Ebb and Flow on the Central Coast

What happens when the “Barbecue Capital of the World” dethrones the self-proclaimed American Riviera?

It depends, of course, on which city you’re in. Here in the town that boasts that it made tri-tip famous, there were flashes of glee at the news that working-class Santa Maria had unseated glossy Santa Barbara as the most populous city in Santa Barbara County for the first time.

“We are on the way up,” laughed Santa Maria Mayor Larry Lavagnino. “They have leveled off and are heading down.”

They, of course, were not impressed.

“It’s finally happened,” sniffed a Santa Barbara News-Press editorial. “But what does it matter beyond bragging rights?”

By itself, the fact that Santa Maria was home to 656 more people as of Jan. 1 than its graceful, famous neighbor to the south doesn’t really mean much. But the state Department of Finance’s late spring announcement is one more harbinger of change here on the Central Coast and throughout California -- where population continues its determined march inland and fast-growing regions hope influence follows.

As the longtime underdog in this geographic rivalry and the unofficial capital of the north county, Santa Maria, at least, is betting that population will breed power and that the burgeoning north’s interests will someday trump those of the shrinking, slow-growth south.

Because a lot is at stake here in Santa Barbara County. Developers have their eyes on the pristine Gaviota Coast, from Isla Vista to Vandenberg Air Force Base. The north county’s oil reserves are increasingly attractive in this $70-a-barrel era. The county Board of Supervisors has a conservative, pro-industry majority for the first time in nearly a decade, but growth is actually making the political picture more complicated than ever.

“At the end of the day, who’s moving north?” asked political consultant John Davies. “Some of the same people who would be voting in the south” but can’t afford to live there anymore.

These days, a state’s worth of struggles are playing out across this county. There’s inland versus coast and north versus south, rural versus urban, and poor versus rich. There’s young versus old, development versus slow growth, Republican versus Democrat. There’s property rights versus environment, affordability versus million-dollar tract houses, pickup trucks versus BMWs.

Over the last five years -- and for the foreseeable future -- job growth in the north county has trumped the south, according to the UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project, which also noted that Santa Maria’s population jumped 3.6% last year, while Santa Barbara’s dropped 0.4 %. It should come as no surprise that both trends are fueled, at least in part, by housing. The median home price in Santa Maria was $455,000 in July; in Santa Barbara, it was $1.05 million.

Santa Maria is “an economically vigorous place,” said Bill Watkins, forecast director. “In some sense, the center of the county is migrating to the north.... [But] I’m not sure the south always knows there’s a north county.”

Or as Santa Barbara resident Angelina Favia, 25, replied when asked what she thinks about Santa Maria: “I don’t really think about Santa Maria.”

And therein lies the rub. The north county has forever felt like a stepchild to “sophisticated” Santa Barbara and the south coast, said housing activist Bud Laurent. Santa Maria has had “housing policies that said grow, grow, grow. It’s tempting to interpret that as a strategy for gaining more power in county politics.”

If there is a single statistic that symbolizes the yawning distance between Santa Barbara (population 89,548) and Santa Maria (population 90,204), it would be housing permits rather than miles.

The two cities are separated by just 75 miles of scenic U.S. 101, which hugs the coast en route north before veering sharply inland. But from 2000 to 2005, Santa Barbara issued permits for 723 new housing units, while Santa Maria granted 4,258.

Santa Maria got its start as Grangerville, an appropriate nod to an agriculture industry that is still the city’s economic backbone. The main streets are disarmingly wide, built broad enough for a six-horse grain wagon to swing a comfortable U-turn.

New homes sprout here as fast as the row crops. But Santa Maria has a better track record attracting new residents than it does recruiting places for them to work. An estimated 10,000 commuters hit the 101 south every day, heading to jobs in Santa Barbara, said UC Santa Barbara’s Watkins; 40,000 others from the region drive north to San Luis Obispo County.

And Lavagnino acknowledges that his “can-do city” occasionally moves a little fast, like the time it knocked down nine square blocks to build a mall. “Turns out we got rid of the historic center of the town,” he said.

Still, he defends Santa Maria and its civic vision to the end against a pricey southern rival that “feels they’re above the fray. In Santa Maria, we know what’s important is the working guy. How do you get French fries at McDonalds if the service worker can’t afford to live there?”

If there’s one word -- other than expensive -- that would come rapidly to Santa Barbaran’s lips when discussing their beauty queen of a city it would probably be “built out.” Elected officials note that the city is pinched by mountains and the ocean and zoned for only 40,005 housing units, of which some 38,000 have been built.

The City Council has been grappling with the issue; its members realize that the middle class is pretty much gone and are trying to squeeze affordable in-fill units into the spaces between million-dollar-plus homes. But anti-housing activists are vocal, council members are attentive, and the freeway is clogged with commuters.

“We have a disproportionate number of jobs to our housing,” Santa Barbara Councilwoman Iya Falcone said delicately. “We have geographic limitations and a long history of a different viewpoint toward growth.”

Regional differences such as these have been strong enough that local residents have tried five times since the end of the Civil War to split Santa Barbara County in two. Measure H, which would have created Mission County north of the Santa Ynez Mountains, failed miserably in June.

Some view the measure’s loss as proof that the north’s power is already ascending. Why bother splitting in two, they wonder, if you’re just about to control it all anyway? Others say that the measure’s demise is evidence that the regions aren’t so polarized in the first place.

But the proposed split got on the ballot in the first place, some argue, because a Board of Supervisors dominated by the county’s coastal, southern region was forcing unpopular planning and development restrictions down northern throats.

In recent years, oaks have been protected against the incursion of vineyards. A grading ordinance, critics carped, made farmers pull permits well nigh every time they plowed. Development of new greenhouses was restricted. Adding insult to injury, most of the unincorporated land under the supervisors’ control is in the north, but only one of their four monthly board meetings was held in Santa Maria. That changed in 2005, after Republican Brooks Firestone replaced Democrat Gail Marshall in District 3, which straddles north and south, giving the board a more north-county bent. But by then, Measure H was already heading for the ballot.

“We were being manipulated and dictated to, and we weren’t worthy of their consideration,” is how Supervisor Joseph Centeno, who represents the Santa Maria area, described the impetus behind the proposed split. “Those are some of the feelings, and they’re very well entrenched.”

Now that the county’s population is moving north and the liberal voting bloc on the Board of Supervisors has been replaced with a generally more conservative vote, some fear that hard-fought environmental protections could be weakened.

Cameron Benson, executive director of the Environmental Defense Center, points to an offshore oil drilling project called Tranquillon Ridge as one example. The former board rejected the project three years ago, he said, but it is expected to come before the new board by 2007.

Since the board’s makeup changed, he said, there have been more requests for development permits along the Gaviota Coast than there had been in the previous 30 years because the current board is more “prodevelopment and less interested in environmental protection.”

That said, Benson and others acknowledge that the influx of new residents, while giving the north more clout, could make the agricultural and oil-producing region more politically akin to its southern neighbors.

“You get more city dwellers moving to the country,” said Santa Barbara Councilwoman Falcone, “and all of a sudden the country starts thinking differently.”

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A county divided

Comparing the cities

*--* Santa Barbara Santa Maria Population 2006 89,548 90,204 Median home price $1.05 million $455,000 Signature event Old Spanish Days Elks Rodeo and Parade Cuisine California chic Santa Maria BBQ Official slogan American Riviera California’s Sweet Spot Shopping district State Street The Crossroads (anchored by (anchored by Nordstrom) Wal-Mart) Higher education UC Santa Barbara Allan Hancock College Transportation German sports car American pickup truck Industry Tourism Agriculture Wine posture We drink it We make it

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Sources: California Department of Finance, DataQuick Information Systems, Times research. Graphics reporting by Maria L. LaGanga