Timeline for Public Beach Access at Hollister Ranch

••• “Hollister Ranch, long the Holy Grail for the advocates of increased public access to Santa Barbara’s off-limits coast, could soon be opened to controlled visitation by up to 100 members of the public a day for a test period of two years. […] All this is happening because of a historic bill introduced by Santa Barbara’s State Senator Monique Limón that was passed by the legislature two years ago and signed by the governor. According to the deadline established in Limón’s legislation, public access to Hollister Ranch’s beaches—which enjoy quasi-mythical status among surfers worldwide—needs to be established in some limited form no later than April 1, 2022.” There’s a lot more in the Independent article about how complicated this process is going to be, as anyone who’s been to Hollister Ranch can imagine.

••• “After hours of testimony both opposing and supporting ExxonMobil’s request to truck oil to facilities in Santa Maria and Kern County, the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission voted on Wednesday to recommend denial of the project. […] The commission’s findings—set to be prepped by staff and formally approved by the panel on Nov. 3—ultimately will serve as a recommendation for future consideration by the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors.” —Noozhawk

••• “Downtown commercial landlord Richard Berti is calling City Hall’s bluff when it comes to helping homeless people with a dramatic $450,000 bet. That’s the money Berti is putting down on the long-vacant St. Mary’s Seminary on Las Canoas Road in Mission Canyon. Berti’s hope is that the property ​— ​55,000 square feet inside and 35 acres outside ​— ​could be a place to treat people who are mentally ill and living on the streets.” —Independent

••• Newsmakers rates the mayoral candidates at this stage, and looks at the recent fundraising by them and the folks running for city council. One appalling side note is that joke mayoral candidate Boat Rat Matt is a QAnon believer.

••• The recent buyers of music impresario Scooter Braun’s Montecito estate for $28 million were “Bryan and Eve Schreier, he an early Google employee who is now a partner at Silicon Valley-based Sequoia Capital, one of the world’s top venture capital firms. […] Current photos of the renovated property can be found on Architectural Digest.” —Dirt

••• “Goleta to Ban Flavored Tobacco Products […] Lengthy Discussion Ends in Decision to Protect Youth.” —Independent

••• A guest post on Newsmakers about the imminent county redistricting assumes a certain knowledge of the situation, but if you’re willing to hack your way through the data, it’s interesting. This seems to be the gist: “I have always felt that Isla Vista and UCSB, by being placed in the Third District for purely political purposes, are shortchanged; UCSB and Isla Vista are integrally part of the south coast. The most feasible redistricting plan starting in 2022 would be to place UCSB and Isla Vista in the Second District, represented by Supervisor Gregg Hart, and almost all of the city of Goleta (32 percent of a supervisorial district) in the Third District, represented by fellow liberal Joan Hartmann. This would result in five districts of equal population—and respect the community identities of UCSB-Isla Vista and Goleta, a key measure of equitable reapportionment.”

••• “Work should begin in a month or two to repair several streets in Goleta, among them the stretch of Cathedral Oaks between Los Carneros and Glen Annie, which one motorist described as having chunks of asphalt rolling across the lanes.” —Independent

••• “Vandenberg Space Force Base has reopened all beaches on base property that were previously closed due to snowy plover nesting season. Minuteman, Surf, and Wall beaches have yearly restrictions in place normally March through Sept. 30.” —KEYT

················

Sign up for the Siteline email newsletter and you’ll never miss a post.