This past week we remembered those Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice; they gave their lives in order for us to be free

This past week we remembered those Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice; they gave their lives in order for us to be free to think and say what we want. It is this freedom that people around the world envy and, in many cases, risk their lives to obtain for themselves. It is the idea of this freedom that this country was founded on, that makes it different from all other countries. It is this freedom that I believe is in jeopardy at this moment.

 

Arbitrary Decisions

 

Every week we are faced with proposed new regulations, which eat away at our freedoms. Someone in Santa Barbara County has decided that no matter how big your family is or what your particular spatial requirements are, if you want to build a house on agricultural land, you are only allowed 3,000 square feet. That is not a very big house, especially if you have a number of children. If you have a hundred acre parcel, why is it anybody’s business what size house you live in? Of course, the argument is that there should be the least amount of impact to the agricultural land and the larger the house, the larger the impact, or is it? It really depends on what your agricultural commodity is.

  On the same 100 acres, if you are growing orchids or exotic flowers in a nearby greenhouse, the impact of a 3,000 versus 5,000 square foot house is negligible, especially if it is two stories. Raising horses or other animals, likewise would be housed somewhere other than in the footprint of your home. Cattle also would be located outside the perimeter of your yard. So why the arbitrary number of square feet?

  Questionable also is the regulation that if something should happen to your house such as an earthquake or fire, if you would want to replace or substantially repair your home, you would have to follow all of the new rules, determined by an assigned Planning Department staff person.

  The rules don’t even have to be official if a staff person decides it is what you should do. If your house was built before zoning was put in place in the 1950’s, there is a good chance that something will not conform to current rules. Such is the case of many of the older ranch homes in this county. Some of them were built near a creek or river which now is, in someone’s mind, no longer acceptable. Thus, if the unthinkable were to happen, you would have to move your home from its original location to someplace further away from the water source. For some reason, it has been determined to be more “environmentally” friendly to do so but what is the sense in disturbing an entirely new piece of ground when the original house has stood and “disturbed” that ground perhaps for decades? It is a good thing that Frank Lloyd Wright built his famous “Falling Waters” house, constructed dramatically directly over a rushing stream, in Illinois because he could have never built it here!

  Santa Barbara County’s housing debate continues to rage on with one group insisting that the State’s edict MUST be followed to the letter and another group firmly resisting. Although the so-called environmental community here has steadfastly pushed against any efforts to provide major housing developments, testifying in public hearings and appealing decisions, it is clear that this path has led us to an untenable position where employers have a difficult time finding employees who can afford to live here. Young adults raised here, often when looking for their first places to live, either move back in with reasoned parents or leave the area entirely because prices are too high for entry-level workers.

  There are many issues in the housing discussion. One of the most important ones is how do we provide the necessary infrastructure to support more housing? Can the roads handle many more cars? Do we have enough schools to educate the incoming children? Are the medical facilities adequate, and do we have the basic necessities such as useable water supplies and sanitation?

 

Hard Decisions and Who Makes Them

 

  It is clear that just talking about housing brings up a plethora of other issues and it is equally clear that some hard decisions will be facing us as residents. For example, with a drought upon us again, something we are not unfamiliar with, we should begin to focus on a strategy to deal with potential water shortages. Perhaps Santa Barbara and the region facing the Pacific Ocean should look to developing a desal plant to keep up with their ever increasing water needs.

  Questions need to be asked if we want to preserve people or other species first, if a situation of critical shortage should arise. How important is agriculture versus your front yard landscaping? Environmental activists have been suing government agencies all over the country trying to make species water needs paramount to humans, all those except those animals involved in agriculture, of course. And how do we continue to serve the ever-growing tourist and gambling industries? They will both continue to make demands on our shrinking resources.      To not make adequate plans to accommodate these visitors would be very short-sighted and have an overall negative impact on Valley residents.

  Perhaps one of the most important questions we can ask is where do we find the leadership to help us deal with these issues? Are our current leaders well-enough versed in these topics to offer relevant information to make the best decisions? Do we know that our leadership has our best interests in mind, or are they influenced by special interests who do not share our same goals?

 

Things Are Not Always What They Seem

 

  The phrase “appearances can be deceiving” is one that I have become very familiar with over the years. My grandmother was one of the first members of the Sierra Club when it was founded. She revoked her membership in the early sixties because somehow the agenda changed from one of benevolence raising money to benefit animals in peril to an extremely powerful activist organization determined to control land that they did not own across the United States. Suing Federal agencies to “list” plants, creatures and vast tracts of land as endangered”, designating millions of acres to be “critical habitat” for heretofore-unknown species has been the trademark of environmental organizations. Little by little, this scheme has filtered into our schools, universities and into our governmental regulations. Kids of ranching families have come home from school with writing assignments to describe why cows are bad for the land, much to the horror of their parents.

What is particularly disturbing about this trend is, first, that most people are not aware of how destructive many of these designations are to the land and the landowners, and second, how the majority of these designations are never “ground-truthed”, meaning that no one has actually ever seen whatever the particular thing is that is supposed to be “endangered” but it COULD exist there. In actual fact, recently day and nighttime surveys were done by qualified biologists looking for red-legged frogs in a part of the Santa Ynez Valley designated on maps as “critical habitat”. Because these frogs have been listed as an endangered species and their living area has been supposedly determined, any time a permit is applied for in that area, specific authorities must look to see if these frogs are in danger from whatever is being proposed. What a surprise it must have been to discover that there were NO frogs to be found; not one! Because there were four survey times, two during the day and two at night, it seems pretty clear that the frogs do not exist where they are supposed to. Why is that? Perhaps it is because many of the maps are drawn by people who live in Arizona (Center for Biological Diversity) who make their determinations of “critical habitat” based on aerial photos and never actually go to the locations to see if the species actually lives there. “Ground-truthing” is a reality check to determine whether or not some species exists where it is purported to exist.

Unfortunately, it is not something practiced by either government agencies or so-called environmental groups. It is all conjecture supported by nothing more than wishful thinking. There is no science involved and it has had some really awful repercussions on property owners, particularly those in agriculture all over the United States, including the Santa Ynez Valley. It should be mentioned that it is not just “environmental” organizations who are guilty of this faulty behavior. Vague government policy and overzealous government employees are equally to blame for these abuses. Maybe it is time to rethink this way of doing things.

 

Is It Too Late?

 

  Being aware of mankind’s impact on the environment is surely an important thing but it is equally important to measure it accurately. It is irresponsible to claim that our imprint is so substantial that the future of the planet is in jeopardy as some extremist views would have you believe. People in agriculture have always known that for them to succeed in producing quality food, fiber, and medicine, care must be taken to keep the land healthy. Apparently, extreme “environmental” views do not acknowledge this obvious fact. It is unfortunate that in this information age, more people are willing to accept misinformation as the truth mostly because they don’t have the time to verify the truth. I ask you to question the environmental assumptions we have made.

  We are systematically destroying the very lands we are so proud of because people who have grown up in cities are in charge of making the rules governing their maintenance. Governmental policy which is truly environmentally friendly does not follow popular trends, but rather acknowledges a problem, determines which solutions best reflect the needs and wants of a community and offers those alternatives which will produce the most useful results with the least negative impact to the land. As new technologies allow us to advance our solutions to higher goals, we need leaders who can recognize the value in public discussions with respect for all views not just the current fad.

 

Summer’s Here

 

  Now that it is officially summer time, it is a good time to look around us and determine our visions for the Valley’s future. There are plans afoot to expand Buellton four times its current size.

  Do we want to see that develop or would we prefer something else? Would we like it if some of the retail businesses we go to Santa Maria or Santa Barbara for were to relocate in Buellton or is that even what the planners there are thinking?

  Let’s get involved in our future. Let us know what your ideas are and how you would plan the future. Let’s have an open discussion from a positive standpoint rather than the behind-the-scene decisions we’ve had before. It’s our community- let’s plan it together.