For the past 18 months, members of the Santa Barbara planning commission have been wrestling with various schemes to encourage high-density affordable housing in mixed-use developments built along existing transit lines and within a quarter of a mile jobs. The underlying notion is simple: By creating homes close to work, people might be reasonably able to walk, bicycle, or take the bus to work — anything but drive their cars.

By Sam Womack/Staff Writer

An offshore oil drilling project that once had strong local support has drawn vocal opposition since the governor added it to the state’s budget proposal this week.

But a representative for the proposed operator, Plains Exploration and Production Co. (PXP), said Santa Barbara County residents can still expect the same benefits from the project off Vandenberg Air Force Base even though the agency approving the project has changed.

A “ground-breaking” agreement between PXP and local environmental groups who have always opposed oil production — including the Environmental Defense Center, Get Oil Out! and Citizens Planning Association — still applies, said Steve Rusch, PXP vice president of governmental affairs.

“There have been a lot of misstatements ... from the various news and print media,” he said.

Project approval, Rusch explained, means PXP shuts down two offshore oil platforms and two onshore processing facilities in the county in less than 15 years.

Also, 4,000 acres of property near Lompoc would be preserved, the project’s greenhouse gas emissions would be mitigated, and funding to purchase clean buses would be provided to the county.

In a rare display of political pulchritude, a group of tenants’ rights advocates gathered outside the County Administration Building early Tuesday afternoon demanding that supervisors stiffen the rules governing how much relocation assistance landlords have to provide displaced renters and under what circumstances.

Under the county’s eight-year-old ordinance, landlords must provide relocation assistance only when their tenants are forced out because their homes have been deemed uninhabitable. Advocates with the Rental Housing Roundtable—a coalition of tenants’ rights supporters—argued the ordinance should be expanded to include renters forced to seek new accommodations because of condo conversion, demolition, renovations, and rezoning. When families are evicted, they must often double up elsewhere, said Sharon Rose of Mobile Home Owners Coalition. “And that’s really hard on the children,” she said.

By comparison, the City of Santa Barbara has an ordinance requiring landlords to pay up to $5,000 to tenants forced to relocate because of condo conversions or habitability problems. City housing officials said they did not know how many times that ordinance has been used.

Height Initiative Wins Tactical Victory

By Nick Welsh

An obviously agonized Helene Schneider — Santa Barbara City councilmember and mayoral candidate — cast the key vote giving traditional slow-growthers active with Save El Pueblo Viejo a significant tactical victory in their battle to put an initiative limiting the maximum size of new buildings on the November election ballot.