Goletans Are Asked to Go Their Own Way or Join Santa Barbara

For all the fireworks that dazzle this seaside valley this holiday weekend, to many Goleta residents Independence Day has slipped away.

A bid by neighboring Santa Barbara to swallow up the Goleta Valley and its 80,000 residents is rattling people here and could derail Goleta’s own bid for cityhood.

The proposed annexation, which would double Santa Barbara’s size and population, is the largest in recent California history.

Goleta residents in favor of annexation agree with Santa Barbara leaders that in the face of rapid growth and a shifting political landscape, southern Santa Barbara County needs a unified front to preserve its slow pace.

But local activists who have long fought for cityhood call the plan by the Santa Barbara City Council nothing short of a land-grab.

“Why do they suddenly want us? Because we generate more funds than it costs to provide our services,” said Jonny Wallis, a leader of Goleta Now!, a grass-roots group whose carefully crafted cityhood plan is now stalled. “Goleta makes money.”

The Goleta Valley, a slender shelf of fertile land wedged between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, has always sparked a thousand fantasies.

Homeowners shut out by Santa Barbara’s high prices and developers hamstrung by its tight planning controls looked north to this unincorporated community. They found meadows, orchards and an unspoiled coast. They also found freedom to build.

Under county control, growth has been quick and, some say, chaotic. Luxury developments sprang up among the lemon groves. Industrial parks bumped up against business districts. Giant chain stores, economic engines of the post-Proposition 13 era, got a grudging welcome.

Local government is the only way to control growth, cityhood and annexation forces agree. But how? Historically, Santa Barbara has shrugged off entreaties to annex Goleta, and Goleta residents themselves refused cityhood three times in the last 12 years.

Just 24 hours before the latest Goleta cityhood plan was to hit the bureaucratic fast track in February, Santa Barbara filed a last-minute request to annex the entire region. Some Goleta residents who had repeatedly requested annexation since the mid-1970s wonder what took so long.

“Seems like forever,” said Peggy Hamister, a Goleta resident since 1964. She serves as co-chairwoman of the Committee for One, a pro-annexation group. “The 1970s, that was the ideal time for the city to annex Goleta, right when the growth began, but it didn’t,” she said. “No imaginative thinking.”

They’re thinking imaginatively now.

In recent weeks Santa Barbara officials have built a Web site (www.ci.santa-barbara.ca.us/annexation), drawn maps and launched a campaign to woo residents on both sides of the border.

Some Goleta residents rebuffed by Santa Barbara in the past are thrilled with the plan, which they hope will extend Santa Barbara’s slow-growth policies and meticulous planning to the Goleta Valley.

But activists in favor of an independent Goleta see Santa Barbara’s eleventh-hour move as arrogance and avarice.

“Many Goleta residents have asked the city to do this [annexation] for many years and they consistently received a deaf ear,” said Wallis, of Goleta Now! “When our cityhood proposal started to look successful, suddenly Santa Barbara was interested.”

The recent Goleta proposal, which includes only areas that voted to incorporate in the past, would create a rambling city of about 30,000 in the western end of the Goleta Valley. But residents of eastern Goleta became alarmed at the prospect of being left under county control.

The northern Santa Barbara County cities of Santa Maria, Orcutt and Lompoc are booming. When the 2000 Census figures are released in about a year, analysts expect county supervisorial districts will be redrawn to shift the balance of power decidedly to the north.

“We are concerned that the size of the proposed city of Goleta, which will represent only 30,000 of the 80,000 people in the valley, isn’t large enough to give us the protections we need,” said Harriett Phillips, co-chairwoman of the Committee for One.

Santa Barbara officials agree. They have set aside $500,000 to fund the annexation and given the effort top priority among city staffers. By unifying the area under a single city’s control, officials believe, issues such as water use, air quality, transportation and land use would get uniform treatment.

“We’re also concerned about competition between cities, like you see in Oxnard and Ventura, or Lancaster and Palmdale,” said Paul Casey, project manager for Santa Barbara’s annexation effort. “There, you see them try to out-sales tax each other and wind up with a lot of growth.”

Still, Santa Barbara’s bid to adopt Goleta faces significant obstacles.

Santa Barbara is several steps behind Goleta Now!, which succeeded last year in getting 25% of registered voters in the area to sign petitions in favor of cityhood. The group has proposed city boundaries, outlined how the new city would support itself and held informative meetings, all required by the Local Agency Formation Commission, which oversees new city formation.

Santa Barbara must perform the same outreach and create maps. And it is required to reach an agreement with Santa Barbara County about how it would relieve the financial burden the county would sustain through the loss of income the Goleta Valley provides.

“The property tax exchange is at the heart of it,” said Bob Braitman, an executive officer of LAFCO. “Right now, 48% of the county’s population lives outside of city boundaries; if Goleta is annexed, it will reduce that population to less than 25%, which is a significant loss to the county.”

Santa Barbara has 60 days to negotiate a tax agreement with the county, Braitman said. Add in several options to extend the deadline, and the city’s bargaining time grows to about five months. When the city’s application is complete, LAFCO will assess the merits of each proposal and decide which will go forward.

In the end, however, after the maps are drawn, the studies parsed and LAFCO’s decision handed down, the voters will decide. If it’s annexation, both Santa Barbara and Goleta must agree with a simple majority vote. If it’s a city of Goleta, registered voters in the proposed city will say yea or nay.

And if neither proposal wins, it’s back to the way things have been for decades.

“There has always been a love-hate relationship between those two cities, and between Goleta and the county,” said Bill Fulton, publisher of California Planning and Development Report, a newsletter about municipal growth issues. “People who live in the city don’t want Goletans to think of themselves as Santa Barbara, and Goletans don’t trust the city. But the balance of power is moving north, and both sides see that. They have to do something, or they both lose.”