Cliff’s Notes: From the Feb. 23 Montecito Planning Commission Hearing

March 3rd, 2006

The hearing went as expected and was reasonably positive. It is good to have the first MPC hearing behind us and to move onto the next one. There have been plenty of hearings in the past and there will be more in the future. But this was a step in the right direction.

The majority of the meeting focused on the legal issues related to “baseline,” i.e., does Westmont have an approved master plan? If so, does Westmont have the ability to build out the approved plan and how many additional square feet are contemplated by the approved plan? Deputy County Counsel Alan Seltzer articulated the County’s position on this these subjects.

This is an important foundational issue. Seltzer mentioned that there are two important books on the subject of land use and determining baseline. Both books are the recognized treatises on the issue, with the co-author of one of them, Whitman Manley, being present at the hearing and representing Westmont.

These treatises agree, and support the fact that Westmont not only has an approved Master Plan but that the baseline to be used for environmental review is the approved Master Plan at buildout. They agree that the appropriate way to measure environmental impacts from this project is from the approved Master Plan at buildout to the proposed Master Plan at buildout. The incremental amount of construction measured in this way is less than if one compared the approved plan at buildout to the existing setting. Seltzer also said that Westmont has gone the extra mile to analyze the impact of the buildout of the proposed master plan to the existing setting to the proposed plan as well, even though this was not required.

He mentioned that county staff identified four methodologies in Appendix ‘H’ and that they did a fine and reasonable job of determining that 200,000 sq. ft. is a reasonable number amount of space that Westmont is able to build out by virtue of the approved plan.

The public comment period was opened in the afternoon. Chair Robert Meghreblian commented that the speaker slips were about 50/50 in favor vs. opposed.

The next meeting is set for Thursday, March 2 at 9 a.m. at the County Planning Commission Hearing room, 123 East Anapamu Street.

[Note: Subsequent to this hearing, an all-day mediation session was held on February 25th with representatives from Westmont and two opponent groups present. Following that session, it was agreed that the March 2 hearing would be limited to comments only from those with speaker slips from the February 23rd hearing and that the next hearing date would be changed to March 15th.]