Many Priorities, One Team — US!

Last week, we helped three Santa Barbara City Councilmembers host a very important community conversation on the California Housing Legislation with our state legislators Senator Monique Limón and Assemblymember Steve Bennett. You know we’ve been working on this closely with our former State Senator, Hannah-Beth Jackson. You can watch the Town Hall at our website: montecitoassociation.org.

It’s a very packed 60 minutes, with more than 100 attendees skilled in land use, housing policy and advocacy, planning commissioners, councilmembers from Goleta, and of course – Montecitans! The bills are being voted on in the Senate this week, and then head to the Assembly, where we hope to get amendments that help protect Montecito. 

Here are a couple of key screen shots from the Townhall: 

You’re encouraged to communicate with our state legislators on these bills!

For Limón, access this portal to flag your comments and raise them to the top: https://sd19.senate.ca.gov/contact.

For Bennett, please use this portal: https://a37.asmdc.org/contact.

If I could sum up succinctly the big concern we have with the bills, Senate Bills 9 and 10, that allow lot splits and multiple units to be constructed with no hearings or approvals, this would be it:

Why do Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Jack Dorsey of Twitter get to dictate what kind of neighborhoods we will have in Montecito? That’s who is calling the shots and pushing these bills. They need tons of housing for their tech workers in the Bay Area. Rather than spend hundreds of millions to build it or figure out how to work remotely like we all just did in the pandemic, they spent $3 million to get the legislature to override land use policies in every locality to get more housing built. The other factor in play is the recall effort on Governor Gavin Newsom, and his campaign pledge to get 3.5 million units of housing built in California. 

We’re going to talk about the housing bills at Land Use/Transportation Committee next week, and we’ll also get a whirlwind tour of construction efforts now about to happen for the 101 widening, thanks to the $50 million infusion into the Montecito segment. Please join us! 

Upcoming Montecito Association Events:

101 Tour at Land Use/Transportation Committee

June 1, 4 pm
Join Zoom Meeting: https://bit.ly/2RPaA1E
Meeting ID: 893 1621 5572
Passcode: 870962

Hands Across Montecito Homeless Outreach Team meeting

June 2, 9:30 am
Join Zoom Meeting: https://bit.ly/2SpkBCM
Meeting ID: 853 6769 7752
Passcode: 537735

Bear Town Hall with California Fish and Wildlife

June 2, 5:30 pm
To register to attend, please use this link: https://bit.ly/3bQNpuY

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.