Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

What's that? Are we on? Sorry. My hearing aids are... Can you hear it out there? I'm turning them off. Okay. Figure that out. Good morning, everyone. This is the August 12th, 2026 meeting of the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. And begin. And if we can have the TV coverage announcement, please.

Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Appointing Commission hearings are televised live on County of Santa Barbara Television, CSB TV, Channel 20, at 9 a.m. in the South Coast, Lompoc, San Diego Valley, Santa Maria, and Orchard areas. Rebroadcasts of Appointing Commission hearings are on Fridays at 5 p.m. on CSB TV, Channel 20. Today's hearing will also be streamed live on the County's website as well as the County's YouTube channel and will be available for download in a day or two. Should I move on to roll call? Please do. Great. Commissioner Ford?

Here.

Commissioner Park?

I'm here.

Commissioner Guy?

Here.

Commissioner Martinez? Here. And Chair Americano? Here. Thank you.

Item four on the agenda is the election of a new 2026 planning commission chair. Is there a nomination for chair? Commissioner Ford?

Good morning. I'd like to nominate Tony Guy for the role of chair.

Is there a second to that nomination? I'll second to that. Very good. Any other nominations? All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. All those opposed, say no. Congratulations. Well, thank you very much. Let's switch seats. All right. and i should say as my last official act congratulations and welcome to the commission thank you very much i appreciate it commissioner mayor connor

Okay, considering this is my first official meeting, I will be needing a little bit of help in the protocols of the meeting, and I ask for your patience as we go through.

So, Mr. Chair, congratulations and welcome to the Planning Commission. We're excited to have you on board. Thank you. I'll start off with... guiding with agenda the next item is item number five which is the agenda status report um once i complete that i'll move to the projection report mr chair okay before we go through may i introduce myself and go ahead and tell the community a little bit about who i am and what i've done mr chair that's your prerogative okay please go ahead thank you very much i appreciate it so uh

I moved to Santa Barbara County in 1982 in order to be a student at UC Santa Barbara. I lived in the county through 82 to 89. I also worked for the City of Santa Barbara Public Works Department while I was in college. I left for a few years. I'm a degreed mechanical engineer and I worked in the aerospace industry. So I left to work in Los Angeles County and then Riverside County. And I came back to Santa Barbara County in 1992, January of 92. I took a job working for a engineering and manufacturing company in Santa Maria called CND Aerospace. I worked there until they were acquired by the Zodiac Company in 2005, and then I worked for Zodiac Aerospace, and then they were acquired by Safran, and I worked for Safran until 2022. During that time period, I worked as an engineer. I worked as a manager. I was general manager. I became the business unit CEO, the division CEO, and I eventually left Safran. I worked in private equity for a short period of time. Then I was hired by the Boeing company to work as one of their executives and to be the CEO for the Boeing seat manufacturing company. That company was called Addian Aerospace. Today it is called Elevate Seating, and we have a division of it in Santa Maria today that I helped to move from Orange County to Santa Maria in order to continue growing the jobs in the area, and then I retired. Since I've retired, I became a director for the Santa Maria Public Airport District. I'm currently the vice president of the airport district, and I am I've accepted this appointment to the planning commission so thank you all for inviting me and thank you for having me here. Thank you welcome okay so then the agenda status report.

Mister chair commissioners in regards to the status of the agenda we have. only one item on the agenda today which is a change of owner operator and guarantor for the san maria asphalt refinery development plan staff and applicants are here today to present on that item i can move to the projection report mr chair yes please so our next hearing is scheduled to be on august 26th and that will be in santa barbara there are a number of items on that hearing date which includes a government code conformity determination on Black Road in the Santa Maria area, as well as a T-Mobile telecommunication in the San Ynez area, a tentative parcel map in the San Ynez area, and an equestrian arena as well in the San Ynez area. And then we have a lot line adjustment in the eastern Goleta Valley. So there's a number of items on August 26th. and then moving further down in the projection report on September 2nd we don't have any items projected and then on September 9th we have one item which is a vesting track map and that's in the San Jose area as well and then I do want to just pause for a second Encourage the commissioners to look at their calendars. September is going to get a little crazy for us. We have, working with Long Range Planning, they have a streamlining ordinance package that they're on track to take to the board at the end of the year. In order to meet that schedule, there's a number of hearings that need to occur with both the County Planning Commission and the Montecito Planning Commission. As you know, the Montecito Planning Commission recommends the board on things in the Montecito Planning Commission or Community Planning Area, but then they recommend to the Planning Commission as regards to areas in the coastal zone area. So the hearing with the MPC needs to occur before the County Planning Commission. Because of that, we are going to ask the Commission to entertain a shuffling some of the hearing dates so we can line up those hearings so we can have Those hearings done by the end of October and we can transition to the board and then allow the board to have some hearings in November and December So here's what the tentative plan is for that So on September 30th, it's a regular County Planning Commission date however, we want to do a two hearings on that date and And what we're asking is that the County Planning Commission will meet in the afternoon and we'll have the Montecito Planning Commission meet in the morning. So this is similar format that we did when we did the housing streamline amendment package for those of you that were here. I don't know how many that was at this point. It keeps shifting. Commissioner Park could remember that, I think. But that's when we had hearings both in the morning and the afternoon. Because of scheduling conflicts, we're going to ask that we have the MPC have their hearing in the morning for the workshop, and then the County Planning Commission will be in the afternoon. And we anticipate that will start at 1 o'clock for the County Planning Commission. So for your notes, September 30th would be County Planning Commission beginning at 1 p.m., and that would be a workshop format. So Long Range Planning will present information and take questions and introduce that streamlining amendment package to the County Planning Commission. At that date, there won't be any action requested of the County Planning Commission. It's just basically an informational item so that you get familiar with the streamlining package. And then what we're going to be requesting is that we... cancel the October 7th for the County Planning Commission and then we'll have that be a Montecito Planning Commission hearing and then the same thing for October 14th and I think on October 14th we do have a note that Commissioner Ford was going to be absent that hearing date as well and so we would have October 7th and October 14th would be Montecito Planning Commission hearing dates And then for the County Planning Commission, we would like to set a special hearing on October 21st in place of the 14th and the 7th. And that would be October 21st and then October 28th would be the County Planning Commission hearing dates. So October 21st would be the first hearing that you would hear the streamlining ordinance amendment package. So workshop on September 30th, and then MPC will have the two hearings in October, and then County Planning Commission will convene on October 21st. So we're asking the commission today to see if you're available on October 21st to have that hearing and set it as a special hearing.

What's the time for that hearing? It would be 9 a.m.

And projected to end when? When you're done. Sorry. Let me be more professional. Sorry. Until we'd be, you know, 9 to 4, whenever. Depending on your schedules, if you have a hard end time, we can do that. We're reserving the October 28th date as well. So if we don't finish on the 21st, we would just continue it to the 28th. location it'll be in santa barbara and that's that's a wednesday that would it'd be a wednesday so that's that's a date we would well usually we don't do the third it's a day that the county planning commission doesn't normally meet so that's why we're asking for a special hearing so that's a npc scheduled hearing date so if we could get some concurrence from the commission today And then I'd request a motion to set that as a special hearing on October 21st.

That's good for me, and I'll make the motion to schedule a special hearing on October 21st.

And it's good for me, and I'll second the motion.

So, Mr. Chair and Commissioner O'Connor, I missed that.

The 21st and 28th, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. is acceptable to me, and I will second the motion to set those two hearings.

All those in favor? Wait, hold on one second. Sorry. Sorry, Chair. We're moving fast. I appreciate that. Thank you. So let's take that as it will. We'll take a separate motion to cancel any of the hearing dates. So let's do this one first. So we have a motion on the floor and seconded to set a special hearing for October 21st. So Mr. Chair, you can. Well, the 20th is already a hearing, so.

Is there any further discussion regarding October 21st? Okay, all those in favor? Aye. None opposed? Okay, motion passed. Motion carries. So now we need to cancel the meetings on October 7th and October 14th.

So Mr. Chair, looking at the projection report, looking ahead, we have September 2nd, they have no items projected. I don't anticipate there are going to be any items on that. It means that... Those items would have been due. So I'd recommend a motion to cancel October 2nd. September 2nd. Sorry, September 2nd. Thank you. And then we can also cancel October 7th and the 14th.

And also change the time on September 30th to 1 p.m.? Yes. Okay. So I move that we cancel the meeting on September 2nd. We change the time on the meeting for September 30th to 1 p.m., and we cancel October 7th and October 14th. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. None opposed? Motion carries.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Commissioners. Thank you for indulging us. And we will, at the next hearing, the projection report will reflect the changes that we made today. So appreciate the collaboration and help in getting that item scheduled for us. Thank you. Thank you.

I have a question about the projection report, rather a request. It sounds like in our next couple of hearings, it's predominantly third district matters. And I've looked at them on the projection port. I don't know anything about any of them. And because it's so many of them, I don't want to be in a position that somebody calls me on a Tuesday morning and says, can you come out for a site visit? And I get four of those. So I would hope that somebody at P&D could brief me with three or four sentences about what each of these is about so I can do a little site visiting in the meantime and plan for that.

Commissioner Park, through the chair, will coordinate with division manager to have them reach out to you. Thank you.

May I ask that they reach out to all of us, not just Commissioner Park? Let us all know? Mr. Chair and commissioners, we can do that. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Park. So the next item on the agenda is item seven, public comment.

Are we safe to move to item number seven?

Yes. Okay. So the public comment period is set aside to allow public testimony on items not on today's agenda. The time allotted to each speaker will be set by the discretion of the chair. Total time allotment for public comment is 15 minutes. When testifying before the Planning Commission, personal attacks and other disruptive behavior are not appropriate. So at this point, do we have... I believe we submit the pink form ahead of time for public comment.

Yes, Mr. Chair. I have not received any slips. I'm not sure if anyone in the audience is holding one. And there are no slips over here. It looks like we have no requests.

Okay. Thank you. So we'll move on to item number eight, the Planning Commissioner's Informal Reports. Individual commissioners may present brief reports on planning issues such as seminars, meetings, and literature that would be of interest to the public and or commission as a whole, which includes site visits. Would any commissioner care to report?

Yes, I would. GO AHEAD.

YES, THANK YOU, COMMISSIONER PARK.

THERE ARE SOME UPCOMING THINGS THAT PLANNING COMMISSIONERS MAY WANT TO ATTEND OR MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC. THE FIRST THAT I CAN RECALL IS FARM DAY ON SEPTEMBER 19. Some or all of the commissioners may have actually received an invitation from SEAG for their VIP tour, where you tour around on a bus and you have a really wonderful set of meals, seems endless. And it's just a good time, meet a lot of good people on the bus. So I'd really recommend you come. It's fun, but to get a sense of what the whole county is all about, there's no one thing you could do that would be any better than go to farm day and it supports a really great organization so i hope you all do that i'll do that uh second on uh september 23 through 25 is the california ag tourism summit i attended that and david lackey did uh last year It's really good. It's up in Paso Robles, so it's reachable. They'll have a sort of a get together on the 23rd. They'll have on the 24th, which is a Thursday. They'll have field trips by buses to various ag tourism facilities in San Luis Obispo County, which I look forward to seeing because it's somewhat different. rubric than ours and then they'll have some panels on friday again because so many of the topics we get in front of us including the upcoming uh recreation master plan deal with this kind of thing is it's worth your time third in santa barbara is the conference at that exact same set of dates the 23rd through 25th of the rcrc which is rural counties representatives of california uh bob nelson is or will be their their new uh president or chair in its uh various MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS FROM ALL THE DIFFERENT RURAL COUNTIES AND THERE'S SOMETHING LIKE 40 OF THEM THAT ARE CLASSIFIED THAT WAY. THEIR LEAD OFF PANEL ON WEDNESDAY MORNING THE 23RD WILL BE TOURISM AND I WILL BE ONE OF THE TWO PANELISTS ON THAT. And I don't know how you get into that meeting unless you get elected to the Board of Supervisors, but probably if you asked, you could, because they'll have staff with them as well. And finally, just for kicks, I have a photo I gave David Villalobos to put on the screen. We're getting there. All right, this is a slide I'm gonna use on the 23rd on tourism to illustrate that we have things in every county that are out of this world. This is within 12 miles of Santa Barbara. It's a waterfall I discovered in June. It's not on any map. The stream is not on any map. I had to figure out a way to get to it. I shot this with a drone. you know i i i travel all over on horseback on my endurance rides and this is something i discovered from one little place uh but it's a it's 120 feet tall which makes it the second tallest waterfall in the county it's uh one and a half times the height of nahui falls that you see near builton it is one of the top 10 if not top five tallest waterfalls in southern california and and there you go and it runs all year so it shows that no matter what we think of tourism in our county there's all sorts of other things that we can enjoy if we just explore enough and organize our ordinances and things to accommodate these ventures so thank you i'm finally done

Thank you. How about site visits, Commissioner Park?

What in particular?

Well, you and I both did the site visit at Santa Maria Asphalt.

Oh, yes. Well, we'll announce that when we get to that matter.

Okay.

You know, where you'll ask, before every item, you'll ask if there are any site visits we have to report.

Okay.

And I mean, I'd do it now, but I think it's more useful then. But thanks for asking.

Okay. Any other planning commissioners' informational reports? No. Okay, then we will move on to item number nine, minutes of the meeting July 1st to be considered. Move approval.

I'll second.

Okay, any discussion? All in favor? Aye. I abstain because I was not part of the meeting. Motion passes. Okay, item number 10. Director's report and Board of Supervisors hearing summary.

Mr. Chair and Commissioners, Director Plahn will be providing that remotely. Okay, great, thank you.

Good morning, Commissioners. Welcome Commissioner Guy. We're very excited to have you on the commission.

Thank you.

And thank you for all the information about your history. I think we shared time at UCSB. Probably.

Yeah.

So I wanted to thank Commissioner Park for bringing up a couple of items. One farm day. I have attended for the last few years, and it has been extremely educational, so I do recommend that commissioners attend if possible. You always learn something new, and they do serve great food, and it's very helpful to understand the ins and outs of the agricultural operations up in the Santa Maria Valley and the technology that they're bringing into the fields and the challenges that they face as regulations continue. grow and for food safety. And then on the Ag Tourism Summit, the department may have a representative attending to talk a little bit about our experience with our Ag Enterprise Ordinance, lessons learned. David Lackey did present last time. We've had an inquiry, so we're working that out. So we may be in attendance making a presentation. Our county seems to be sort of on the forefront of these types of regulatory incentives for agricultural operations. We presented at the County Planning Directors Association for California, and there weren't a lot of counties that had engaged in it yet in an extensive way. So I think they're all excited about moving forward with something that can help stimulate more economic security for the ag operations that they have in their communities, which is the intent of the Ag Enterprise Ordinance. I have not seen you all for a while, so I have a fair amount to report on what the board has done. On July 7th, they heard the Rose General Plan Amendment and Rezone, which was in the second district, and that was approved. They heard an appeal of an incompleteness determination for Diana Sandoval on an ADU. And they found that the application was, in fact, incomplete. And then we had been asked by the board to come back with an item regarding ICE detention facilities. And there had been a question as to whether or not our codes would allow for such facility. And through our research, we found that we don't actually have any uses in our code that are similar to a detention facility. So when there is no use identified in our code, it's not an allowed use in the county. Now, if the federal government came in and built one on their own property or leased a property and built one, they could do that. But there have been instances across the country where warehouses have been leased to or upgraded or changed some kind of detention facility by a private entity and then ultimately leased to the federal government. And in this case, if a private entity came in and proposed something along those lines, we would not approve it because it's not a permitted use. And so the board had sought an update as to what whether or not we needed an amendment to prevent that. There were three board members interested in that. And then on the 14th of July, we had an update on the implementation of Acela across multiple departments in the county. And Acela, for Commissioner Guy, since he's new, is the permit software that we use in planning and development. And planning and development was the first department to bring Acela to the county. And now Acela provides a lot of different types of services. And we've got environmental health on Acela. We've got fire on Acela. Public works is on Acela. And the CEO is also on Acela with respect to cannabis licensing. So all departments, including ITD, which led the hearing, presented an update on where we are with all of the advancements that we're making and the new software that we're implementing through Acela. And if you're interested in that, I highly recommend watching it because I think it's very informative on the technology that we're bringing into the county. And then we had our first hearing on that date for utility scale solar, and that was the 14th. The board had some changes they wanted to make to the code and some additional research they wanted us to conduct, which we have done, and we are going back to the board on next Tuesday on the 18th for a final approval of that ordinance package. A couple of things they were interested in was creating an exemption for a small standalone battery energy storage system. And what we're bringing back is a quarter acre of a standalone that could be exempt in tier one. And another change you might be interested in is the agricultural community. In fact, Shipper Growers asked if they could establish a Tier 1 exemption for up to 15 acres on agricultural properties if that solar is to serve the agricultural operation solely. And we have incorporated that into the code. And there's a couple other minor changes as well. And then in terms of future board actions, as I mentioned, utility scale solar will be on Tuesday, the continued item. We have the HAGFORS general, it's a rezone in the third district, and that's going on the 18th as well. And then on the 1st of September, we have the Coastal Resource Mitigation Fund mid-cycle fee assessment, reassessment that we're doing. So We're actually going to be changing the fees for the Sable operations now that they've been active. They're going to have to contribute additional funds to the Coastal Mitigation Fund, which is then used for grants in the coastal zone up and down the county for different types of projects. Let's see. And then on the 15th of September, we have the first phase of the oil and gas amendments that would prohibit future drilling of new wells. And that's what we have projected for the board. And I'm happy to answer any questions.

Any questions? No? Okay, so Mr. Villalobos. Thank you. Help me with the next step here. Thank you very much for the presentation.

So, next is our standard agenda. I can read the first item into the record?

Yes, please.

AND THEN WE CAN GO INTO EX PARTE DECLARATIONS.

OKAY.

THANK YOU. GREAT. THE FOLLOWING IS A HEARING ON THE REQUEST OF CAP RESOLUTION PARTNERS LLC DOING BUSINESS AT SANTA MARIA ROAD MATERIALS TO CONSIDER APPROVAL OF CHANGE OF OWNER, OPERATOR AND GUARANTOR FOR THE SANTA MARIA ASPHALT REFINERY DEVELOPMENT PLAN PERMIT NUMBER 95DP001. revision number three in compliance with chapter 25b of the county code and to determine the requests are exempt from CEQA pursuant to CEQA guidelines section 15378b as outlined in the notice of exemption thank you okay help me out just okay are there any ex parte comments

ANY SITE VISITS? SORRY, COMMISSIONER PARK, I GOT OUT OF LINE EARLIER.

YOU KNOW, EVERY OTHER NEW CHAIR, AND I'VE FACED FOUR NEW ONES IN THE LAST 18 MONTHS, USUALLY JUST FOR GUESTS TO EVEN ASK ABOUT EX PARTY CONTACTS OR VISITS. SO IF YOU GET IT OUT OF ORDER, YOU'RE STILL AHEAD OF THE REST.

THANK YOU.

THERE YOU ARE. Mr. Guy and I had a site visit at this site in a meeting with Mr. Fields, I think Mr. Robinson, Mr. Hankey, all on the project. It's very useful. I'm older than Mr. Guy, so I don't remember the date, but maybe he does.

Okay.

Yes, Vince? Yes, I had a conversation with Mr. Aaron Hanke last Wednesday regarding this project and just discussed in regards to the documents that have been submitted thus far. That's it.

Thank you. Anybody else? Okay. I also would like to share that I did the site visit with Commissioner Park at Santa Maria Asphalt. And I also have had a conversation with Aaron Hanke regarding the same subject to help clarify a few questions that I had. That's all I have to report.

And Mr. Chair, I believe now we should go on to staff presentation.

Okay. I would like to ask that we have staff presentation at this point.

Good morning, Chair and members of the Commission. My name is Aaron Briggs. I'm the Deputy Director for the Energy and Minerals Division. And this morning, I have our Supervising Planner, Jax Ibarra, giving our presentation. Great.

Thank you.

Great. Good morning, Commissioners. Welcome, Chair Guy. I'm the Case Planner, Jacqueline Ibarra. And as Deputy Director Aaron Briggs said, he's also here today. And we're also both UCSB alums. So go Gauchos.

Go Gauchos. Thank you.

Today, the commission is considering the change of owner, operator, and guarantor for the Santa Maria Asphalt Refinery's County Development Plan permit. The request is on behalf of CAP resolution partners doing business at Santa Maria Road Materials for a change of owner, operator, and guarantor of the refinery's development plan permit number 95DP001 under Chapter 25B of the county code, which governs the process of transferring county permits for certain oil and gas facilities. And because the application involves a change of owner, guarantor, and operator, the requests have been combined and to be decided upon by your planning commission. Important to note the request today is to transfer the county permit for the refinery and not for the transfer, bless you, of the refinery itself and that the permit transfer does not include authorization to restart the facility. That's a separate process under the jurisdiction of Planning and Development and the County Fire Department and the County Air Pollution Control District under existing permit conditions and other authorizations. The facility is located at 1700 Sitton Road outside of Santa Maria in Mr. Martinez's 5th Supervisorial District. You can see in the zoomed out figure the city of Santa Maria is to the east and the facility is about four miles to the west in a more rural area. And the zoomed in figure shows the refinery itself which borders Sitton Road and the Santa Maria Valley Railroad. This slide gives you a little bit of background and timeline on the refinery. So it was built in the 1930s, and the county issued a development plan permit in 1995. In 1999, it was acquired by Greca Refining Company, and in 2018, Greca changed its name to California Asphalt Production, or CAP. They operated the refinery until 2021 when operations were then shut down by orders from the county fire department due to fire code violations with various requirements for restart. CAP essentially then left the refinery idle and eventually went bankrupt in 2024. In 2025, Santa Maria Road Materials acquired the refinery through a bankruptcy restructuring and now owns the refinery offices and associated lands. Following the acquisition, Santa Maria Road Materials applied to transfer their county permit earlier this year. It has been processed and that is why we are here today. For environmental review of the request, permit transfer does not constitute a project as defined by CEQA section 15378, which exempts administrative actions of governments that do not result in direct or indirect physical changes to the environment. The permit transfer would meet this definition as the resulting action would update the owner, operator, and guarantor on the county permit, and it would not result in a physical change to the facility. Okay, so for the meat to the potatoes, this is the consistency analysis. We analyzed the application in relation to the required findings of Chapter 25B and determined that each finding can be made. And they are listed here and I'll go through each in summary. So first, for financial guarantees, we confirmed that Santa Maria Road Materials is current on all their outstanding fees. They've paid over $660,000 in legacy compliance and permitting fees, both to Planning and Development and the Air Pollution Control District. For item number two, financial, sorry, for financial guarantees, Chapter 25B only requires that existing insurance bonds and other financial documents are updated to reflect the new owner. In this case, neither county code nor the permit conditions require Santa Maria Road materials to have insurance for the facility. However, there is a permit condition that requires they be responsible for any upset condition. So think oil spill, fire, hazardous materials release, et cetera. So to demonstrate that they can be financially responsible for such a condition, the applicant did provide copies of their existing insurance, which covers $7 million, and that's for the EIDL facility as it stands today. and they've stated that they will increase that insurance to no less than $20 million once the facility is operational. For bonds, the permit requires San Maria Road materials to post a reclamation bond at the permanent shutdown of the facility or continue to pay property taxes through final abandonment. So there is nothing currently on file, no current bond for them to update. For item three, as part of their application, San Maria Road Materials did accept all conditions and requirements of their permit. For item four, safety audits, Chapter 25B requires a safety audit be provided to the new owner. The county conducted safety audit. We last conducted a safety audit on the refinery in 2020. and found approximately 148 outstanding issues that needed to be addressed before the facility shut down in 2021. When Santa Maria Road materials took over, they did begin a comprehensive restoration program with various upgrades that are currently in progress that will address that audit as well as the fire department stop work orders and other violations. We have also scheduled a supplemental safety audit for August 26th in which San Maria road materials will be required to satisfy any findings prior to restarting the facility. And that safety audit will be with planning and development, the fire department and ABCD and building and safety. And finally on this slide for item five, compliance with permit conditions, technically the facility is out of compliance with their permit due to the various violations on the facility itself. However, in accordance with chapter 25B, the applicant entered into a binding compliance agreement with planning and development that demonstrates how and when they will satisfy all outstanding conditions, which meets the requirement for this finding. I'll skip over item six because it's the same as item two, just for change of guarantor versus change of owner. For item number seven, 25B requires that all major compliance plans for the facility be updated to reflect the new owner's contact information. As part of their application materials, they did submit all updated plans, and they are also being reviewed for overall comprehensive and technical accuracy by Planning and Development and the Fire Department, and those more comprehensive updates are currently ongoing. Secondary compliance plans would also be updated within six months of approval of the change of operator. For item eight, a transition plan, because the former owner operator went bankrupt, that was Greca slash California Asphalt Production, San Maria Road Materials couldn't prepare a transition plan with them. However, the applicant did provide a comprehensive training plan that outlines the types of training, the schedules for training, and that would be applicable to all new staff and staff that used to work at the refinery. It incorporates industry training, site-specific training, and lessons learned from the previous operator. For item number nine, emergency response drills, a desktop drill was conducted as part of San Marie Road Materials Training Program, which is outlined in the transition plan in item eight. And a field drill will be conducted with the fire department once their more comprehensive fire protection plan is approved. And they're currently in conversations with fire updating that plan now. And finally for item 10, operator skills and resources. So San Marie Road Materials, their managing partners are made up of two individuals here today, Mr. Dave Fields and Mr. Chip Moore, both who have extensive industry experience and as well as about 15 onsite operations staff who also have industry experience and some have experience at the refinery itself. Dave himself was a former chief executive officer and general manager of the refinery for 18 months, but ultimately left two years prior to the stop work orders being issued. And we found no major incidents that occurred during Dave's management of the facility. Since then, now as part of San Maria Road materials, Mr. Fields and Mr. Moore have put substantial resources into correcting violations and updating the facility, as well as becoming current on all fees and past due property taxes. So in conclusion, all findings can be made as discussed in attachment A to your staff report, and we recommend that the Planning Commission, one, make the required findings for approval, two, determine the requests are not a project pursuant to CEQA, and three, approve the change of owner, operator, and guarantor on the county permit and adopt the conditions of approval. And that concludes staff's presentation and we're happy to answer any questions or wait until after the applicant's presentation. Thank you.

Okay, now we will go to the applicant's presentation. No, sorry, Commissioner Park.

Questions from commissioners. okay i'm sorry questions from the commissioners yeah and i always have questions so okay okay first thing i want to compliment mizubara on on her report is typically thorough of all her reports And it's very impressive. Even she has little projects. She has a great report. And we should all appreciate this. I always like to see her. On prior transfers of this nature, meaning of this nature that relate to oil and 25B, whether people like it or not, I always ask about GHG emissions that we're going to see now that something restarts. and and uh uh i'm not terribly concerned about it here because i i think they're very low and and they probably net out to be a positive contribution but it should be in the record and so do you know what the ghg admissions will be from this project once it's up and operating i'm sure apcd had those figures i've asked mr fields for that and he'll comment as well but i think that it'd be useful if you've got that you can tell us

So Commissioner Park, through the Chair, regarding air emissions, we can get back to you on exact numbers, but those are outlined. The facility had a mitigated negative declaration prepared back when the development plan was issued and that analyzed air emissions from construction and operations of the facility. Like you mentioned, they also have permits through the APCD, so they're limited on what air emissions they're allowed to emit, they're capped, and that is all through air pollution control.

Do you have a ballpark figure where they are?

We can look it up.

Okay, let me ask you this. I'll ask Mr. Fields the same question, assuming you go to the podium. but not right now but I'll ask you the same question and then if you could just confirm that that's your understanding as well I appreciate it.

Just to add to that a little bit so the negative declaration that was done for the project back in 1995 was done prior to greenhouse gases being a CEQA issue and therefore it was not studied at that time so that's the reason why we don't have a great estimate on the emissions is because it's never been looked at by P&D at the facility. Right.

Okay, well, thanks.

I have a quick question. I noticed that in reading this that there's a lead contamination area. So is the applicant now the responsible party for cleaning up that lead contamination area?

Mr. Chair and Commissioner Martinez, I think the applicant's going to be a little bit more familiar with the circumstances of that issue, and it would be best to ask them.

okay but this this lead contamination area is within the project site we're talking about here today i'm seeing head nodding yes okay okay all right i'll wait for that answer when it comes up thank you any further questions or comments from the commissioners okay so at this point we'll go to the applicants presentation

Good morning. Can you hear me okay? Hello. Hi, Chair and Commissioners. I just want to confirm we have 15 minutes for our initial presentation and five minutes for rebuttal. Is that correct? Yes.

Yes, that is correct.

OK, thank you very much. I'm Beth Collins. I'm a land use lawyer from Brownstein. I'm here today on behalf of Santa Maria Road Materials. First, thank you so much to staff. Thank you, Commissioner Park, for noting. Thanks for your great work over these years and the very thorough presentation and report. Second, our team is here. Chip Moore and David Fields, our CEO, are here if you have questions, which you apparently do. And some we'll cover in the presentation. We might cover them in question and answer after as well. Chip's actually going to do the presentation with me. So if you have follow up for David, he's here as well. So I just want to acknowledge this is a strange, a relatively strange situation for the Planning Commission to consider in that we're not asking for a new permit to develop. Instead, my client purchased this property and the existing plan and the associated permit out of bankruptcy. So that's an odd situation. And then on top of it, we are IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE COUNTY STAFF'S REQUESTS, HERE ASKING FOR A CHANGE OF OWNERSHIP, OPERATOR, GUARANTOR, UNDER SECTION 25B. AND THAT CHANGE IS FROM THE DEFUNCT OWNER TO THIS NEW OWNER. As you heard in the staff presentation, the county has these findings. It requires the Planning Commission to make, and frankly, the applicant has far surpassed, and the Planning Commission can easily make these findings. This is especially true where the prior owner guarantor, the ones on the HOOK RIGHT NOW ARE BANKRUPT. BY CONTRAST, MY CLIENT IS STEPPING IN TO SAVE THIS DAMAGED ASSET INVESTING ALREADY OVER $12 MILLION TO OVERHAUL THE FACILITY WITH MORE PLANNED AND THEY NOW ASK THIS PLANNING COMMISSION TO APPROVE THEIR APPLICATION so that they can begin operation next month. So I'm going to pass the mantle to Chip. He's going to cover one through three, then I'm going to pop back up and talk about the findings. So I'll give you to Chip Moore. Right here. This right click. Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Chip Moore, and I am the managing member of CAP Resolution Partners. Um we um it's been a long road to get to actually this hearing date. Um this was our decision to get involved with this refinery dates all the way back to the process started back in 2022 when we first met with the planning department to discuss what if any conditions we could satisfy to get their support for our ownership and operatorship of this refinery. At that time, the refinery had been closed for over a year. We knew Dave Fields, who had left, as mentioned, back in 2019, but had run the refinery for 18 months and was obviously extremely familiar with it. So it's been a long road to get here. We attempted to buy the refinery from the prior owner. That didn't work, so we ended up purchasing his senior secured debt and forcing essentially a foreclosure that resulted in a bankruptcy of the refinery. And then it took another 18 months in bankruptcy to finally get the assets free and clear. And of course, What did we own at that point other than an abandoned asphalt refinery? And so now we have spent the better part of a year restoring the refinery with a large team of contractors, local contractors, and with Dave and numerous members of the team that formerly ran the refinery. That largely covers that slide. Many of these slides in this presentation were just covered by the Planning Department's presentation, so I'll move quickly through these. We all know where the refinery is located. Two-thirds of the finished product is asphalt. This refinery has... has been in existence for 100 years. It is perfectly located because it's very close to the heavy oil producers locally and it's right on a rail line. OK, so logistics are very important in the road construction industry. And so that's why this refinery operated continuously for almost 100 years up until its closure in 2021. The actual refinery process is really more of a distillation process. There's no hydrocracking going on here. This is really just low pressure heat. It runs three shifts. You only need a couple of operators per shift to actually operate this refinery. There's numerous ancillary maintenance and support people involved. We currently have 20, 25 employees on the payroll. About two-thirds of them are operators. They've all been through extensive training at this point. And so we are rapidly approaching being ready to operate. That's been covered. Just a few points about the market for asphalt in California. California finds itself very short of asphalt supply. The state consumes about 40,000 barrels a day. And in April, the Valero Benicia Refinery closed. They were the largest asphalt refinery in the whole state. They made 8,000 barrels a day of asphalt. About 20% of the market demand was satisfied from that refinery, and it's closed. So the opportunity here, of course, is for the Santa Maria Asphalt Refinery to step into the void and replace... Can't replace all of it, but can replace, you know, half to two thirds of that lost asphalt. So that's the goal. That's the market situation right now. You know, for its entire history, it's played a key role in the Caltrans supply chain. The refinery was built in Santa Maria because the oil in Santa Maria happens to be the ideal feedstock for performance grade asphalt. California has the highest performance standards for road asphalt in the country. And so not all asphalt works. The asphalt produced at this refinery does work and will work. I'll also just point out the closed loop logistics nature of this refinery where the heavy oil producers are nearby. They pull in with their oil. It gets converted to asphalt. 48 hours later, local road contractors drive in with their trucks or we load heated rail cars and send asphalt possibly to Sacramento and areas of this nature. So it's ideally located and the logistics were really well considered when this refinery was put in place. In terms of the economic impact to the community, as mentioned, we currently have 25 people on staff. We're hiring more. Those are permanent jobs. Many of the people working for us were displaced workers from the oil and gas sector, which obviously has contracted considerably in California. um we've hired dozens of local contractors have been on site for the past year it's not going to even though the refinery restoration will be completed in september we have many future projects upgrade projects that we're going to be doing over the next three years in addition a refinery like this has has a large annual maintenance requirement so we're going to keep the local contractors and suppliers busy um which is good obviously good for the economy here um as was addressed in the earlier presentation we we had to pay all the um delinquent um property taxes and unpaid regulatory fees for you know and property tax was 14 years of property taxes and um unpaid and um several years of delinquent um you know, delinquent fees to the county and to APCD and so forth. So those have all been satisfied at this point. So we've really tried to, you know, put our money where our mouth is and, you know, get caught up on all this stuff. And, you know, it's going to be a great little local business that will provide a long-term tax revenue stream to, you know, to the county and to the local community. Okay, environmental and community benefits. Yes, as we know, 90, you know, most of the roads in California are made of asphalt. Now, we've got a slide that follows this one that's going to get into some of this detail. It starts to get to this GLG, you know, reductions and so forth because, you know, We have primary and secondary things to consider here. So let's just kind of start initially with this restoration project. They had these legacy steam boilers that were very inefficient from an emissions perspective. They've all been replaced with state-of-the-art, low-NOx boilers. The furnaces that heat the incoming crude oil, all the burners have been upgraded and replaced to best available control technology. So David has the specifics. He'll talk, if you'd like, in a moment. But I can tell you, I happened to look at the APC table. They sent us a table of the emissions reductions. And the SOx and NOx reductions associated with just those changes exceed 80%, 80% from where it was. So that represents a very large, obviously, decrease there. Then we go sort of outside the walls of the refinery to think about from a trucking perspective, what does this mean for the county? OK, so today all the Santa Maria Valley oil has to be trucked on 166 Route 166 over to the Pentland Depot, which is near Bakersfield. That's that's 100 miles each way almost. You know, we will take all their oil, okay? Every barrel of their oil can, once this refinery opens, can now come to us. On average, we're about 20 miles away from these refineries. Thank you. I'm taking too long, I see. Okay. All right. And so that represents a very large reduction. We've tried to create a table here to show that for you. We took three representative... oil fields in the area, looking at, they can either go to Pentland Depot or they can go to Los Angeles. Those are the two options. So they can drive 200 miles round trip or 300 miles round trip, or they can bring their oil to Santa Maria Refinery, which is 40 miles round trip. So that's approximately an 80% reduction in trucking miles. Given the amount, even that's at 4,300 barrels a day, that's 28 tanker trucks per day, 365 days a year. That's about a million and a half truck miles that we can take off the roads as a result of the refinery. And that's just for oil. Now what? The numbers on the asphalt side are not that dissimilar. Asphalt's being trucked all over the place right now because of the lack of supply. It's very difficult. And so we can darn near double the mileage off that way as well. So this ends my portion of the presentation.

Okay, now to the findings. Finding one, that's simple. We paid the past fees. We've paid actually over $850,000. The staff report said $650,000, but $850,000 so far, and they've committed to pay all future fees. Second, financial guarantees. You're going from a defunct owner that had significant debt, over $220 million of debt, And now you have a capitalized company with no debt. Also with significant insurance coverage, which Jack's talked about. Next, on the finding number three, we have not only, or my client has not only put in a certified letter that they will comply with all permit conditions, but they've gone through a significant effort with the county to update all the relative plans for this facility. And again, this plant cannot restart unless it's safe. There's currently a stop work order, but it will be going through a new Simquot audit. And once it passes that audit, it can open, which we hope will be next month. um and as far as again jack's covered this very well compliance with existing requirements on the transition plan of course there's no transition because there's no current operator but we have a restoration program we've had full significant training of new hires we have the highly experienced team david fields has been leading that effort of the rehab of this very neglected facility we have really in essence 25 years of deferred maintenance that has been rectified over this last months that they have owned this facility. And then I might eat into one minute of my rebuttal. So in short, we'd like you to adopt staff's recommendation. This new applicant is providing a significant local benefit. Oil trucks off the road, as you saw hundreds of miles of reductions of oil trucks, local asphalt supply, new jobs for local displaced oil and gas industry workers. And here, this makes particular sense for you all because the current owner generator that's actually on the permit right now is a defunct entity. So please follow staff recommendation and approve the application. Thank you.

Thank you.

We're here for questions.

And I have questions.

If you didn't cover things, yes.

And I'm going to ask my question. First one's one I already asked staff about is a quantification, even if it's ballpark, of the annual metric tons of GHGs admitted once this starts up again. Do you have that figure?

Well, I don't have a figure, but I can give you a qualitative analysis which tells you, in essence, that the GHG picture is much better with this. And it seems it doesn't make sense, right, that starting up this asphalt plant actually improves GHG. Why is that? One. Right now, our local oil trucks, as you know, have to drive 100 miles at least. Then they can drive 10 miles or so to this local refinery. Two, we need to import. asphalt here through heated real cars and trucks. Now we will be able to have a local asphalt supply. So those are two big reductions in GHG plus what you heard Chip describing which is APCD also required various upgrades to our air quality scrubbers at the plant and so air quality in general maybe ironically will improve with the opening of this plant.

Well, let me ask you about three, another reduction and see if you agree with this. Oil that's local, that's trucked off to Pentland goes into a system that ultimately refines a lot of that for gasoline usage and it's combusted and it leads to GHGs and perhaps climate change. But I would think that oil that goes to this facility will go into asphalt because that's what it's for. It will go into roads. It won't go into a combustion process. It will be in fact sequestering this local oil.

That's a very clever point. You're correct. Asphalt is a carbon sink. So it actually keeps the carbon and captures it instead of burning it. So you're correct. Now we're going to be able to, from our local heavy oil, sink it into asphalt, which will be captured on our roads that even my Tesla needs to be able to drive on asphalt. So our electric cars also need asphalt. It's an important commodity in this state.

OK. So who can I ask on your team for the GHG It'll be Mr. Fields. I thought it would be.

Thank you, Chair Guy versus the Commission. So 15 metric tons is the annual emissions from the fired equipment. That, as Chip pointed out, we had to upgrade. We're actually setting a new standard in Santa Barbara County for emissions limits under best available control technology. Picking on our boilers, they've been upgraded to, they're gonna have five ppm NOx, which again is, previously it was nine ppm was the best in Santa Barbara County. So that's about a 80% reduction in NOx and SOx emissions from our fired equipment. Now the 15 metric tons is also what I would call a worst case. That's if we're firing everything at 100%, which we will never be doing. We've got redundancy and we don't fire everything at 100%. So it should be significantly lower than 15 metric tons per year.

And that's the annual amount?

That's the annual amount, yes.

I might just point out for other commission members who weren't at the Cat Canyon hearings, because none of you were, we were looking at that time of the three projects together of generating in the nature of 300,000 annual metric tons. So this figure is, I mean, I don't mean to, belittle any amount but it's such an incredibly small amount compared to anything else we've seen in this whole endeavor thank you john i can i can address the lead too if you if commissioner i have a question relative to what you just spoke about the 15 metric tons um is that um

created by the burning of natural gas in order to heat up during the process, or is it generated by any other avenues?

It's predominantly, overwhelmingly burning PUC natural gas. We have three new boilers, and we've got seven heaters that predominantly burn PUC gas.

Okay, thank you.

Commissioner Martinez. Thank you, chair. You were just going to answer the question in regards to the lead contamination area.

Yeah, there's a old it's a area towards the east end of the refinery where Conoco had done some sandblasting of stuff with lead paint and they remediated it and they retain the liability that when the transfer from Conoco to Saba in I want to say early 90s. And I can share, we have an environmental site assessment that has a section on that that I can actually share.

Okay, so right now as we speak, ConocoPhillips is the responsible party for that area.

Yeah, it's been remediated too. I mean, they dug it up and put a bunch of dirt on top of it and fill material.

Now, I have a few more questions, and maybe you can answer them, and maybe other people on your team can answer them, but Greco.

Yes.

Okay. No more affiliation with it, correct? No more affiliation with it. I heard one person, maybe, which was a... there for a year and a half. That was me. Okay, that was you. That's now still going to be involved in it. But the same people who are making the decisions and principles as to what ultimately led to the diminution of this plant, they're not involved, correct? Correct. Okay.

I wouldn't be here if they were.

Okay.

And not to mention a number, you know, the staff and a number of other folks have made very clear that that was not, that was a condition of...

Well, that's good to hear. I heard an indication of a SIMQAP audit, S-I-M-Q-A-P. What is that?

So it's really the S-S-R-R-C, and I always mess up what the initials stand for. But, you know, as Jack said, it's, you know, P&D, the fire department, ABCD, building safety. They come out and they spend a day just... We start out in the morning going through all the plans. So if you go back to the one slide that, well, we both had slides with all the various plans. So we'll go through all the plans. They'll check the plans. They're going to check that we're correctly manifesting hazardous waste and hazardous material in and out of the refinery, that we've got your correctly inventory and stuff like that. And then they do a big walkthrough. Some of it's like... STUFF'S NOT PAINTED OR LIGHTS AREN'T FIXED. SOME OF THEM ARE MAJOR STUFF. THERE MIGHT BE AN ELECTRICAL SAFETY HAZARD TYPE OF STUFF. WE END UP WITH ABOUT 10 TO 15 PEOPLE FROM DIFFERENT DEPARTMENTS, ALL MEMBERS OF THE SSRC UNDER THAT UMBRELLA. THEY GIVE US A BIG PUNCH LIST. I THINK THERE'S THREE. I'M NOT 100% CERTAIN. I THINK THERE'S THREE CATEGORIES OF degrees of severity and you know there's like level one which has to be addressed within 48 or 72 hours. Level two you have 30 days and level three I think you have 90 days.

So through that process, is that where there's actual inspections of the tanks? I mean, we see pictures. There's tanks there. There's some infrastructure there. So that's going to be inspected and assured that it's in a condition that can be used in an operational capacity, correct?

I would say sort of. And the reason why I say sort of is You know we've been on site now for a little over a year And I would say like the first four to six months was was serious inspection the direction from the SSRC Commission with committee was basically inspect everything So all the tanks, vessels, towers, exchangers, we spent six months inspecting everything. And basically since October, November, we've been fixing all the problems we found, all the legacy problems we found. Those inspection reports then get submitted to planning development and the SSRRC committee for review. And so part of that process, which is the right to just say sort of is because it's much more involved than just the audit, but part of that process is You know, they'll look at the inspections and they'll verify that, you know, the inspection says fix A, B, C, D and that we fix A, B, C, D. The inspector will, you know, also do that and then they'll give us a return to service letter. The SSRC committee and the planning development department will verify that all before we start up.

And I want to make sure that you and so the public knows in regards to why I asked that question is because I have been asked and inquired of as to, well, okay, we have a facility which has been sitting there, and as anything, you have metal that's going to have corrosive, and that's being addressed, and that has been addressed before operations begin.

Yes. Okay. It's in progress, yes.

Okay. Now, you mentioned that, at least I heard somebody say that you guys have some projects over the next three years. What are those projects that we're talking about?

Largely, so we have, let's see, 117,000 barrels of crude oil tankage and like 200,000 barrels of finished product tankage. So most of the year two, year three is really upgrading the rest of the tankage. There's some other projects around upgrading or replacing exchangers and whatnot. But the overwhelming majority of it is. If you went back to the picture, the overhead picture, it's like, you know, the refinery itself is a little footprint. It's like an acre surrounded by like 15 acres of tanks. It's really, you know, finished inspecting, repairing, upgrading the remaining tankages, the bulk of the remaining work.

Now, as for the insurance, we've heard $7 million, then it's going to go up to like $20 million once you're in operation. What kind of insurance are we talking about? Are we just talking premise liability insurance or contamination insurance?

Yes, both. Both? Liability, pollution, potentially business interruption, but it's, you know, yes.

Okay. And then... I see a lot of mention of local contractors, and I'm going to say this out loud, and I may have some flack back from people in the Central Valley, but Bakersfield has made their line and said, this is our area, and just as much as they don't like us going over there, let's look about over here now and the local contractors. What kind of local contractors are we talking about utilizing them in the operations?

Yeah, I mean, what I call our general contractor, I mean, he's out of Nipomo and all of the, you know, as uh i think beth and chip both pointed out you know most of our the the people actually turning the wrenches are displaced local displaced oil field workers the folks that were working out in the oil fields a year ago two years ago five years ago whatever um and now they're in the refinery turning wrenches okay but but local trucking companies are we talking about here too

Okay. So I saw the map, which kind of gave me this idea of asking this question, and my question is, what market area are we talking about here? Now we know we're talking about, okay, now the oil is not going to be going over to Bakersfield or to B, whatever they do with it over there. It doesn't matter to me. but now we're going to do something here in our valley so what market area are we talking about where the asphalt is going to be utilized and at least in your projection i mean it can't be 100 you know because of like asphalt has to travel at temperature we tend to ship it out at 350 degrees or higher so that kind of you know creates a

you know, an arc, so to speak. And it actually gives us a bit of a, you know, natural monopoly within that arc. So, you know, we go as far south, really into Ventura County, as far east. We did go into Bakersfield and as far north up into kind of not quite to Sacramento. But, you know, primarily, you know, we're, you know, there's a plant in Buelton we support. There's a plant in Templeton we support. There's went over in Arvin, so it kind of, you know, the local stuff is the core, and then we had some ancillary stuff that went as far as, as I said, Ventura and Bakersfield, not quite Sacramento to the north.

So the market projection is predominantly the local stuff?

Yes, California.

California, okay.

Yeah, and one of the things that Chip alluded to, you know, with Benicia closing, there is not an asphalt producer in California north of us. So we're the, we're it as far, you know, so, you know, Northern California in particular is going to be in trouble. Yeah. But, you know, it's sort of the local, it's, I say local crude, local asphalt. That's our plan.

Yeah, that's a terrible story about Benicia. Yeah. I heard they're even petitioning to try and keep it open because that's everything to Benicia. Schools. Yep. The whole nine yards. Yeah. Those are all the questions I have right now. Thank you.

We have more. We're out there.

I probably will.

We like having visitors to show and tell.

Okay. Commissioner Ford.

Thank you. I appreciate all of the discussion and descriptions of what has been done so far. I see you're looking at a mid-September restart. And I wonder if there are any, what are some things that have to happen in order to restart in September?

Yeah, I mean, the big one is we have to we're building a new fire water tank. You know, the the the planning developments envoy, so to speak, on site has said, you know, that's the most important tank in the facility, right? Because, you know, we are we are for the per the permit requires us to have a twenty four thousand barrel. Firewater tank, so we're building a new one. So that'll probably what sets our actual restart. We're still in the process. I'd say we're about 75% to 80% done with clearing. The stop work orders have maybe somewhere between like six and 10, you know, check items, we have most of them done right now. So that's probably the second thing is getting those done. And then we are in the process of almost done updating the fire protection plan, the emergency response plan. They're not gonna let us start without those done. We actually have a fire protection engineer on site this afternoon, which is the last big step on those ones. But as far as maintenance, it's gonna be the fire water tank is what's gonna set it. Most of the rest of the stuff we're starting to, if we're starting to put everything back together. The list is getting shorter finally after a year.

Thanks.

Certainly.

I have one last question. Of the asphalt that you plan to produce at this facility, how much of it is anticipated to be used locally in Santa Barbara County versus what would be used outside of Santa Barbara County?

Probably like 30-40% but to a certain extent it's fungible, right? Because we can send to one of our former customers, you'd send it to his plant in Templeton and then he'd bring it back into Santa Barbara County. And same with one of them where you'd send it into Arvin and it might come back into Santa Barbara County. But within Santa Barbara County there's three particular plants that we used to supply that was about 30-40% of our production. Now there's also about three or four other plants that we didn't supply that we're we hope to bring them on as customers so i'd say the 30 is probably a floor if we just go back to who we historically supplied you know five ten years ago okay thank you any other questions from commissioners all right thank you all okay thank you

So Mr. Chair, yes, this is when we would typically open public comment. We don't have any speakers online. I do have one speaker slip. If anyone else would like to speak, submit your slip now. But before we get to public comment, we do have one small administrative item to take care of. And that is we received a letter towards the end of the day yesterday that exceeded a page in length that was submitted after your deadline. So we typically do this before public comment in case the commission opts not to include it in the record. So if they're present, they can provide their comments verbally. And so the letter, the email that I'm talking about is from Scott Metcalfe. came in a little after four yesterday afternoon. So the rules for the commission is that for inclusion in the record, because it came in after the deadline and because it's more than a page in length, we require a fourth fits vote to do that. So if the commission would like for that to be included into the record, someone would have to make a motion, we'd have to have a second, and then four of the five would have to say yes on that.

Okay, anybody interested in making the motion?

To accept or not to?

To consider it. So the motion would be to, if you, so it's not part of the record currently, so the vote, if you wanted for it to become part of the record, you'd have to make a motion to include it. Well, I'm not going to make that motion, no. Okay.

No.

Okay. The answer is no. Okay. And so the reason why we do that now is because if he's present, he can share his comments verbally. Okay. Thank you very much.

I do have a request, though, because it's nigh on to 1030, and I think we ought to take a break.

Okay. Okay. I agree. This is a nice time to take a break. So I guess we normally take a five or 10 minute break.

We say 10 minutes and then it's a miracle when people come back in, but you always try.

Okay. Then we will take a 10 minute break. Thank you. Returning from our break, at this point in time, we are going to open for public comment.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do have one speaker slip. If anyone else has a slip, go ahead and turn it in now. If not, so our first, I'm sorry, we do have someone online as well now. But our first in-person speaker is Mary Hayden, to be followed by our online speaker, Roy Reed. Mr. Chair, before we start, we should just indicate to our speakers how much time we're going to give.

Okay. Each speaker will be given three minutes to speak this morning. Thank you.

Good morning, Chairman Guy and commissioners. My name is Mary Hayden. I'm a co-owner, co-manager of the Ted Chamberlain Ranch, which is a beef cattle ranch in the Part of our property overlies the Zaka oil field, and we've had a consistent lease there since 1942. I will say my generation, although we've definitely benefited from the royalties, are conflicted in terms of greenhouse gases and just general admissions, but I'll get to that in a bit. So the oil entity that we own is called Chamberlain Oil, and the current pumping operator is PCEC or PCE. EA, and I have not talked to them, so I do not know what their position on this is at all. Nor have I spoken to the folks here, CAP, Resolution Partners, LLC, so I do not know what their position is in terms of using local, although it does sound like they're interested in local oil. Like you, Mr. Martinez, I'm hugely concerned about GRECA being a part of this and we've gone through the GRECA years and it was awful on many, many levels. I was a little confused with the initial presentation that said CAP. Well, it went from GRECA to CAP and then CAP to currently the Santa Maria Asphalt Refinery. So I was a little concerned that CAP may still have something to do with GRECA. or Cat Canyon or whatever name but very very specifically if Mr. Randy has anything to do with this I ask you to not approve this and I also know he's a very clever businessman and so if it's an umbrella over an umbrella over an umbrella entity again please do your homework and make sure this gentleman has absolutely nothing to do with it If he does not have anything to do with it, I, in general, fully support the opening of the asphalt refinery. I do personally believe it's the best use of our locally produced oil, especially due to the thickness of the oil produced in the Zaka oil field. And again, this is where our conflict with environmental concerns can be remedied. remedied in the use of our oil as asphalt and not as combustible oil for gas-driven cars or whatever, and for all the other reasons that Mr. Moore and Mr. Park said today. So yeah, I think it's a great opportunity for us in general, as long as Mr. Randeep Gurrel has nothing to do with it. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speaker will be Roy Reed.

A great opportunity. Hello.

Hello. Can you hear me?

Mr. Reed, yes. If you have the hearing running in the background, you might want to just hit mute before you start.

Okay. How is that? The reason I'm responding to this, you know, this has been for many years an important part of the local economy until it ultimately folded. It has a number of benefits. Obviously, it provides a marketplace for local oil producers, and the secondary benefit of that has also been covered. It actually reduces vehicle miles traveled for trucks that now necessarily have to go over 166 as far as Bakersfield. And we have consistently heard concern from the environmental community over truck transportation. over 166 with, in their view, the attendant hazards of accidents, stream pollution, etc. This plant, when in operation, would substantially eliminate that over-the-road transport, thereby eliminating that element of greenhouse gas. And it will, again, reiterate Commissioner Park's comments by allowing local oil to be converted to asphalt, you are effectively sequestering those hydrocarbons permanently. And by eliminating the possibility that they will enter the atmosphere if they were used as motor fuel. So I think this has significant advantages for the local community, the local community, the local economy, and local producers, and also meets to reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere. So I think it's a very attractive proposal. One final concern, however, I think people need to focus on the fact that this is, the item today, is a transfer of ownership. It is essentially an administrative procedure. It is not an operating permit. I know there's been mention of the ultimate goal of beginning to operate that plant in September or beyond that. But I would ask the commissioners to please keep in mind that that is a separate process and those approvals will be addressed separately. I would just ask that you all focus on the matter that lies before you today, which is mainly administrative and ownership transfer issues. that will ultimately pave the way for other things. But please focus on what lies before you, and hopefully you will be confident and able to make what I think is the reasonable and correct judgment and approve this. So thank you very much.

Thank you.

So seeing no additional questions, People rise from the audience.

Mr. Reid was our last speaker on that item. Okay, then we will go ahead and close the public comment session and we will move on to the rebuttals.

Thank you, Chair, Commissioners. So, in essence, what you have before you is, in my estimation, a no-brainer. You have a current owner, operator, and guarantor on these county permits that has an abhorrent record, which resulted in the plant accruing several violations after significant deferred maintenance and neglect, and the entity is now bankrupt. Now you have a viable, well-financed, capable, experienced owner who has already invested significantly, collaborated effectively with all the regulators to bring this facility back to life. This is quite obviously a superior owner, operator and guarantor and I can guarantee to you, thank you for your comments, they have nothing to do with the prior owner um randeep or greca that's not a part of this applicant so uh finally and maybe perversely if you don't adopt the staff recommendation and approve this you're actually keeping that prior owner operator guarantor on the county permits so thank you so much for the really uh I would say elevated discussion today and all the questions and we appreciate your time and we're here if you have any other questions. So, thank you.

Thank you.

So, you can always, you can ask staff if they have anything to add.

Okay, I would like to ask staff if you have anything else to add.

NOTHING TO ADD BUT HAPPY TO NOTHING TO ADD BUT HAPPY TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS.

ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS. I DON'T SEE ANY QUESTIONS. I DON'T SEE ANY QUESTIONS. ANY FURTHER QUESTIONS? ANY FURTHER QUESTIONS?

OKAY. OKAY. AT THIS POINT I THINK THE AT THIS POINT I THINK THE COMMISSION SHOULD BEGIN COMMISSION SHOULD BEGIN DELIBERATIONS. DELIBERATIONS. OKAY. OKAY. LET'S BEGIN DELIBERATIONS.

LET'S BEGIN DELIBERATIONS. COMMISSIONER MAYOR CONNOR. COMMISSIONER MAYOR CONNOR.

THANK YOU. This is a both straightforward and I think easy decision for us for the reasons explained by both staff and the applicant. The status quo with a facility that was both broken and abandoned is simply not acceptable and shouldn't be acceptable. The ability to bring it back and make it both physically and economically productive seems to me to be one that we should be encouraging. The idea that the trips by truck to take locally produced oil and move it over to Bakersfield, which can then be avoided, is a good reason to say yes. The trips by truck to bring completed asphalt here for road construction and other purposes which can be avoided is a reason to say yes. Using locally produced oil for this purpose to sequester the potential emissions from that oil rather than convert it into gasoline or other fuel to be used and producing more GHGs is a reason to say yes. And looking at the entire record in the presentation of both the applicant and the staff convinces me that there is no reason at all to say no. And so I will be supporting the staff recommendation. Thank you. Thank you.

Commissioner Park.

you know usually i want to hear first from the uh planning commissioner whose district a project lies that's always tricky if you're the chair because you don't know where you want to go last or first because it's your district and i would certainly defer to you if you want to speak to your attitude about the project but i think i already know what your attitude is because i spent a lot of hours with you on this and i think it's a very positive one so i'm i'm ready to speak to what i have to speak with uh but if you want to go before i do that's fine too no please go ahead commissioner park okay um you know every once in a while we get a project that strikes me as incredibly important, and it's because of the unique role that the project plays in our local economy. And an example of that, was it last year or was it this year, was Plantel, which has nothing to do with oil, but Plantel's the only provider of the small vegetable plantings that every vegetable grower uses. So you have to have Plantel or it really changes the county. And we've had other things like that. This is like that. is an incredibly important project. I'm going to give four simple reasons why. They basically echo Commissioner Mary Connors. It's a supply for local asphalt. We use asphalt. We'll always use asphalt. We have to import it now from all over the place. And I think some of it comes from Colorado and Arizona. I mean, it's incredible that we're bringing asphalt in when we have stuff that when you take it out of the ground basically is asphalt. And it's right here. So it's a supply for that local asphalt. We need it. we absolutely need it and by we i mean our road departments our municipal agencies others we just all need it it absorbs the local oil that's my second point i i think our local oil i'm not talking about the offshore stuff is around 10 000 barrels and uh and this uses it and it's a perfect match uh and commissioner of mara connor pointed out that means we're not trucking in asphalt and we're not trucking out uh uh local oil so it's talk about a win-win the location is is really important as well we had an oil project last year that had some issues on the trucking routes uh and and and one thing it was going to do was run uh the trucks all the way up broadway essentially make a right turn on bed arabia and get on 101 and go to coalinga you know i'm not picking on that because i think that could be resuscitated in it now that we have this because Now that same project would go up one aways and then veer off to the left and take local roads that are appropriate for this right to that refinery. And it just solves so many problems that way. And I could go through every oil production site and point to the same thing. So it's a perfect location. And something that's very important to me, and I'm glad that Mary Hayden's here and commented, is... this will be a benign customer for oil from our local oil field owners like the chamberlain ranch and others that that are committed to staying in ag in agriculture when they stay in agriculture what do they do for the rest of us they provide the external benefit of fabulous view sheds watersheds probably most important these days is properties like the chamberlain ranch and others are tremendous carbon sinks they probably do more to combat Climate change and anything we deliberately try to do in this county and so we have to help these owners out and You know by the time they write their insurance premium check and their property taxes It's kind of hard to make any money in agriculture especially in ranching so I Their own production is really important to them. It's important to the county to keep it that way. And so here we have a benign customer for that. Why do I say benign? I've said it twice now because it's like Commissioner Mary Connor pointed out. That oil will be sequestered in roads instead of burned as gasoline. And that's couldn't be any more benign in that industry. I've got to say one thing here that kind of excites me is It's the courage of the applicant, because I spent 50 years representing businesses and other things in litigation. And to see somebody who goes and deals with an entity and an individual with the reputation that their predecessors had, I'm trying to be diplomatic, and deals with them in bankruptcy and buying their debt. I don't know how you go to your investors and say, hey, would you like to give me several million dollars so I can deal with the person of this reputation? Acquire their assets and restart something that's going to take us $20 million of additional investment to do. Will you hand over your money? I mean, but you did it and you're doing it. I really admire that. And I always try to take my personal admiration or excitement and turn it into something relevant to say. And that is that, you know, in the period in this era of uncertainty we have about what's going to happen to local oil production for someone to do this and step in and create such a beneficial use for the county is really, it's really something special and I appreciate it. I think we all appreciate it. I think that something that we should consider and I hope staff is listening to me on this is that when we get into the issue of phase out of production, which is gonna take a lot of time in the next few years, just discussing it, that we look at the idea of allowing a much longer period of amortization or even exemption for asphalt facilities like this as compared to other oil production, because they're gonna absorb our local inland production, or most of it, and I think they should have longer time to do all the good things they're doing just an idea obviously i support this and i appreciate everybody's diplomatic uh treatment of mr gruel and uh and greg i'm kind of surprised everybody could do that today thank you thank you commissioner park commissioner ford

Thanks so much. I agree with my colleagues, so I won't belabor any point. Just understand that I think the report has been comprehensive and the assurances regarding compliance and regulation give me nothing but optimism and confidence. So I, too, support this change of owner.

Thank you, Commissioner Ford. Commissioner Martinez.

I would completely agree with my fellow commissioners in their comments. This is a viable project, turning something that is defunct into something that will actually help the local community. I appreciate the responses that I received regarding the insurance. I hope people realize that having insurance is much better than having a blanket bond, which goes to every single thing that's out there that could be claimed against it. That's where my questions were focused on those things. And I will make a statement that I know people who own property around these things and they've had no objection. And basically we have a situation where this production facility would be in harmony with what is surrounding it and I would be in full support of it. Thank you Commissioner Martinez.

Okay, I have a few comments and the first one I'd like to bring is I want to start off with the report that was prepared by Santa Barbara County Planning and Development. Lots of pages, lots of information. No, but let me tell you, I so much appreciate the information because by the time I was done reading the report, I didn't have any other questions. So I want to compliment the staff. You did an amazing job. So prior to coming in here, I had the information. I had most of my questions answered and I really appreciate that. So thank you. Next item is locally produced asphalt, locally consumed asphalt. The key to me is keeping things local. I really appreciate the efforts that we put forth in order to keep revenues local, in order to keep taxes local, in order to keep the jobs local. And I did get to ask the team when we were out there about the local employment. I really appreciate that. So I ask you all to continue to keep things local. the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The other commissioner spoke about that. I appreciate the fact that Commissioner Park brought that subject up when we did the site tour. I had not been thinking about the comparison, and thank you, Commissioner Park, for helping to get me aligned and understanding that portion of it. the cost of the material should go down. So I'm thinking how this is going to save our local cities, our county and even the state with all the work that we've got going on here with you producing the asphalt here locally, the cost should go down. I sure hope that we get to see a reduction in cost across the board, especially in Santa Barbara County. So thank you. So at this point I believe we open it up for

no further discussion so would anybody care to make the motion there and there is oh sorry sorry i forgot an item and i i i do want to uh emphasize it you heard from the applicant about their replacement of the boilers okay and that may not sound like a big deal it is a big deal at las flores canyon the biggest uh emitter of ghgs is are the old boilers okay these boilers create steam steam is used to run facilities steam is used for cyclic steam injections used for a lot of things in oil modern oil fields at cat canyon that was going to be the the emitter the greatest emitter there even more than the trucking by far was the old boilers so to go in and replace them all and get those 80 reductions they deserve attention for that and and that again goes to why i think that it doesn't just impress me personally it shows that this is somebody who is is going to operate well and is trying to do things that are good for them and good for the rest of us thank you commissioner park commissioner martinez any further comments before we go no i was just going to venture into making the motion okay and um

I would make the motion of accepting the staff recommendations to make the required findings. Attachment A, I know it's in our stuff, but it's not up there. But I guess that's Attachment A. To determine the request or not a project pursuant to CEQA, which is Attachment C. And three, approve the change of owner, operator, and guarantor on the Santa Maria Asphalt Refinery Development Plan, permit number 95-DP-001. and adopt conditions of approval for the attachment beam. That would be my motion.

Is there a second to the motion? Second. Okay. All in favor? Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Do we need to do a roll call vote or just... Sorry.

So the only time we're going to be required to do roll call vote is if we have like a split commission, someone's remote perhaps. Okay. But it's at the commission's discretion. Sometimes the chair does like to do roll call vote if there's a split.

Okay. There's no split. So the motion passes 5-0. adjourned okay is there any reason why the meeting should not be adjourned no okay so meeting adjourned there you go