City of Goleta Wants Share of Fees Paid By Oil Companies to County
Excerpt from "County Parks to Benefit from Oil Drilling", Santa Barbara Newsroom:At least one supervisor criticized a request from the city of Goleta. The city is asking the county to pitch in $350,000 to purchase an acre of land northeast of the Ellwood Mesa area, known as the Doty Property, mostly for the purpose of creating hiking trails.
“I can’t possibly support (it),” said Fourth District Supervisor Joni Gray, who represents Orcutt and the Lompoc Valley. “To pay $350,000 for a little bitty property that’s not even close to the ocean – if it’s that important to the city of Goleta, do a fund-raiser.”
3 comments:
Once again, Goleta has been let down by Supervisor Firestone, who is the Supervisor for Goleta starting at Fairview and all the way to the western Goleta boundary.
Even though the city of Goleta has a lot of control over its destiny, it is still subject to much control from the County of Santa Barbara.
They county provides most of Goleta's social services including courts, public health, etc.
The county controls land use policy all around Goleta, not just west of the urban limit line. North of Cathedral Oaks and areas such as the Patterson Ag block, these areas are not in the city so land use policies are determined by the county.
And as this story shows, in doling out fees from oil companies, even though Goleta is probably impacted the most from the off-shore drilling, it doesn't get a fair share.
When has Firestone held even one public meeting in Goleta? He is an absentee supervisor and we are not represented in important county decisions.
Here's an excerpt from the Daily Sound Blog regarding this...
“Protecting habitat is a little bit of a stretch on one acre,” Firestone said.
For what its worth...
As always, we welcome any comment from the Firestone camp.
Firestone's referring to the Doty parcel at Ellwood "protecting habitat is a little bit of a stretch on one acre" shows that he does not ubderstand the importance of this parel. It is in fact the funnel through which trails from the densly populated Ellwood Beach and Mathilda Drive areas, the Phelps Road, Cannon Green neighborhoods and the soon to be built University housing must go to get to the beach. It may be a small piece of habitat, but it is a vital coastal access link for thousands of local residents.
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