Clarification on Recusal from MPC Hearing

I’d like to clarify a couple of points regarding my recusal from last Friday’s MPC hearing.

I did give an ex parte declaration at the beginning of the meeting as is required. I gave some specific names and also at the end said that I had also spoken with a great many neighbors, especially some from the Hedgerow area. Neither Lisa Plowman nor anyone from Caruso’s phalanx of attorneys spoke up and asked me to be more specific or even to provide a list of names to be added to the record before the meeting concluded. This is the same inaction I experienced after sending an email with a question of my own along with an attachment from Philip Dracht with many pages of his questions. I sent that email with my question and Mr. Dracht’s (as I have been doing, and was instructed to do since my first commission meeting in 2023) to the planner assigned to the project, Willow Brown. The ONLY response I was given by Ms. Brown was a return email which said “Received.” There was no phone call, text or email asking me if the attachment was a group of my own questions or if they were from someone else. If I had been asked I would have gladly said that they were from Philip Dracht, a neighbor of the Miramar.

I would have identified Mr. Dracht as a neighbor because that is how he introduced himself to me. He had previously sent a highly informative, detailed report on the current parking and traffic situation at the Miramar. I thought he was a traffic engineer from the report he sent in. But he never gave any indication on paper or in conversation, as to any relationship he had with All Saints. I have asked him now, after the meeting, to confirm, and he states unequivocally that he has no formal role as an attorney or anything else at All Saints, other than as a Parishioner.

I think it speaks volumes about how desperately no one wants to answer Mr. Dracht’s questions or my own, to have them characterized – as they were by LISA PLOWMAN in your recent article  – as “EVIDENCE.”

I understand now, after reading your article and having that paragraph from the MPC Commissioner Manual quoted, why – in a behind the scenes meeting I was asked to attend before we reconvened – I was told that I hadn’t followed the proper procedure when emailing those questions to the staff. Somehow, Lisa and her staff have confused Questions with Evidence! 

All of this finger pointing and accusation regarding my honesty and integrity are based on a set of QUESTIONS I sent to the County. I did not send anything to Caruso or his team. I followed procedure and sent my email to the County staff person assigned to the project. What that person and other staff members and Lisa Plowman directed her to do with the questions was up to them. One thing I can tell you for sure is that no one at County or Caruso has bothered to answer a single one of those questions. 

The “controversy” surrounding the submitted questions seems to have handily produced a convenient distraction from the strange unwillingness to answer any and all questions from myself or many community members. Questions such as Why the rush to push this project through without thorough vetting? Why has a Comprehensive Study – of the impact of higher density of projects such as this and the Music Academy – not been required by the County? Why is the County unable to produce any emergency/evacuation plan which looks at these enlarged projects in the context of how county agencies will handle an emergency?

The Biltmore, the Coral Casino and the Miramar rely primarily on Valet parking. How does it look in an emergency when potentially several hundred people are constrained between the 101 and the ocean – and the majority of them don’t know where their cars are or where they are parked? In the event of a true emergency, what is the plan for managing a couple hundred confused resident and non-resident pedestrians and bicyclists? How could emergency vehicles access these sites, which are just two lane roads with cars parked on the sides, not major thoroughfares? How can a traffic study for the Miramar project’s impact on our surface streets not be done to include all of San Ysidro from East Valley to the ocean? How could the plan not include the actual peak hours of 7-9 a.m and 2:30-4:30 pm, when the five schools – either on San Ysidro or accessed off of it – have drop off and pick up? The current report actually states that there will be negligible impact on our local traffic by a project adding 34 housing units and 17,500 square feet of retail. The application is full of exemptions, waivers, etc. which are still unexplained. Because I couldn’t ask my questions… I was forced to recuse myself so as not to look impartial. There is a big difference between bias and the intent to do my job and understand just what this project really entails.

I am not opposed to Caruso enhancing what is currently in place at his hotel. I am not in any way opposed to Affordable Housing – although I would love to have seen it offered to our local First Responders, Sheriffs, teachers, etc. rather that some out-of-town employees, but that’s just my wish.

To conclude, I was appointed as a Montecito Planning Commissioner. My job is to ask questions and to do a deep dive into the information we are given to review. I am there to represent the well-being of the residents and retailers in Montecito. I am there to look out for your safety and, in the case of local traffic in the past few years, our collective sanity.

I did nothing wrong and had no bad intentions. I am simply trying to hold the County accountable to do some PLANNING before approving a project which will impact my great-grandchildren without proper analysis. 

I would like to add that the tempest in a teapot about my questions apparently so deeply threatened the County and Caruso, that there was a Press Release type statement sent by Caruso via email the night after the meeting. The communication  questioned my integrity and accused me, basically, of collusion. Why are questions about this project such a threat? Why does Bob Hazard go on to further vilify me for asking questions? Whether those questions came from me, or Mr. Dracht, or anyone else, they were only questions. Asking them is part of my job description and my due diligence. No one had to go Hi Tech and use some App to discover their origin. I only had to be asked.

Caruso’s press release was handed out the following Saturday at the Montecito Union Carnival. I have lived and worked and participated in this community for over 40 years. My office is within several hundred yards of the Carnival location. The potential to impact my business, which relies heavily on my reputation as being honest and diligent and acting with full Integrity, has already eroded some people’s faith in who I am.

Is my asking questions really that frightening to them? Maybe I should go without a costume, just as myself, to Ghost Village Road and be the scariest one on the street.