Political season

Now that the holiday season is over, it’s time to launch into the political season full bore. Have you noticed the amount of time that we have been abused by news networks on what is happening in New Hampshire and Iowa on the presidential election? On a daily basis we are assaulted with endless discussions, excerpts and parsing of who said what on which topic. I mean, do we really care at this point?

 

I agree that one must watch carefully all of the candidates’ machinations as each in turn will metamorphose into someone you would not recognize from the beginning of their campaign. I find it amusing to see them trying to be all things to all people when you know perfectly well that they will say anything to get a vote. This is true of almost all politicians at every level of government; well, not all, but I believe that most succumb to the power that their candidacy promises to bring to the individual should he win. The power of the flip-flop is really all there is because, once in office, the wishes of those voters be damned.

 

I have seen this up close in Pasadena, where I worked as a field representative for four years for a City Director, the equivalent of our County Board of Supervisors or Solvang’s City Council. When my boss once accepted money from a developer who opposed his no-growth agenda, I questioned him about why he thought he could do that. His response was that he didn’t make any promises to the developer so he didn’t owe him anything. How naïve! He didn’t last very long.

Our own local political campaigns are already heating up with some people trashing other candidates when they don’t know anything about them. I would hope that these folks have the good sense to have facts to back up their statements, lest they be sued for slander. And perhaps it would be important here to mention that what is not good for the third district is another ‘representative’ whose own agenda has been bought and paid for by a small group of people with interests that are not the same as the whole district.

 

Community plan

One of the topics that will surely surface during the local campaign will be the SYV Community Plan. There are some clear divisions here in the valley between those who favored the General Plan Advisory Committee-county planning staff version of the Plan versus those who actually own the property that will theoretically be impacted by the Plan.

I was a part of the entire process, first in being a part of the audience that had comments on virtually every topic, although you would never know it because there were never any official minutes taken, including questions or comments from the community, and second as a member of the Valley PAC, although you wouldn’t know that either because for some reason my name was eliminated from the list of members and some other people’s names substituted who were not actually ever on the Committee. Makes you wonder doesn’t it?

 

We are lucky that an enterprising fellow videotaped a big majority of the meetings from gavel to gavel, so if you have questions about someone’s claim, you can very likely get the actual meeting videos.

There were a lot of issues that troubled me, but there were three things in particular that really made me mad. These were the proposed River Trail, the boundaries of the Community Plan and some of the proposed overlays. There were other issues I had with the Plan as well, but that would take a book to thoroughly examine. I kept muttering under my breath at these meetings, “This is still America, isn’t it?” because I was so horrified by the cavalier attitude of the first committee members toward property rights. According to them and county staff (most of whom have now left the county for other locations), property owners were to sit back and let someone else put their future design ideas on their property with no input from the owner.

 

Perhaps no one has explained to these people that paying taxes on the property gives one the right to make decisions about the use of that property, within reasonable guidelines. For example, on an agriculturally zoned property, it would not be appropriate to apply to build a 12-story hotel and one normally would not buy such a property to do that kind of project.

 The boundaries of the Community Plan are certainly a bone of contention because there are those who feel it should include the entire valley under the same plan; these are mostly people who don’t own any of the larger ranches in the outer areas. Then there are those who think the more developed areas, including the townships and developed neighborhoods like Meadowlark, should be separate from the expansive agricultural areas located further away, and that those properties should be linked with other, similar properties throughout the county. Those opposed to this view make public statements that can only be referred to as a ‘class warfare’ argument, saying that this idea will benefit only “a few large landowners who want to keep their options open for the future.” (Santa Ynez Valley Alliance 2007 op-ed)

 

The point being missed here is that those landowners, like everyone else, are paying property taxes based on that development potential. If that potential is no longer available, the County will have considerably reduced income to pay for the programs it provides.

 This argument is not about people not wanting to see another San Fernando Valley here, which I certainly don’t want either; but I do want what’s fair. If I am never allowed to develop any part of my property, then I don’t think it is fair to me or to my heirs that I pay the taxes on that possibility. In fact, it was through the community plan process that I discovered that county staff had erased the subdivision lines on two parcels which had existed since my grandmother bought the place in the ’20s. Unfortunately, they refused to put them back and they also neglected to notify the assessor’s office that I should be taxed at a lower rate. Is that fair?

 

The proposed River Trail was another disgusting attempt to steal private property, as that land in, on and under the Santa Ynez River is privately owned, has Assessor Parcel Numbers, and owners pay taxes on it. The staff and a few community members who had moved here from planned communities that included trails apparently did not understand that you cannot simply take people’s property for a public use without paying for it and usually going to court to decide how much. So staff devised a way to solve that little problem by a process called ‘exaction.’ When a property owner comes in for some permit and his or her property is on or in the river, the county will ‘exact’ that portion of the trail in exchange for giving permission for the permit. I kept saying, “Isn’t this America? We don’t do those sorts of things. They used to do this in Communist Russia!”

The third issue that really bent me the wrong way was the design review overlay that was proposed for those two parcels of my ranch which had been put in the Inner Rural designation like all of the more developed areas, splitting them off from the rest of the ranch. When I asked Brooks Firestone twice to remove the design review overlay from my cow pastures and put those two parcels back into the Outer Rural designation, like the rest of the ranch, he ‘forgot’ the first time it came up and he refused the next time.

 

Because I have no confidence that the local authorities, planners or citizens know better than I or my predecessors how to manage those two parcels, on  Thursday, December 27, 2007, a deed was recorded on those two parcels known as the Windmill Field and Armour Hill with a conservation easement in perpetuity with the California Rangeland Trust. This easement will guarantee that these two beautiful pieces of valley property will forever be in agriculture and out of the hands of politicians and misguided residents.

 

Ranch happenings

Life is never boring on a ranch. There is always something happening somewhere; sometimes good, sometimes bad. We had a little of both last week. First, I got a call that we had trespassers down by Lower Windmill Field near our bridge that crosses the river, a bridge that was given to us by CALTRANS when they built the new one a number of years ago. Instead of destroying the old bridge, they gave it to us, which is very helpful in getting cattle across the river bed, which is treacherous even when dry — which it is most of the time. A couple of ranch employees went down to see who these folks were and why they thought it was OK to trespass. It turns out that it was three Audubon Society members doing a winter bird count who left when they were told the sheriff had already been called to cite them.

 

Before the ranch employees left, however, an odd thing happened. Across Highway 154, at Lower Armour Ranch Road, two CALTRANS vehicles appeared with another unmarked sheriff’s car. Apparently a meeting had been called, and when I inquired of the one CALTRANS official who didn’t speed off upon seeing my car just what the meeting was about, since I was the property owner there, I was told that it had to do with fences and property lines. We had a cordial conversation, introducing ourselves and exchanging pertinent contact information, and we each went on about the rest of our day.

What I found out later that day rocked me to my very soul. Apparently, a lieutenant of the sheriff’s department in Solvang had called the meeting to ask CALTRANS to provide public access to the river through their easement. CALTRANS properly declined, stating that their easement was with a private property owner and that they could not make it public. This officer had also been in contact, from what I hear, with someone in the County Counsel’s office who opined that the river was public property, which it is not. None of these people had ever contacted me or any of my employees on this topic, and I am wondering what this secret effort to open my property to the public is all about.

 

I cannot for the life of me figure out why this would be happening, although it has been suggested that a possible reason could be the recent citations for Raul Armenta Jr. and two friends for hunter trespass and hunting after hours for ducks which could only be ‘nol-prossed’ – the charges dropped – if it occurred on public property. According to witnesses, the young men protested being cited and said they would talk to Sacramento to see if it was ‘legal’ to cite them. This could only be deemed public property if the county entered into a condemnation process on the entire Santa Ynez River properties, owned by hundreds of residents, and paid for it, which it can’t begin to afford; it would take many years in court to settle on prices with each owner.

So, be aware, fences keep animals in, but are also meant to keep the public out. You may ask for permission to enter private property from the owner or a representative, but you may not enter until after you have received permission. Otherwise, you risk being cited for trespass and you risk possible injury from objects or animals.