition is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to accelerate the transition to renewable energy. And the Clean Coalition urges the Planning Commission to approve the proposed amendments to the LUDC and CCO prohibiting the drilling of new oil and gas wells. This is a critical step toward achieving commitments established in the county's Climate Action Plan. and the proposed ordinance amendments represent an opportunity to translate their climate commitments into action, taking a critical step towards a more resilient, locally powered system. This would reduce emissions at the source and decrease long-term public costs while improving economic efficiency and strengthening energy resilience in our county. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. All right. Our next speaker will be Bill Woodbridge.

Hi, commissioners. Thank you very much. My name is Bill Woodbridge. I'm in Goleta. I implore you to approve this ban on new drilling and as soon as possible stop the existing Wells from being operated and plug all of the leaking wells I think I believe that you are qualified to make this decision you are hearing from the people today and the people who are currently employed are can be retrained in renewable uh energy opportunities uh they pay just as well and uh solar and wind farms are the first and second highest fastest growing jobs in the country so uh We don't need any more pollution. We don't need any more risk of oil spills. We do need cleaner air and water, and we don't need our groundwater to be poisoned. So please approve this motion. Thank you very much.

All right. Thank you. So no more hands up?

We do have a couple more.

For one minute. Okay.

All right. Our next speaker will be Vivian Chonkai, I believe.

Yes. Hello. Good morning, commissioners, and thank you for taking my comment. My name is Vivian Chonkai. I'm an advocacy co-chair for UCSB's Environmental Affairs Board. In my time at UCSB, I have seen how unique the environments of Santa Barbara are as well as the danger that oil and gas poses to those ecosystems in our communities. I urge the Planning Commission to approve the proposed amendments to the LUDC and CZO prohibiting the drilling of new oil and gas wells to protect community health and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There's strong evidence that supports that this transition, such as the high cost and risks of operating oil infrastructure in Santa Barbara County and the small number of oil and gas jobs in the county. While this is only the first step of the oil phase-out process, it represents a big milestone for the future of climate policy in Santa Barbara. This ordinance will lead the way for the county to solidify its place as a climate leader and create a safe, more climate-friendly future for everyone in Santa Barbara. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Alright, our last hand up is our telephone caller. If it starts 6 to unmute yourself.

Hi, my name is Emily Angle. I'm a leader in the. Can you hear me?

Yes, go ahead.

OK, but yeah, we can. I'm a leader at the Santa Barbara. Yeah.

Yes, go ahead.

Sorry, do you want me to go ahead? Okay, hi, my name is Emily Engel. I'm a leader in the local Santa Barbara Sierra Club chapter, and I'm also a mother of two young children in Santa Barbara. I am calling... as a mother and as a volunteer to encourage you to approve the ban on new oil and gas drilling in santa barbara county this ban protects the health and well-being of our families and children by stopping major new sources of toxic air pollution protects our drinking water and water supplies and ensures a clean future for our children and families oil production in santa barbara county kills and harms and dangers sensitive and protective protected and endangered animal species, and also is a threat to our local treasures and the unique aspects of our local county landscape. We live in a hotspot of biodiversity that our families and children value and support, and I'm here to advocate for them today. Thank you for all you do, and I look forward to all of you really protecting the future of our county and ensuring a bright future for our children and families as we go forward into new technological developments and really promoting economic growth and diversity for our county. Thanks again for all you do, and thanks for taking my comment.

All right, thank you.

And I have no additional hands up for one minute.

Okay, so now we will proceed. If anyone wants to speak and hasn't yet put in a speaker slip, do it right now, because it's closed after this. We have one coming, right? Okay. We will begin with Katie Davis. Three minutes. After that will be Janet Blevins.

OK, thank you, Katie Davis. And I don't know that I have much to add to that. There are hundreds of public comments in support of this initiative, so I point you to those. I think no one has been more eloquent on this issue than the supervisors who directed this to happen. And so I'd like to quote from what Joan Hartman said at the last hearing in October. And Yes. So she said, I'm fortunate that my three-year-old grandson moved to the area. When I pick him up at his daycare and I look at his little compatriots, I wonder what kind of world it's going to be for them. We're leaving a very different planet for those who came after us. We've got an administration in Washington that is denying that there is such a thing as climate change and stopping research and funding. But we know that it's real. We've been measuring it since 1958 in Hawaii when there was 315 parts per million carbon in the atmosphere. Today it's 426 parts per million. So that's the first time in at least 3 million years it's been that high. The average annual increase over the past decade has been 2.5 parts per million a year. That's 100 times faster than natural changes at the end of the last ice age. So we're making dramatic, dramatic changes to the planet. We're engaged in the sixth mass extinction. So we talk about what are the costs. And I feel the concern of people about their jobs. But let's look at the cost on the other side. And we see the fires. We have 172% increase in burned forest areas in our state. What does that mean? It means my constituents are saying, I can't get insurance. I can't sell my house. We can't get a mortgage to buy a house without insurance. What about the bluff collapses we're seeing? There's tremendous property damage, sea level rise. What is that going to mean for infrastructure, for roads, for bridges, for water infrastructure? These are billions, trillions in costs, and we're just putting blinders on. What's it going to mean for the future? We've seen the debris flows. We've seen in this county what has happened. It's a tremendously difficult thing to make change. We cling to what we know and what's familiar, but we really have to make change. At the state level, the goal is in law by 2045, we want to be carbon neutral. In the county's action plan, we actually call for phasing out oil. That's going to be something we have to do. It is broadly recognized that we have to reduce oil. But what's happening, the oil industry has known since the 50s about these impacts on the climate. They could have made huge strides in this transition and been not oil companies, but energy companies. They could have led the way. So how do I, somebody here, say I have to use whatever power I have to try to change this? California is the fourth largest economy in the world, and we may not be a huge producer within the state, but we have standing, we have status, and what we do matters, and we can be an example to others. The energy transition is well underway, and California is a leader in that. Joan serves on the 3CE board and follows how much of our energy is coming from renewable sources. And we've exceeded our total energy demand in our service region many, many days, and battery storage has tripled just since 2020. So we're headed in the right direction. Batteries now provide over 12% of our nighttime demand. So we've made a huge shift. And I'll just say that she represents the majority of her north and south and central constituents. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we will go with Janet Blevins, and she'll be followed by Eric Vasquez.

morning um thank you planning commissioners for your dedication to to your jobs i very much appreciate it i am from lompoc and i have been fighting oil development in this county for 15 years ever since measure p failed commissioner martinez that was in 2014. so almost 16 years later we have not approved a single new oil development in this county. And that's because even though Andy Caldwell likes to, hi Mr. Caldwell, likes to say that the voters have spoken and they voted against Measure P, what the measure actually did was educate everybody in the county about all the oil development in the county on land that they were not aware of. And they weren't aware of it because the maps at the energy division online did not show any online oil development. They only showed, this was before Mr. Briggs was director, they only showed the offshore stuff. So that changed and hundreds and hundreds of maybe more than a thousand little black dots appeared in northern Santa Barbara County on that map. So as Katie Davis said, everything she said about climate and responsibility is so true. I would like to mention a question that I have about somebody on this board who owns oil rights voting on this. I don't see how that's appropriate. When my first granddaughter was born in 2014, I started fighting oil. When Bill McKibben wrote his famous article, the founder of 350.org, wrote his famous article in Rolling Stone about where we would be. in now if we didn't do something reasonable. The oil companies knew. Exxon knew. They could have chosen to educate the public about it and transitioned. They didn't. They chose to lie to all of us forever, which oil companies are still doing. They have done enough damage to our air and climate. We here in Santa Barbara County, as lucky as we are to live in this beautiful, beautiful place with the effects of climate change relatively minor here, that is not true for the rest of the world. The floods, the fires, we've seen a little of that. but other places have seen way more. Please do the right thing and vote for this restriction. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we will go with Eric Vasquez.

He will be followed by Andy Caldwell. good morning chair reed members of the commission my name is eric vasquez i'm representing a company asphalt llc asfalto we've been doing business here in santa barbara county for just about 20 years we currently have about you know 20 plus employees directly and then you know a factor of that that we use for outside contractors as well so In recent years, we've been the most active driller in Santa Barbara County. We did get the production plan approved 12 years ago for 56 wells and we've been drilling through that production plan over the last 10 years or so. Most of the oil that we produce, it's very heavy oil and it's used predominantly for asphalt. roads, parking lots, essential public infrastructure projects. And that's where we specialize in as much of the oil onshore Santa Barbara does as well. I'm here today to voice concerns about the proposal made today. First and foremost, I feel the proposal is just a little too extreme and far reaching. By choosing a CEQA exemption, I believe the county is short cutting the process. and not assessing all the impacts that such a ban may entail. Further, by taking this route, I believe the county is exposing itself legally, both from short-cutting the CEQA process and also the legality of the ban itself. I think some of the commissioners have already expressed questions asking, has staff assessed all of the components of this? And what I heard was no, and I agree with that. I think it needs to be understood a little bit better of what's being proposed today. For these reasons, I asked the Commission not to approve today's proposal and instead send it back to staff for a full CEQA analysis. I was going to end there, but because I've not another minute or so, you know, I've heard a few times today that there's a transition happening. I could not agree more that we are transitioning as a nation and people. But even Governor Newsom last year and his uh community energy commission they've realized that transition doesn't happen overnight it's got to be thoughtful it's got it takes time and you can't hurt people while that transition is happening i believe this ban will hurt people we are working towards a different solution but you cannot drive an electric car on dirt it just doesn't happen there are things that we still need both in this county in the state and nationwide and this band doesn't help us there I'd like you to consider that thank you thank you next up our second Lompoc speaker well former Lompoc speaker Andy Caldwell

Chair Reid, members of the Commission, Andy Caldwell representing CoLab. You know, we believe that the truthful thing to do is to fold this into Phase II EIR. We don't understand how you can have two phases and Phase II as an EIR but not Phase I, because we do believe this will result in impacts to the environment. The other thing we want you to look at is the big picture, to step back a big picture, is that this does nothing to reduce consumption. It just increases imports. So this solves nothing. California's been on, look at Stoker's letter as far as, we used to produce almost all our own oil and now we import most of our oil from around the world. That does nothing for greenhouse gases. So as you know, I represent a broad coalition of farming, ranching, trucking, construction, and the like. Many cattle operations are solely dependent on oil and gas and or royalties to keep their cattle operation going. Especially in drought years, cattle operations are a losing proposition. And so this is going to cause conversion from cattle to nothing, probably estates. That could actually lead to more brush fires because the cattle keep the brush down. And then plus cattlemen have to transport their cows to market and sometimes bring in feed during drought years. So this will impact ranching. No ins, ands, ifs, or buts about it. Most people in ranching do not make a living off the ranch. It's a love of life. Secondly, with respect to farming, farming is fuel intensive, including the use of fertilizers, which are a derivative of fossil fuels. And with gasoline prices hitting $78 a gallon, diesel is supposed to hit $10 a gallon. This is before the war on Iran. This is actually laid out in a USC study, among others, that this is a cumulative impact of a state action to reduce oil and gas production means refineries don't have the stock to keep the refinery open and it's the loss of refineries and a loss of a pipeline due to the loss of refineries that's triggering this rise in gas prices here, that is an impact to quality of life. It will be an impact to farming. Because again, right now, people will come to California and haul produce all the way across the country. They're not going to do that if our gas prices are sky high, because our prices that farmers will have to require higher prices for their produce because of the higher prices of fuel and fertilizer. They're not going to be able to withstand it. That could lead to land use conversions. There are farmers right now selling to private equity. They're getting out of farming because it's already too tough to make it. Finally, as was mentioned by the previous speaker, where are you gonna get your asphalt? There's not a single road in this region that isn't paved with asphalt. If we don't produce it locally, you're gonna have to import that too. From where? What will be the emissions from the trucking, right? What will be the cost to the county jurisdictions and private property owners to haul asphalt from God knows where? That needs to be examined. Again, you need to do an EIR to flush all this out. And again, I hope you'll read Stoker's letter, SIPA's letter, and we obviously believe this is a takings. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Next, I'd like to have Charles Catherman, and he will be followed by Haley Ehlers.

Good morning, Chair Reid and Commission members. My name is Charlie Catherman. I have a business here in Santa Barbara County. I'm a professional geologist. I specialize in petroleum and groundwater. I started a company 35 years ago to produce oil and gas. I played by the rules. I hired workers at a livable wage. and I paid my taxes and I also reduced my emissions by doing more than the predecessor company did. As has been talked about today, 90% of the oil in Santa Maria is heavy and it's used primarily for asphalt, roofing materials and lubricants. Everybody drove here today, even an EV needs oil. You've got transmission fluids, brake fluids, coolants, and you gotta have asphalt to drive on. There's some key issues that were brought up by the commissioners this morning, not the least of which is the lack of interface by the county, its consultants, with anybody in the industry. So I'm looking for me personally, that there's no options. If I take it out through phase two, it's the nuclear option. There's no, well, how do we work with industry to continue to reduce emissions? In your own climate action plan, it shows The oil and gas industry has reduced emissions by 75% from 2008 to 2022. What other industry decreased by that much? I'd like to see some work with the county with industry to come up with compromises, solutions to the problem. How do we continue to reduce emissions in the oil patch? If this thing goes its length out through phase two, I'm done. So I walk away. So what do you do about all these wells that I've walked away from? Because every day, every week, every month, I have to monitor those wells for emission leakage. I have to monitor the fluid level of saltwater in the well so that it doesn't rise up to a point where it's at the base of fresh water and we have a water quality problem. who who's going to go around all those facilities and monitor them on a weekly basis to make sure there aren't any leaks is the county going to do it because i'm not if i'm being told you're out of business so my request of your commission is to go back and have county interface with industry to come up with solutions and determine then how we do it or we don't. I appreciate your time very much.

Thank you. So Haley Ehlers and who will be followed by Pasha Malavi.

Hello, my name is Haley Ehlers, Executive Director at Climate First Replacing Oil and Gas, or CFROG, a grassroots advocacy organization leading a just transition away from fossil fuels to protect our health, economy, and climate here on the Central Coast. I am personally a resident of Ventura. For a decade, CFREG has watchdogged the local oil and gas industry, ensuring that through regulatory intervention, lawsuits, and policy advocacy, frontline communities and our environment are protected. We urge the Planning Commission to approve the stack of recommendations on the simple but incredibly important ordinances to prohibit drilling of new oil and gas wells. i'd like to emphasize the legality of this narrow policy first state law reaffirmed under ab 3233 grants local governments the explicit authority to quote prohibit oil and gas operations or development in their jurisdiction and impose regulations limits or prohibitions on oil and gas operations that are more protective of public health the climate or the environment than those prescribed by a state law regulation or order second the ordinance would not impermissibly impair vested rights as it is narrowly concerned with infrastructure that does not exist yet but even so california courts have long long recognized that zoning restrictions requiring non-conforming uses to be terminated are well within the scope of a county's police power and satisfy due process requirements. Similarly, takings claims are irrelevant here as a prohibition on new wells is not a deprivation of all economic value of an oil and gas property. Expecting or hoping to make a profit is not enough to weigh in favor of a regulatory takings because there is no absolute property right in future theoretical profits. This is particularly true for heavily regulated industries, which property owners are expected to reasonably anticipate new and restrictive regulations through land use policy. Lastly, moving forward with this ordinance to prohibit new oil and gas wells is essential to fulfill the county's mandated service delivery promise of a safe, healthy, and prosperous life for all Santa Barbara County residents. There are over 30,000 residents who live within an unsafe distance to a polluting oil and gas well, over 60% of whom are people of color. The documented negative health impacts they experience and the compounding health and safety threats that all Santa Barbara residents face as a result of fossil fuels climate catastrophe are evidence enough to support the end to new oil and gas drilling and from new wells from being drilled. Which is all that is in front of you today. Thank you.

When you say 30,000 residents live within, you know, the safety zone of a well, is that the 3,200 foot out of 1,132? 1,137. 1,137. Yes. Okay. Thank you.

Next, Pasham Madhavi.

Thank you very much. Good morning. My name is Pasha Madhavi. I am a resident of Santa Barbara. I live in the first district and I'm a professor at UCSB where I teach statistics and energy policy in the Department of Political Science and also affiliated at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management. I'm here to urge the Planning Commission to vote to approve staff's recommendation on a prohibition of new oil and gas drilling. I make that recommendation on the basis of research that my team has conducted in conjunction with the Community Labor Center at UCSB, led by Carmen Rhodes, and supported by 12 students and staff and postdocs, where we conducted a 10-month study, a research study on the demographics of the oil and gas workforce, the economic impacts of a prohibition on new oil and gas drilling, and public attitudes on these issues. It's a 54-page report, which I submitted as a public comment. I'm not going to go through the entire report here in the short time that I have, but I will give a couple of top line results. The first is based on a public opinion survey that we conducted of 2,714 residents across Santa Barbara County randomly selected using a state of the science methodology to capture a balanced and representative sample of county residents. That's in terms of demographics, age, gender, race, ethnicity, income, and political ideology. We also administered the survey in Spanish. And geographics. We had responses in every single census tract in the county. We found that 65% of all county residents support an ordinance to prohibit new onshore oil and gas drilling in the county, which is the measure before us today recommended by county staff. That is nearly two out of every three county residents that support this. And this is importantly not just a North versus South County story. We find majority support in four of the five supervisor districts. 74% support in District 1, 73% support in District 2, 66% support in District 3, 48% support in District 4, but 61.6% support in District 5. which is 17% of our sample, which is 500 people plus. The second finding that I'll discuss here, I'll be brief on this, which is the economic impacts of the ordinance that's based on an analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the California Employment Development Department, paired with semi-structured roundtable interviews, informal discussions, and qualitative surveying of current and former oil and gas workers in Santa Barbara County. I'll give you two top line messages of that. First is that countywide employment in the oil and gas industry only accounts for 0.3% of all employed workers. Second, we found a modeling of no economic impact of this current ban on new drilling compared to business as usual. just threw a lot of data at you but i'll keep it simple the public overwhelmingly supports this ordinance whether in north and south county and the economic costs pale in comparison to the gains from committing to a real clean energy transition thank you for your time and i urge you to support this ordinance do you have any questions from commissioners

a couple okay hey like i told you when i asked for the copy of your report i think it has it's a really good resource for a lot of things demographics those sort of things i do have a couple of questions about your survey though i'd like to look at figure nine it's on page 33. Yes. When you look at with this policy in mind, how would you support or oppose the local government enacting a policy two? I find it interesting if you look at the middle bar, prohibit drilling at new sites but allow existing wells to be re-drilled or expanded. the well new well band versus well maintenance we did and you know over 50 percent are either either strongly support or somewhat support that then we have the somewhat suppose well does that mean they're somewhat opposed they're maybe okay maybe not so it does show some support for a banning new wells but allowing existing ones to remain

Well, Chair, thank you for that. That's in reference to that figure. Indeed, we do see some support for that, but as you can note clearly, that top bar, much higher support for prohibiting any new oil and gas well drilling, including re-drilling or expansion of existing wells. Indeed, we do have more than 50% in that second bar, but you lose that if you look across all five districts. To my point earlier, a four out of five, you don't see that same high support for that second bar.

Gotcha, then second, just a question about your survey in general. You said you had about, and it's this one, right? I got this one.

Yes, yeah, one out of five households got it.

How many people turned it in and actually applied and got the five bucks?

So we had a response rate based on, let me look at our numbers, right?

Yeah, how many got the five bucks?

Oh, well, everybody who completed the survey and responded with an email address got the $5. I don't have the precise amount, but it's pretty close to that $2,500. I guess I didn't fill out that box. What's that?

I guess I didn't fill out that box. Okay.

Yeah, if you have to finish the survey to get that point. So you didn't finish the survey, you didn't get the $5.

I'm just, you know, I was in a former... business years ago, we did a lot of direct mailing and basically sales and things and you normally get about a 2% return. So yours 6.8 is pretty good.

It's quite high. In fact, the highest that we've had across about 12 different surveys that we've conducted.

But just in general, you got that back out of the 40,000 you did mail out. So you've got this large body of people you might actually describe them as a bell per curve each end of the bell this is the standard deviations either in they're probably populated by people have a high level of concern and then you got the middle part of the population that may not be so concerned is that

No, I don't think that's a fair characterization of the distribution of support, again, because we only have these four levels, right? So strong support, somewhat support, somewhat opposed, strongly opposed. You've got a categorical variable, but not a continuous.

I'm just posing a question. Among all recipients of your survey, is it more likely that you would artificially be selecting out people who just had stronger opinions one way or another, as if the other group who didn't really wasn't really into the issue would probably just throw it away?

No, not at all. In fact, that's the whole point of the random sampling. And again, if you look at the demographics, you can see that balance. And if you're right about this point where some people may have had a pre-existing high level of support, well, it's just as likely that somebody who didn't have that pre-existing knowledge of the case would have received our survey and filled it out. So we didn't see any differential response rate based on that. What's that? You control for that. Well, we control for that based on things like the demographic characteristics we can model. Education, age, gender, race, and household income. Those are factors that would predict this. You're obviously the statistician in this. I am. I'm trained in statistics. Yeah.

And then just one final question. You sent it out to, it says 25% of Santa Barbara County households, which would be 39,000. So then if you do the numbers, there's actually about 160,000 households in the county?

Yeah, we did a mailer.

Four times 39,000.

Well, we identified deliverable mailing addresses, so it's not an exact match.

Yeah, just the exact isn't a big deal. But then you got your 2,700 responses, so the 2,700 out of 159,000 is about 1.7%.

No, I don't think that's a fair characterization, right? Because the household is different than the population.

Okay. So we have the population is what, 440,000? That's right.

Yeah. And so our sample size unit was household, not individual.

So I'm just wondering when you say the number of people responses, is that how appropriate a reflection is that when we say it represents the county as a whole?

Well, again, like to my point earlier, this is representative based on the variables that we are able to code.

I know it's certainly representative of the people who responded.

No, but also in addition based on matching it to the census, which everybody responds to or they have to respond to. So we matched all of our characteristics against the U.S. census at the census level. So that's how you come up with a representative sample. It's not just based on those who responded. There are differences between people who are likely to respond to mailers and not. But again, we can account for that based on the demographics that we collect.

All right. Well, thank you.

Absolutely. Any other questions?

I have a quick question. Since I know your comments were, you're looking straight at me, so obviously they're towards me. How many people voted in Measure P? We did not look at Measure P in this study. It was more than that took your survey. Would you agree with that? Well, that's a ballot measure. i'm just asking more people voted on measure p than those people who respond to your survey is that correct that is correct that's not a fair question well i'm sure you have an opinion about your survey and that's why you appreciate it it's just calling but thank you very much no thank you any further questions thank you thank you very much for these questions appreciate it

or Tara, I'm sorry, to be followed by Ken Huff.

Good morning chair and commissioners. My name is Tara Ranjifo and I am a senior attorney with the Environmental Defense Center. We fully support the board's vision and staff's recommendation to amend the county code to prohibit the drilling of new oil and gas wells. We request that the commission votes to recommend that the board adopt the ordinance amendments today. The proposed amendments to the Land Use and Development Code and the Coastal Zoning Ordinance in attachments C1 and D1, respectively, are consistent with AB 3233, simple and clear. Prohibit the drilling of new oil and gas wells and prohibit reentering a previously abandoned well for the production of oil and gas. These prohibitions would apply to activities that have not been permitted under a previously approved and vested land use permit or oil drilling and production plan. The ordinance amendments are being proposed under the authority of AB 3233. They do not constitute an illegal taking or an unlawful infringement on property rights. Rather, these amendments are a legitimate exercise of the county's inherent police power, which is supported by the new state law clarifying local regulatory authority over oil and gas operations. County staff's approach does not extinguish vested rights or mandate compensation. Prohibiting new oil drilling will reduce air pollution, protect water quality, safeguard our health, and help our county meet its GHG thresholds. For years, residents throughout the county and local groups have called for no new drilling and a transition to renewable energy development. Yet the oil industry continued to push riskier extraction techniques and dirtier projects. Fortunately, these projects were defeated one by one, but now the county is empowered by the enhanced regulatory authority given to local governments by AB 3233 to prohibit new oil drilling for good. These ordinance amendments will align the county with the broader state legislative trend towards prioritizing public health and environmental justice over oil development. Please recommend that the Board adopt the ordinance to amend the Land Use and Development Code and CZO to prohibit new oil drilling in Santa Barbara County. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Next, we will have Ken Huff, going to be followed by Ed Hazard.

Good morning, Chair Reid and Commissioners. I'm Ken Huff, Co-Executive Director of Santa Barbara County Action Network, or SBCAN. For 13 years, I have testified to your commission and to the board about the need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, and in particular to reduce oil and gas production in the Santa Maria Valley, where residents and agriculture relies on clean groundwater. The report commonly referred to as the Scalmanini Report, which is required to be produced annually by the Tritchell Management Authority, according to the stipulation about Santa Maria Valley Groundwater Basin. That report has reported there are some 65 locations where oil or its constituents have been found in groundwater wells in Santa Maria Valley. We urge the county to avoid more opportunities for oil and its constituents to find their way into our groundwater. And it's not just wells, but trucking of crude oil threatens our water supply. Evidenced by several years ago, 4,000 and some gallons spilled into the Cuyama River in a truck wreck. Two years ago, SBCAN appealed Sentinel Peak's request for a land use permit for a truck rack to be installed in the Lompoc Hills. The truck rack would have facilitated the restart of production in those hills following the closure of the Phillips 66 refinery and the pipeline to it. So that's one oil project that was approved, but that was by staff. We appealed it to your commission, and after four hearings, that the project was withdrawn, it may come back under this ordinance. I wouldn't see it coming back because it would be disallowed if this ordinance goes through. This, as I said, this would preclude a revised project and it would save Sentinel Peak and SBCAN and others from project by project battles. And the next such battle might well be over a short new pipeline from Santa Maria Energy's oil field, which also lost its pipeline access to a refinery, to the existing truck rack at PCEC. That pipeline could lead to hundreds of miles of crude oil trucking daily, just like the Sentinel Peak proposal. Some have said that our county, we're small potatoes, but if jurisdictions everywhere would adopt proposals like the one before you today, we could all get a better grip on the catastrophe that will likely result from continuing our reliance on fossil fuels. Thank you very much for your service and attention.

All right, thank you. Next, we have Ed Hazard, who will be followed by our final speaker, Ted Cordova.

My name is Ed Hazard. My family and I are Santa Barbara County mineral owners and royalty owners, and I'm president of the California chapter of the National Association of Royalty Owners. The royalty owners in this state, we estimate there's over half a million. The majority of those are females over the age of 60. They are very confused, majority of royalty owners, as far as what is going on. They don't have the wherewithal to litigate on their own, so on and so forth. I would like to address a couple very specific issues. First of all, CEQA. This county is built on oil and gas, and you had out in the Santa Barbara Channel for millennia oil and methane naturally seeping from the ocean floor, and that increases when you shut down oil production. You've had oil and methane seeps onshore for decades, for millennia. I think that you need to do an EIR to comply with CEQA to see what happens if you actually shut oil production down to that natural seepage, because those reservoirs are going to naturally recharge. And so I think that should be a requirement. Secondly, AB 3233, I would like to address that. We've been involved in quite a number of lawsuits over oil and gas. Measure Z being the first one in Monterey County, which we won at the lower court and then unanimous decision at the appellate court and unanimous decision at the state supreme court. We also sued Ventura County with a group of royalty owners and producers sued and we settled that one. We then sued the city of Los Angeles. We won that one. The city of Los Angeles, well, the county of Los Angeles subsequently rescinded their oil and gas ordinance after we won the city of Los Angeles case. And now both are trying to readopt their ordinance, believing they are protected by AB 3233. We believe that AB 3233 is unconstitutional. and we are going to be challenging that. The city of Los Angeles is the closest to readopting their ordinance. At that time, we will challenge AB 3233. Now, if AB 3233 is upheld and the ordinance upheld, There's a taking. There's still a taking. And as you probably know, two of our Cat Canyon royalty owner members of NARO here in Santa Barbara County have sued in federal court for a takings because of SB 1137. That's a 3,200 foot setback law, which we believe is also unconstitutional and extremely flawed. That case has been taken on by Pacific Legal Foundation, who has an incredible track record at the Supreme Court. They're 18 for 20. Their 21st case was just heard. They do not take on cases that they don't believe they can win at the US Supreme Court, and this is one of them. I would ask that you step back and allow us time to meet with county council, to meet with staff, and perhaps each of you to discuss our position and why we believe we have the legal right to sue for takings and why we believe that AB 3233 is unconstitutional and the CEQA issue.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Last speaker will be Ted Cordova.

Good morning, chair and commissioners. My name is Ted Cordovan. I'm speaking on behalf of EMB Natural Resources. We're a California-based energy company operating in the Cuyama Valley. We're a bit unique. We're a hybrid of oil and renewable energy assets. We share the county's goal of reducing emissions. We've looked at the ordinance and we believe that that's not exactly the right path to get there. Number one, Santa Barbara County still depends on oil. Prohibiting new local production will not reduce demand. It will shift it to foreign sources with weaker environmental standards and higher emissions. That's not a reduction, it's a transfer of impact. At the same time, you have local companies such as us, where our operations support high paying local jobs and generate millions in tax revenues that fund schools, infrastructure, and emergency services in this county. uh we've shared the concerns that you've heard about regarding process and legal exposure a policy of this magnitude one that effectively eliminates future access to mineral resources warrants full environmental review proceeding under a sequel exemption limits transparency and risk costly legal challenges we do believe there is a better path forward one that prioritizes emissions reductions through innovation, responsible production and practical transition strategies rather than an outright prohibition. We respectfully ask that the Commission do consider this ordinance and work collaboratively towards solutions that provide a better path forward that are both environmentally effective and economically responsible, as well as protect local communities like Cuyama from the unintended consequences of such a policy. I do understand that there are bad actors in every industry and certainly Santa Barbara has witnessed that across probably multiple sectors. But I would ask that you give consideration to some of these local companies that are doing the right things. They're being part of the solution. They're investing in innovative technologies. They're reducing emissions.

and they are doing great things in the local community so i do hope you give consideration to such good actors thank you so much all right thank you so that concludes our public comment or do we for in room yes we do have a number of people we have seven hands up okay online all right uh i'll just start calling on you let's see our first speaker will be drake house to be followed by kawamena

All right, thank you. My name is Drake House. I'm a petroleum engineer, president of Sierra Resources and oil and gas operator in Santa Barbara County, and I oppose the ordinance. I appreciate the commission, you know, one important one, namely of what does this actually do for the climate and If there was a I'm gonna be pretty clear that negative every Producing here will be produced somewhere else under weaker It's gonna be shit are there and it has higher toll and

I believe that we lost our speaker. We can come back to him if he reconnects.

Okay.

Cara Mena to be followed by Jean-Michel Cousteau.

Good morning, Planning Commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Carla Mena. I am the Director of Policy and Legislative Affairs for Los Padres Forest Watch. We are based in the city of Santa Barbara. Los Padres Forest Watch, along with 30,000 members, supporters, and online advocates, strongly supports proposed phase one oil and gas prohibition ordinance amendments, as outlined in the March 31st staff report. For nearly 20 years, we've worked to stop the expansion of oil and gas drilling in Los Padres National Forest and the surrounding communities. Oil production harms endangered species, pollutes our air and water, and worsens the climate crisis in one of the world's most biodiverse regions. These amendments will prohibit new onshore oil and gas wells, associated production facilities, and reentry of previously abandoned wells across unincorporated Santa Barbara County. Many county permitted oil facilities and fields are located near or directly adjacent to Los Padres National Forest. And other federal state and local public lands by closing the door to new drilling on county land. These amendments will help protect sensitive habitats, but I like quarters, water sheds, air and water quality of these public lands and the surrounding communities. They rely on. This action directly carries out the Board of Supervisors' direction from the October 21st meeting and addresses to advance the county's 2030 Climate Action Plan by preventing any net increases in greenhouse gas emissions from new oil fuel extraction. These changes are consistent with California's Coastal Act and recent state law AB 2333. which gives local governments clear authority to limit or prohibit oil and gas operations. Neighboring jurisdictions have already taken similar steps. The oil industry relies on The oil industry and its allies continue to push to reverse decades of progress. Recent executive orders, emergency declarations, and environmental rollback seek to open the floodgates to drilling on federal lands. We therefore urge the county to include provisions in this ordinance in the upcoming phase 2 process to ensure that the phase-out does not simply transfer oil extraction activities onto federal lands. Specifically, the county should phase out support facilities and infrastructure located on private or county land that currently serve federal oil and gas operations and seeks other ways to limit transfer of oil, drilling, and federal lands. The Santa Barbara County has a unique opportunity to chart a different path and demonstrate true climate leadership. And since I have time, the federal court on March 31st denied the Trump administration's request to pause enforcement of the California's landmark oil and gas health buffer zone. The court denied the administration's request to preliminary adoption, which means that the buffer zone, the SB 1137 will remain in effect while the lawsuit is being heard. Thank you for your time and leadership.

Thank you.

and i believe we have mr house back uh mr house i believe you had just a little over two minutes left of your time yes uh thank you i was just getting on a roll there so yeah uh saying the environmental impact uh is going to be a net negative because It's not gonna reduce a single barrel of demand from Santa Barbara County, but it does take away the people of Santa Barbara County from producing it. Then it gets transported from, further away and it yields a total increase in emissions. So somebody mentioned that a ton of CO2 here is no different than a ton of CO2 produced somewhere else, but it's not even an even trade. It's going to be more emissions If it's produced somewhere else, and so it's a pretty important piece of the climate climate action. If the goal is to help the world and reduce emissions as a whole. So ignoring that environmental impact is. And then if you decided to move forward and increase emissions on the world stage, then I understand phase one is framed as stopping expansion and not shutting down existing operations. But you've got to understand that as an operator, a new well is not... Usually, an expansion of operation is simply maintenance. Oil wells decline in production every day, and drilling quote-unquote new wells within an existing field is how operators maintain current production. It's not growth. It's just keeping the lights on. And so if the board is requiring an economic study before it can phase out existing operations under phase two, then the commission should at least recommend the same standard for phase one. It's not as simple as stopping expansion. And so before even moving forward, I think it's been made pretty clear through the questions of the commission and the lack of research and study that has been performed by the staff that this really is nowhere near ready for adoption.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Our next speaker will be Jean-Michel Cousteau, to be followed by Michael Tsiakos.

Hello. Jean-Michel Cousteau, thank you very much for giving the time to share what I've had experience for the last 80 years of scuba diving over the planet. from Santa Barbara and hear the voice to share with you what we have collected.

I'm Nancy Marr. I am co-founder of Ocean Futures Society with Jean-Michel Cousteau. Jean-Michel Cousteau is president and CEO of Ocean Futures Society, which resides in Santa Barbara County, Santa Barbara, California. Jean-Michel Cousteau does support the ban on all oil and gas drilling and production in the Santa Barbara County, including and along the coast and in the Channel Islands. The Santa Barbara County, many people are in opposition and we are also hearing many people that are for the band and in opposition of it. It's a very interesting discussion, which we very much appreciate. Here is Jean-Michel's statement. The science is unequivocal, expanding fossil fuel infrastructure moves us further from climate stability. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made it clear that continued fossil fuel dependence threatens our ability to meet the global climate goals that will protect the life-sustaining systems. Restarting pipelines and oil and gas production does not lower energy risk, it transfers it to coastal communities, marine ecosystems and future generations bear the potential costs. A single failure contaminates beaches, destroys habitats, devastates local communities built on tourism and fisheries. The long term damages far outweigh any short term gains in protection. Energy security matters, but true energy security matters not in barrels of oil, but in the resilience of our ecosystems, the health of our communities, and the stability of ocean, the vital living force that stables the global climate for our planet. At the moment when science markets and public consensus are converging on the urgent need for clean energy transition, The federal government is also moving in the opposite direction. Jean-Michel did submit a presentation, and I'm going to conclude it with renewable energies. It's so important. The Santa Barbara, well, let me see. The Santa Barbara coast celebrated for its beauty and mild climate is more than a scenic stretch of shoreline. It's the birthplace of the modern established environmental movement awakened because of the 1969 oil spill. Currently allowing the oil to flow Pipeline systems are already compromised by aging infrastructure and decommissioned after the 2015 oil spill ignores history. These events are not distant memories. They are warnings. The spill released over 100,000 gallons of crude, coated miles of coastline, destroyed 1,500 acres of intertidal habitat and 2,200 acres of subtidal fish. habitat, killed hundreds of birds, marine mammals, closed 138 fisheries, and caused an estimated 3.9 million lost recreational and economic value. These are not isolated.

Thank you for your comments. Please, you're well over the three minutes, but thank you.

I'm sorry we did submit a statement which also encourages diversified renewable energy systems with the energy systems that Santa Barbara does currently use as many people have said.

OK, we received that too. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker will be Mr. Chacos to be followed by Kara Sanford.

Get through.

Hello, my name is Michael Chiakos representing Community Environmental Council and CEC was formed in 1970 in response to one of the most devastating oil spills the world has ever seen. We are in strong support of the staff recommendation to prohibit new oil and gas drilling. We've been working for 56 years on environmental solutions, and now we finally see the light at the end of the tunnel as California moves away from fossil fuels. State policy is leading this transition with AB 1279 legally binding California to carbon neutrality by 2045. The California Air Resources Board has a detailed scoping plan on how California does this. Part of this is phasing out fossil fuel production and usage. Santa Barbara County should join other jurisdictions that are not allowing new oil drilling. Our oil reserves are old, tired, and take a tremendous amount of natural gas to cyclic steam the last dregs out. Our oil is expensive and has a very high greenhouse gas per barrel impact. Major oil companies have left Santa Barbara and sold to smaller companies that increasingly go bankrupt and leave taxpayers holding the cleanup costs. Companies like Greca and Venico have left taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of millions to clean up their messes. It's time to end this abuse of our air, land and waters. We now have increasingly easy, affordable substitutes for oil. And yes, some of them do go on dirt roads. Electric vehicles get 120 miles per gallon equivalent and can be powered by renewables. I personally have been driving on sunshine with an EV and rooftop solar for 14 years. My solar panels paid for themselves seven years ago, so I now have no fueling costs and still have another decade or two of driving for free. That certainly beats paying thousands a year for gasoline. 3CE has a goal of providing the county with 100% clean and renewable electricity by 2030. EV sales have been recently a quarter of new vehicle sales in California. The goal is 100% EV sales by 2035. Affordable new EVs like the Chevy Bolt and Nissan Leaf start at under $30,000, which is cheaper than they were 15 years ago. Used EVs now start at $5,000. The current war in Iran and run up in gasoline prices show that oil is a global commodity and more drilling here will do nothing to affect prices. Oil companies are making massive windfall profits right now. How about they put some of that into cleaning up their messes rather than leaving taxpayers to do it as one speaker threatened? The only way out of volatile oil prices is to get off fossil fuels. Anyone who is able to do so should switch to an EV and rooftop solar or use the increasingly clean renewable electricity provided by 3CE. Use a heat pump instead of a natural gas furnace or water heater. Check out CEC's programs to help people access education and incentives to get off of oil and gas. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker will be Cara Sanford to be followed by Anne Meyer and then finally Melissa Munoz.

Hi. Good morning, Commission members, and thank you for your time. My name is Cara Sanford and I'm a. Wait, can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, sorry. My name is Cara Sanford. I'm a student at UCSB studying environmental studies, and I urge you to approve the proposed amendments to LUDC and CZO prohibiting the drilling of new oil and gas wells to protect community health and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This ordinance is practical and forward-looking. Phasing out new drilling would help Santa Barbara County meet its climate goals, prevent over 344,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2045 and avoid an estimated 21.8 million in climate-related damages. It would also protect our region's extraordinary biodiversity, safeguarding sensitive and endangered species that depend on the Central Coast's unique ecosystems. Just as importantly, it would improve air quality, water quality, and protect public health, things which should be basic human rights. While Santa Barbara County has seen little new oil and gas well development recently, expanding leasing across the region threatens the landscapes and coastline that define Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara has long been a leader in environmental stewardship. Our community expects clean beaches, blue skies, and a healthy ocean. These are keystone features of the area, and this is how we protect them. As a student and a member of the next generation that will live with the consequences of today's decisions, I please urge you to act now and improve these amendments. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker will be Anne Meyer to be followed by Melissa Munoz. Miss Meyer, if you could unmute yourself. OK, we can come back to Miss Meyer. Next speaker will be Melissa Munoz to be followed by Candice Mennegan.

Good morning everyone can. Can everyone hear me?

Yes, go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, commissioners. My name is Melissa Munoz. I am a youth student leader and fellow with Climate First Replacing Oil and Gas, and I'm here to express support for the order to superheat new oil and gas drilling in Santa Barbara County. When the county adopted its climate action plan in 2024, community members raised concerns about the omission of emissions from oil and gas facilities. In response, the Board of Supervisors added the fossil fuel transition policy, recognizing that addressing this sector is essential for meeting our climate goals. Since then, the board has moved this policy forward because of the rising cost of climate-driven disasters, the need to protect public health, and the importance of local action. A phase-out policy could prevent more than 344,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions by 2045, which would avoid an estimated 21.8 million in climate-related damages. There are also serious public health and safety concerns. Oil production has been identified as a major source of pollutants like PM2.5, benzene, and formaldehyde, which are dangerous substances linked to cancer, asthma, and heart disease. Many wells are located in high-fire hazard zones, and wastewater injection has been associated with an increased seismic risk. And these risks fall directly on its residents, all of you. Economically, oil contributes only about 0.2% of county revenue while imposing high costs through emergency response, road maintenance, and environmental oversight. And studies show that a managed phase-out can create new jobs through well decommissioning, site remediation, and clean energy development. Santa Barbara County has even identified as a strong candidate for geothermal repurposing of wells, which could provide new employment opportunities for workers with their already existing skill sets. Residents of Santa Barbara County have consistently expressed a desire for a stronger climate action like AB 3233, which affirms the county's authority to regulate this. And for all these reasons, I urge the Planning Commission to approve the proposed amendments and prohibiting the drilling of new oil and gas wells to protect community health and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker will be Candice Medigan.

Good morning, I'm Candice Madigan here with Coastal Ranchers Conservancy. We were formulated in 2003 with the mission to support nature conservation, restoration and education along the 76 miles of the Gaviota Coast. I'm speaking today in strong support of the amendments to the ordinance to phase out new oil and gas. Director on an environmental stakeholder on a groundwater sustainability agency. We know that oil and gas threatens our sensitive groundwater resources. Over 80% of Californians rely on groundwater as a source of their safe drinking water, and oil and gas puts a threat on that groundwater resource. We also have areas in Santa Barbara County which have been identified as over 80% on the Cal Environmental screen, showing exposures to their drinking water. having 97% groundwater threats in the area of Santa Maria in northern Santa Barbara County. Many speakers have spoken to the asthma impacts and sensitive populations in Santa Barbara County. We also have a host of threatened and endangered species which would be implicated by oil and gas spills in our waterways and along our coastlines. It is for these reasons that we are in strong support of the amendments today and urge the Planning Commission to vote accordingly. Thank you.

All right, going back to Ann Meyer. So it looks like there's two people logged in under that name. So if you are logged in under that name and have your hand raised, now is your chance to speak. Go ahead and unmute. They may have left the room, but that would be our last speaker.

All right, thank you. We're going to be taking a five-minute break. I have another request. Before we do that, does staff have any need to respond to anything? Okay, thank you. So we will take a five-minute break starting now, and then we return. We will... What's that? Yeah, starting now. welcome back to the april 8th hearing of the santa barbara county planning commission during our break we have discovered clinging to the bottom of our bin another request to speak form okay uh then this is in mr rich field didn't mean to ignore you it just got misplaced while speaking.

Maybe John over there saw who I was with. Anyway, my name's Rich Field. I'm the Senior Environmental Health and Safety Manager with PCEC, located on Orchid Hill. We've also got several oil and gas operations in Santa Maria Valley, over in Kern County, down in LA. So we've been expanding and growing our business. There's a couple of points that I didn't really put anything down YOU KNOW, CANNED ANY KIND OF LANGUAGE, BUT THERE'S A COUPLE POINTS I WANTED TO MAKE AS FAR AS SOME OF THE REASONING AND, YOU KNOW, I DEAL WITH A LOT OF THE AIR PERMITTING, WORKING WITH CALJAM, WORKING WITH THE REGIONAL WATER QUALITY BOARD, SO ALL MY WORK IS BASED IN SCIENCE AND PUTTING TOGETHER AIR EMISSIONS, YOU KNOW, SUMMARIES AND THINGS LIKE THAT. ONE OF THE ISSUES I'VE HEARD IS THE GHG ISSUE. THE DATA SHOWS THAT CALIFORNIA REPRESENTS .7% OF THE WORLD'S GHG EMISSIONS, WHICH ISN'T A LOT, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU'VE GOT COUNTRIES LIKE CHINA AND INDIA THAT ARE BUILDING NEW COAL FIRE POWER PLANTS, NEW REFINERIES, SO ANYTHING THAT WE CUT HERE IN CALIFORNIA MAKES NO DIFFERENCE TO THE GLOBAL consequences of GHG emissions. It's a cumulative effect. In fact, recent courts have struck down local challenges to oil and gas projects or oil and gas companies because this is a global phenomenon. So if people aren't participating from a global standpoint, then anything that we do here, even though it feels good, is not gonna do a difference in curtailing global climate change. And to that effect, California is still dependent on oil and gas. We've shuttered in refineries, look at the gas prices, it's only gonna get worse. You have to remember, where's the oil gonna come from? It's gonna come via tanker from foreign sources, Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia. Those tankers are gross emitters of GHG. So anything that we curtail domestically is only going to get magnified tenfold by tankering it in. The other thing I've heard is community protection or community health. We as an industry, we do health risk assessments. They're done by third parties and they're approved by CARB and they're also approved by APCD. So we have to submit the data and everything that we've done to date shows that we do not have an impact on the health of our communities from a cancer aspect or other types of issues. So recently we've done a AB 288 air toxics health risk assessment for Orchid Hill, and we found that there are no risks from a health benefit or a health standpoint to the community. Also with APCD, when we put in a permit for a piece of combustion equipment, they also run a health risk assessment. And if you look at the data, none of that health risk have shown any issues to the surrounding communities. So anyway, I would encourage you to not approve the phase out of oil and gas in Santa Barbara County. Thank you.

so with that public comment is now concluded we can proceed to deliberations

I don't know and I would assume you don't know what's really the preferred order of who speaks when because this is a matter for all the districts as opposed to one district to go first. I want to go first because I'm getting sleepy and I want to remember my comments before I fade out. That's just the way it is so bear with me. what i want to address is a little bit of political science about the role of the board and the planning commission and staff and i want to make it clear right now because of my understanding that political science i'm i'm absolutely going to vote for this and vote for it right now because that's the role i see for me But I also want to discuss some, oh, I'm uneasy about a few things about this. And I would like to express them now because I've got staff here, I've got CSD people here, other planning commissioners and other folks. Probably my issues would bear most on phase two and we'll have an opportunity to deal with them there. But I think that they, they should be addressed now because maybe somebody at the board will decide okay let's let's think a little bit more about this and uh and about what tools we have available and and uh and whether we need to modify this a little bit okay so uh uh I was going to see Professor, is it Padavi? Yeah, here today. So in the early 70s, which I think is before you were born, okay, I was an economics and political science student at UC Santa Barbara. There weren't very many of us because after the riots, the parents pulled all their students out. But anyway, I was there. And the Club of Rome study came out. You remember that or you know about it? The Club of Rome study, uh came out in the early 70s and said we're going to run out of oil in the world there won't be any oil left in i think it was 25 years or something but you know uh one of the premier experts in economics on natural resources was dr walter mead and and dr mead said you know As we run out of it, the price will go up, there'll be more incentive to discover more, and people will use it less. So you'll never really run out of oil. And the experience we've all had since then is we keep discovering new oil, we keep discovering new techniques to recover it, and we're never gonna run out of oil, okay? We're just never gonna run out of oil. What's gonna happen to oil, and you're seeing it here, We won't stop using oil because we run out of it, and we'll always have some demand for plastics and lubricants for oil anyway. The only thing that's going to stop the oil industry, whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing, to stop production of oil and drilling is going to be legislative action. That's it. I've known that for years. And that's what it's going to be. And you know, going back to economics, there's externalities of oil production. An externality in economics is a cost on the world that isn't really incorporated in price and incorporated in profit making. and and when you get sick of the externalities being too high you say no but you know you also have to look at some expertise externalities that are positive and i'm going to address that in a moment this is a legislative issue we have a legislative body in this county it's the board of supervisors it's not the county planning commission our job and staff's job and we work together with staff to take things that the board wants to do or recommendations of the board, and we process them as well as we can to make sure they're the best ordinance, the best project whatsoever. But then it gets in front of the board, especially on legislative matters, and they make those decisions. You can argue whether they make right decisions or wrong decisions, but at least three members of the board made it extremely clear what they wanted, and they told staff to do it. and they've told us to look at it make your best suggestions and move it on so that's why i'm going to vote for it okay i know we're going to hear a lot about liability i want to discuss that a little bit i don't want to discuss the substance of whether there's liability or not i want to make a point that i've actually hammered several times here at the planning commission hearings the board of supervisors has attorneys, it's county council. They have an attorney-client relationship with county council. They have executive sessions where the five members of the board and only them and county council are there and they speak candidly about legal issues. the county council produces opinion letters they go to the board these things don't come to us it's not really our issue to address liability issues it's it's the board's issue and so i'm not going to dwell on these liability issues whether they're right or wrong this is the wrong forum for it as i said i will support it because the board wants it and we don't have many modifications to make to this and it's their prerogative My pause I have is some things that make me uneasy, and I'm gonna simplify them. Kind of two big things. One is I think we need to distinguish between big oil and little oil, okay? And I hope I don't offend any of the oil folks in the room by calling you little oil. okay uh my experience in dealing with big oil sable exxon exxon trucking all those those folks are from outside the area and they want what they want and and and there's not much room for discussion or argument i know on the exxon trucking project uh Not a soul from Exxon asked to even speak to me though. It came out of my district and I'd been the most vociferous about it, but that's that. Little Oil, Little Oil is different. Little Oil is generally local people. They are dealing with, I mean, I'm talking about both the people that are employed by the industry, by the people that run it, some of the owners of it, and the landowners who have the land where they get the oil. And just in the course of things, many of us run into them all the time, okay? We don't necessarily have the same political point of views or natural resource point of views, but my attitude is I'm a planning commissioner for the whole county, for everybody in the county, and I'm available to talk to every single person. Little oil, They're more collaborative. And I hope that somewhere in this process, we have that collaboration occur. Maybe that's phase two. We discuss what's the best way to do things. A very particular concern I have is part of Little Oil being the landowners, the ranchers. I deal with ranchers in so many ways through the planning commission and also some of my own personal interests, my endurance writing. they're struggling to uh to find a way to keep their ranches this is very important i mentioned externalities before the externalities we get from ranches and agriculture in general it's the best carbon sink there is it's the best way to fight climate change there is a local impact that local people uh make on climate change uh and ghgs and that's preserving our agriculture so it can preserve its its ability to sequester carbon and i don't want to lose about that i think about it all the time i have ever since i've been on the planning commission second thing i want to discuss is that I want to compare this to taking cars off the road to deal with air pollution. In Cuba, I think you always see photographs and articles of old 1955 Chevys and things there, and they're probably polluting like crazy. And you'd want to remove the clunkers, the old cars, right? And I think of the oil industry the same way. We got a lot of old wells and idle wells and crummy wells. I've seen some wells, though, that are very sophisticated equipment. I was talking about one earlier. And they're new. They're very well run. And so we're going to stop the new ones that are easier for us to regulate in so many ways and keep the old ones that are sort of leaky and out of control. I wonder if that's the right approach. That's like taking new cars off the road to reduce air pollution but not the clunkers. you know on the local level we regulate trucking of oil we regulate the steam generators which are generally run on on on natural gas and are actually some of our biggest burners of ghgs in the county and we also have methane that leaks out with new drilling but mostly in the old wells we can address trucking in a way with electric trucks. Probably every truck that trucks oil in 15 years will be electric. We can address steam generators by electrifying those with solar. That's one reason I I relate this to our utility scale solar project we have coming up with us. And we can address it with methane with the new wells, but we don't really have a way of addressing it with those old wells that, what was it, 1,231 idle wells, and we've got 371 orphan wells. I'm really worried about them. uh i'd like to deal with them at least in phase two to give incentives for oil companies that do have money that if they want to operate for any period of time that they go in and and uh and formally abandon those wells that maybe they don't even own but at least we have some resource to do that i hope that's something we can talk about um and that's where i come back to You know, if you want to give incentives to an oil company to formally abandon large numbers of those idle and orphan wells, is the incentive better to let them drill a new well or let them continue operating their existing wells or maybe it's a mixture of the two. That's why I hope somebody looks at this issue again to see what's our best tool for providing those incentives. Final thing I want to address is with respect to this particular ordinance, I do agree with Commissioner Reid that if we have a an understanding of what's new drilling, okay, that we don't leave it to what we heard today and to a brand new planner five years from now to come out of college and say, I guess this is what it means. It's better to be more specific in the ordinance if we can as to what's allowed and what's not allowed in the definition of new drilling. And finally, something I've heard about from a number of people in the last few days, that I was a little bit agnostic on, and that was the drilling of new wells, the exemption of drilling of new wells for produced water, for injection of produced water. And I've realized through this process that we definitely want to keep that exemption because if we essentially allow existing wells to be deepened or to have sidekicks, lateral drilling, things like that. We'll get some more produced water. We'll get some, because that's most of what you get when you drill is produced water. And we'll need to get rid of it. And there may be a very logical need for new wells for reinjection. But where I stand is the board wants this. We've got an ordinance that works for that purpose. it's not my role to pick it apart or to say i don't like oil or i don't like this or i don't like that my job as a planning commissioner is to move it on so that's where i am commissioner martinez well um surprised i think we we differ from the commissioner park and there's no i don't think there's any surprise of that but

Your comment about the political philosophy. I can't get out of my mind the people's history of the United States of America, Howard Zinn, Industrial Revolution, and how there was such a fear of the combustible engine coming in and removing horses and removing the blacksmith and it did. And they had no employment. and it took generations for those people to actually get back into the society mark where they were at economically and socially. So there is change coming. Who can say there isn't? There always will be change, and that's the beauty of our economy. But what I don't see a change in is that me being in this position, And that's obviously Supervisor Lavagnino. He didn't put me in this position to simply rubber stamp anything, which I think is that's what we're being asked to do, because I am not going to go away and make a vote without giving my opinion and my rationale for why I would give it. I don't believe we're at the stage where we're supposed to be in regards to approving or disapproving this. I'm looking at the attachment E, which obviously the three that voted for this, it says, once effective, this would result in decision makers no longer having the ability to approve permits for drilling of new oil and gas wells. That's phase one. But then it also directs that community services staff will lead stakeholder engagement and community outreach and provide general project management. I didn't hear staff tell me that that was occurred. It was even asked by a couple of the speakers. That's why I was asking who, and I think Commissioner Reid did a great job of asking, who did you go to? there isn't any outreach to me it seems what happened here is go put some language and amend the statutes or ordinances to say no more new drilling okay that's three sentences but i don't see the outreach i don't see the communication with our community even looking at ab3233 it says your community needs um i guess that's why a lot of people were talking about the possible environmental contamination of the carbons and so forth. But the point being though is if you have local production, that absolves us if not diminishes significantly the transportation in of those same materials. No more driving on the roads, no more shipping. That is us being self-sufficient. You have the Truman Doctrine, of course, if you want to get into politics, let's use everybody else's oil first and then we'll just use ours eventually and then we'll be in a place of power. Well, we see the ability of possible alternative energy sources coming in, but those have their problems too if we really want to get into it. The lithium battery sites, the fires that we have and everybody's complaining about those, but not in my backyard, they say. When I'm looking at this, I'm not looking to see what Los Angeles is doing. I'm not looking to see what anyone else is doing. I'm looking at the reality of this is something the community needs and actually utilizes. I can't look in this room without thinking about what actually is made by a byproduct of oil itself. I believe that there is a responsible way of producing things. I believe that you do have responsible producers. You have responsible where they have the bonds, they have their insurance. And yes, we do have the black eye of what we have in the past, which would be Greca and stuff. I mean, that was a bad. We have an oil spill. Yes, we do. But we also, like I mentioned, we have the lithium battery sites burning. And we have one that was built in Napomo, which can have an effect upon my house even if it goes up in fire again. We have the mention of electric cars. The gentleman was kind enough to point that out, but we're not there. The fact is, if you take this away, in my opinion, nobody has said this is the answer today. If you take this away, that's where they stop. I like it, it sounds good, but there's nothing today that will replace it 100% in regards to it. And my comments as to the comments about people retraining, I don't wanna be that person. I would hate to be that person who's putting the food on the plate for their families. We talk about affordable housing, affordable living. Think about that person who doesn't have that job anymore. Oh, but you're gonna be retrained. How long is that gonna take? How long are you gonna go without that income coming in? I believe that there's a reality in the decisions we make and there's a real impact. Yes, we need to minimize that. Yes, we need outreach to those community members that are involved in this, that do live through this income, that do depend upon this. Is that the answer to saying, well, we're not gonna do anything about it because you make a dollar off of it? No. No, I believe in regards to there's a progress that can occur here and that this isn't the answer. This is just simply, I'm dropping the hammer on you, that's it. I don't think that's democracy in its fashion. The comments about Measure P being in 2014, I'm not aware of any statute of limitation on a voter's decision. I think the answer to that is you put it back on the ballot. so i i am not going to vote for this i i will be one to to vote nay on this thank you sure commissioner ford

Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, we're going back and forth because to me this ordinance is about taking a legislative stand to protect public health and to safeguard our environment and I support moving forward today to approve it. But I do have a few notes that I'd like to share first. commissioner park so kindly pointed out at our last meeting as that as a commissioner i will always try to ensure that we're mindful of the effective decisions on the future specifically young people of our county and this ordinance gives me strong rationale to do this. First and foremost this is a public health and environmental protection ordinance to me aimed at reducing harmful pollutants that lead to serious illness and disproportionate exposure by certain populations. This county recently passed the environmental justice element and this ordinance further supports it. I was a Santa Barbara high school student during the terrible oil spill of 1969 and so for over 50 years so many of us have been especially concerned for the real and the possible damage to our wonderful environment that must be avoided at all costs and stopped to the largest extent possible. Climate change is real and greenhouse gas emissions are a huge and scary reason why. Our state and our county have long made it clear that the quality of life for all matters and oil and gas production degrade. quality of life. I'm really grateful finally to the staff for the comprehensive work they supplied to us and that they have done. I believe this is a well crafted ordinance meeting the direction of the board importantly, and it is clear and powerful. It's about responsibility, responsibility to our residents, our environment and the future generations. And I would love to make or second approval of the ordinance. Thanks.

Commissioner Cooney.

But this is one of the most important matters that's come to the commission during my lengthy time as a commissioner. And I think the... the various individuals and groups that are focused on this are extremely valuable to the Commission in judging what its position should be. And I don't feel any differently. I care certainly about the opinions of my fellow commissioners, all of whom have spoken except Commissioner Reid and he was an early contributor to our consideration of what to do today. But it is the kind of decision where I am placing a great deal of of the strength of our opportunity here on the Board of Supervisors. It was a little confusing to me how long ago uh the board of supervisors started uh considering what it could do about the oil issues in santa barbara county but i am convinced that under the leadership of aaron briggs and alex tuttle and others in your um charge that we are doing this the right way, a step at a time, but deadly focus on the importance of doing something. So I was ready to do that but the presentation of staff convinced me that we should be clear about and not nitpick any of the suggestions that were put forth by the public and our staff. I will mention again, as I did at the outset, I had a a meeting, a Zoom meeting in this case, with several of the leaders and competent input from people like Katie Davis, Tara Rifingo, Haley Ehlers, Pasha Mondavi, and Michael Giacos, just to mention my experience with them. I have no trouble in terms of referring this back to the Board of Supervisors and trust that they will make use of our opinions and balance everything that is in the record when it returns to the Board. And so I would join

uh commissioner park and uh approve of the uh action we have before us okay so here we sit divided uh looking at this proposed ordinance and indeed the board of supervisors can certainly adapt it regardless of what of anything we say here or our opinions. They can certainly do that. They can embark on just whatever course they would like. It would be interesting, though, to suppose what the discussions would be were not the whole context in which we're deciding this, if it were not tainted by the long-time level of displeasure and animosity regarding what Sable is doing out in the channel, what the Trump administration has done to approve it, and with the impending role of the Trump administration in Just a blanket approval of a whole lot of oil development on BLM lands and national forest lands, and I don't support any of that. I got involved in all of this to support local governments and county governments' authority to control land use. i hate to see our decision making in pursuit of that tainted by what i think are inappropriate actions of other level of government be it the state of california or the federal government so there's my opening I also think, and it's been pretty obvious if you really carefully look at many of the letters of public comment and some of the ones we heard today, that the animosity towards offshore oil is applied versus on show. However appropriate or inappropriate you may think that is. We've heard an abundance of comment. from people in the community on both sides. We've heard ample comment about takings, constitutional preemptions, because despite the fact AB 3233 is the law passed by our state legislature, I have not noticed any corresponding comments amendments or changes to that pesky state constitution. I suppose that'll be an issue that will be later dealt with. One of the things we haven't spent a great deal of time on And I'm going to get to some of the, a lot of other things having to do with CEQA and environmental effects, but I'm just, I'm looking at the people who work in that. Perhaps not the largest workforce in the county, but as... aptly stated in Professor Madavi's publication, a relatively small but meaningful workforce. These are people with important head of household jobs, might make a lot less than you know people working for the county or people comfortably ensconced in a position at university of california making far more but these are real everyday work-a-day people we in the fourth and fifth district see all of the time so their needs i think are also important and really need to be considered because as as is obvious from the maps the bulk of the wells are in the fourth district uh but i think the bulk of the employees live in the fourth the fifth with a meaningful community up in the quiama valley where oil is of great importance there and alternative careers are rare so but as it says in this a lot of them move out of the area which they do rather than change careers I had that done to me when I was really little. My dad worked for Union Oil, got transferred out of here to a place I thought was hell on earth, Kalinga. Actually, it's not that bad a place. Don't laugh. It was serious. I remember missing everything, all the families, all the relatives sitting there because he had this job and oil and it was horrible. I don't need to do it. I don't want to start choking up. But fortunately, my mom told him after about a year, well, I'm getting out of here. You either come back or stay. So came back, got into the construction business. I don't want to do that to other families. I don't want to do that to other little kids. you know so there's part okay now i'll change gears so i think those human effects they really need to be considered Despite the fact that so often in discussions about eliminating oil, there have been comments about just transition and things, these people that could be displaced, they really feel like they're held in contempt. Somebody in their 30s and 40s worried about making house payments and car payments and supporting their children isn't really in a great mood about having to take a year off and learn how to crawl around on roofs, putting in other people's solar panels. i know all the renewable jobs aren't like that but but to me and as commissioner park so aptly stated we don't legislate that's the job of the board of supervisors but as keepers of the general plan things for the county one of the things we do is review ordinances and it's our obligation when we're looking at an ordinance or proposed ordinance to return the very best product possible to the board of supervisors for for their continued action and i think to that end one of the i i think glaring omissions in this ordinance that's before us is the fact that it's contained a sequa exemption now yeah there might be sequel attendant to the amortization portion of this But seems like in this case, the baby's been cut in half and the half we're dealing with doesn't have that consideration. When in fact, even this part of it, I think has potential to produce significant changes in land use in this area of the county. Therefore, I believe it is a project it really changes the physical environment by removing, as we have heard today, and what has been attested to, I think, by a very fine comment letter by a very prominent landowner on the value that alternative source of income Oil royalties have been for that ranch. People look at ranches and farmland and say, wow, that's beautiful. It's big. They must be a billionaire to have that. And just think back though, we have the old saying, land rich, money poor. this oil income stream helps keep many many farmers and ranchers particularly i'm going to focus more on ranchers with rangeland which has great view value as habitat you know it's it's not just something that grows things for cows to munch on It's very important habitat. We recently, I mean you can reflect back, I've listened to three years of this stuff about hearings and land use and a recent case with, near the coast with habitat, foraging habitat. I was going to build a single family home but there were great demands for additional environmental review, an EIR, because it might have an influence on a little bit of foraging habitat. I've heard other cases where Someone wanted to put in a single family home. And because there might impact an obscure weed, well not really a weed, you can buy it in the native plant nursery any day of the week, it should require more rigorous environmental review. I've seen others where there could be the present of an interesting but very rare lizard that's not even been described there, only across the highway. That requires more environmental review. So we're looking at this, and even though it could quite logically produce significant changes in land use, it doesn't have one. All right. If you look at indirect impacts. We ban production, it could be shifted to Kern County, out of state, other areas, may not have the rigorous controls we are, may be dirty, may increase greenhouse gases, may increase greenhouse gas emissions from trucking. This ordinance doesn't reduce oil use, it exports the impacts. What's gonna really reduce oil use is the marketplace. People seeing their neighbor with an electric car and thinking, wow, that's a cool idea. People hearing what the speaker from the community environmental council did, running his car completely green. That's neat. All it's going to take is enough people seeing their neighbor get that. and pretty soon a lot more will have it. That's what's going to reduce oil consumption and production, not this. I mean, if you grew up in our era, like most of us on this board, the local geratocracy, who grew up in the 50s, 60s and 70s, how much technology did we see, and you Ken, you're laughing, smiling, how much technology did we see that was at first expensive, hard to adapt and in no time at all. Everybody's got a color TV set, everybody's got not just a boom box, but they've got, you know, All the electronics we have now, I think if you look at natural attrition of oil and gas versus the marketplace, it'll do the job a lot faster than regulation. But that's not part of the reason I think this really needs more rigorous CEQA review. We have, you know, cumulative effects. We have state phase outs, other county restriction, and that creates cumulative supply impacts. We can't look at this in isolation. I mean, that along with a lot of other, I got pages of things. And we got the environmental justice counter argument. Our county just spent a lot of time working on environmental justice element issues. So hey, we ban our local production, it just shifts production to places with weaker protections and maybe worse environmental standards and produce disproportionate harm to disadvantaged communities elsewhere. We need to look into all of these things. We don't need to say CEQA isn't required here we do sequa board of supervisors can do exactly what it wants to do before but we do it with a better base of knowledge and they wind up with something that's more defensible in the face of legal challenges so the case law you know shows the the A legislative body can pursue a route by using exemptions and they can pursue a route really doing a thorough and adequate consideration of CEQA and the courts like that one a lot better than claiming exemption and just moving forward. You know, look at CEQA. It requires transparency, public disclosure, evidence-based analysis. So I think this just cries out for that. I think it demands that, you know. When I look back at just, you know, three years, not nearly as long as Commissioner Park has been looking at it, we look at the level of CEQA review for so many other projects. We looked at Ag Enterprise Ordinance, not unrelated. We looked at alternative pathways of supplementing income, subordinated and secondary to Ag that was very important to a lot of small ranchers and farmers because they need alternate sources of income. Might affect some land use. Does it have an EIR? You're darn right it does. We're looking at the rec master plan might produce some changes in land use. Does it have an EIR? Well absolutely. We're looking at utility grade solar. which could have the potential of well obviously the potential of altering land use patterns does it have any ir absolutely nobody's saying that should be exempt uh so why in this case you know which will clearly change patterns of land use here. Well, even U.S. Fish and Wildlife recognized the benefit of modest oil production in one of the early iterations of the Santa Barbara County Tiger-Salamander Distinct Population Segment Recovery Plan. They recognized that by having some level of oil production to supplement their income, that allowed many ranchers to leave their land in cattle grazing which was in the end beneficial to the California tiger salamander because they could walk down to the ponds easier. And so that had a real environmental benefit. They said there was a benefit in allowing that oil production because it avoided the necessity faced by ranchers to convert their rangeland to more intensive forms of agriculture. So my bottom line is, you know, As a commission, we have a well-documented record in hearing after hearing of requiring or requesting more rigorous environmental examination And we often hear attacks in appeals and other places against piecemealing projects to make them into smaller bites in efforts to avoid more rigorous environmental review. for this board, I feel, to go ahead and approve this, send it forward in the current state without environmental review really defies what our record has been so far, and I think could be a real example of hypocrisy. You know, requiring more rigorous environmental review is not going to eliminate the Board of Supervisors' opportunity to ultimately do what they desire. It might interfere with their haste or desire to do it quickly with the prospect of an upcoming election in just early June, but we don't deal with that. What we really need to do is look at the needs of the county and helping meet our standard of producing the best ordinance possible. and i just can't i can't support moving this forward uh if it does not include a requirement uh for a more rigorous environmental review so i guess that's a very long way of saying i can't support it in its present state Commissioner Park, I saw you go for it.

Actually, I just want to make a comment I should have made earlier. It really doesn't address the merits of this, but I've enjoyed listening to each commissioner because everyone's been really articulate today, and every one of you has convinced me, but I'm still going to vote how I want to vote. But it's impressive, and I wanted to say the same thing about the public speakers today. everybody did a good job had good points really nothing was repetitive i was very impressed and it goes with the written product as well that we received i looked at that and i i think we had uh mr villalobos was at 11 pdf files to look at and i think that was the all-time high for me but they were good it wasn't just one form letter that got signed by 70 people it was all good stuff so good job everybody but that leaves us with somebody to make a motion which I hope Commissioner Ford makes so I don't have to go through all the stuff up there.

I'm happy to make the motion. if I would just read those three points, to make the required findings for approval to determine that case numbers 2604RD0001 and 00002 are exempt from the provisions of CEQA, adopt a resolution recommending approval, those are attachments C and D to the staff report dated March 31st, 2026.

So, Mr. Chair and Commissioners, did you follow up on the motion that was just made? There were a couple comments related to definitions for new well, and I think staff has prepared a definition? No. I'm getting blank stares. So just for the motion maker, does that motion include either direction to the staff to prepare a definition for the Board of Supervisors to consider or just leave the ordinance the way it is presented today?

Well, is there a new definition or not?

uh mr chair members of the commission um if your commission wanted uh to pursue that then we we have something that we could share with you our i think our perspective is that definitions aren't necessary um because of uh sort of a common understanding of of what is considered new versus existing well

um but if you felt strongly on that we could discuss it further and present something to you may i speak to that yeah go ahead you know i do have a strong feeling that you shouldn't do it today because i i know you do a good job it would seem a little hurried a little rushed and you've heard the point of view you've you've got until the hearing or submission for the hearing before the board. And you'll talk with board people about it. And if you think it's appropriate to do there, it'll get done. So I don't think we need to hold things up today or get specific about changes. I think that would actually be deleterious to the effort. And I second the motion.

Anyway, thanks. Mr. Wilson, I appreciate you pointing out the possibility of this, but I agree with Mr. Park. I think that I would like to leave it as it is, and you've heard what many have said that possibly you would consider the concerns about the definition of new as you go forward with the board, but not here as part of our ordinance. So we have a second.

I guess we need a roll call. Mr. Villalobos.

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

Nay.

CHAIR REID DEFINITELY NO MOTION PASSES 3 TO 2.

SO MS. CHAIR AND COMMISSIONERS I THINK THERE'S ONE MORE ITEM THAT WE MIGHT WANT TO ADDRESS ON THIS AND PART OF THIS IS A CONVERSATION WE'VE HAD IN REGARDS TO THE COMMUNICATION FOR THE PLANNING COMMISSION TO THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS And that communication is the resolution that this motion just adopted. Currently, the resolution is set for the chair to sign that. And if the chair wants to sign it, he can. Or we would like the motion, a motion to direct the vice chair to sign the resolution to go to the board. So we'd like to have that on record that um a motion if the chair so is inclined to have someone else sign the resolution then that's fine but we would like to have that the motion made to have the vice chair sign that resolution to go to the board

I'm going to make that motion. I'm not going to have my signature on something that's so deleterious to a bunch of little kids and families, so I would move that the Commission direct Vice Chair Cooney to sign that thing. I'm not going to have my prints on it.

Then I'll second the motion.

All right. Commissioner Cooney. Aye. COMMISSIONER FORD?

AYE.

COMMISSIONER PARK? AYE. COMMISSIONER MARTINEZ? AYE. CHAIR REED? AYE. MOTION PASSES 5-0.

SO CHAIR AND COMMISSIONERS, ON THAT, WE ARE DONE FOR TODAY AND CAN BE ADJOURNED.