Montecito Community Trails Partnership Recognized

The California State Association of Counties (CSAC) has awarded the Montecito Community Trails Partnership – a partnership between the County of Santa Barbara Public Works Department and the nonprofit Bucket Brigade – with a 2022 Challenge Award in the Suburban Disaster and Emergency Response category. CSAC’s Annual Challenge Awards recognize the innovative and creative spirit of California counties as they find new, effective, and cost-saving ways to provide programs and services to their citizens. The award program is an opportunity to spotlight best practices while recognizing staff for developing innovations in County government.

This year, CSAC received 370 entries, with just 18 selected to receive an award. The award recognizes the collaboration between Public Works and the Bucket Brigade to develop and build over 2.2 miles of pedestrian paths along high-volume travel routes throughout Montecito. The project, which was borne out of necessity following the 1/9 Debris Flow in 2018, was completed in less than two years, costing approximately 1/5 the cost of similar public works projects. The community support for the projects, including most adjacent owners and associations, was overwhelming, according to Public Works staff, who applied for the award. 

With limited staffing and funding following the disaster, opportunity to build improvements such as installing a new network of community pedestrian paths, was difficult, but the community lacked safe, ADA-compliant paths on almost every road in our semi-rural area. The Bucket Brigade provided volunteers from the community to do the outreach and construction of some features, and they also fundraised to provide these services, requiring no County funding for their work. When opposition arose, it was not the County explaining why the project was needed and beneficial; it was members of their community via the Bucket Brigade. The County provided the technical expertise for the projects, and funded the hard infrastructure including asphalt work, ADA ramps, and drainage work. The Bucket Brigade did the rest, and they fundraised for future path maintenance work.

Over 2.2 miles of pedestrian paths and trails have been built, and the Bucket Brigade is in the process of fundraising for an 8.5-mile trail network for $2.5 million. This partnership reduced the average design and construction cost by 60-80 percent. The Montecito Neighborhood Trail Network includes ADA-friendly decomposed granite pathways along main thoroughfares, informal compacted shale trails along side roads, and nature trails through open spaces and parks.

The Bucket Brigade started as a grassroots response to the debris flow, and has grown into an organization that organizes, trains, and deploys community members to work on disaster preparedness projects. The County and the Bucket Brigade are currently working on similar models in two other locations, including in the Santa Ynez Valley. By working together and developing a long-term plan, the Santa Barbara County Public Works Department and the Bucket Brigade leverage each other’s strengths to improve public safety in Montecito. 

The hope is that this new recognition from a statewide entity will bring awareness to the potential opportunities possible when there is a partnership between local government and nonprofit organizations. To learn more about more walking paths in Montecito, visit https://sbbucketbrigade.org/walk-montecito.