By Deborah Brasket/Looking Forward

Santa Barbara County has been facing a serious shortage of affordable housing for its middle- and low-income residents for quite some time now.

The collapse of the national housing market has been especially hard on families living in the northern part of our county. Families seeking the American dream of home ownership have outreached their financial means because so little housing here is truly affordable for them.

State law requires that each county conduct a regional housing needs assessment every five years to ensure that enough land is zoned for all income levels. SB CAN advocates creating sustainable communities by building housing in urban areas within walking distance of basic needs and services, while also preserving open space and recreational areas.

The county largely mismanaged its obligation to rezone for high-density housing during the 2003-08 process, by not balancing the real needs of the community.

The county went from trying to put all the affordable housing rezones in the semi-rural Orcutt area, to putting all of them in Isla Vista, a tiny densely-populated community that serves a large university — hardly what you’d call fair-share housing that would meet the real needs of low-income families across the county.

By Olivia Uribe/Looking Forward

UCSB, the county’s largest employer, has announced a new long-range development plan (LRDP) that by 2025 would add 5,000 new students, 350 faculty positions, hundreds of new staff positions and other employees to provide services to the new students, faculty and staff.

This proposed development could have far-reaching impacts on nearby communities and across the county. To explore these issues, SB CAN convened a series of meetings, leading to the formation of a new coalition called Sustainable University Now (SUN).

SUN, which includes an impressive array of community and environmental organizations such as the Community Environmental Council and the Santa Barbara League of Women Voters, seeks to encourage wide community participation in reviewing and responding to the plans for UCSB’s expansion.

SUN members emphasize they do not seek to oppose the university’s future development, but rather to improve it. They urge careful scrutiny of the LDRP draft environmental impact report (EIR), which is expected to be recirculated soon.

Public celebrations all across the world and tears of joy marked the culmination of a truly amazing presidential campaign on Nov. 4.

In significant measure, the historic election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States was an unprecedented grassroots effort, the kind we at SB CAN believe in and celebrate.

This grassroots effort has been at least four years in the making. In reflecting upon this momentous occasion, it's worth remembering that four years ago after the re-election of President George Bush, many of the same people who are now dancing in the streets were “mourning a sense of lost hope,” as I wrote then in a column for this newspaper.

In trying to make sense of that loss, I lamented that “maybe things have to get really, really bad” before people would realize we were heading in the wrong direction and be ready to turn things around:

SB CAN invites the community to join it in a Fall Harvest Picnic at Gaviota to honor a few H.O.T. Heroes.

Enormous global challenges — including climate change, the energy crisis, and now economic meltdown — demand that we look beyond short-term fixes to long-term viability. We must be aware of how current practices will affect future generations, how local economies relate to global stability, and how individual decisions affect whole communities. Taking a comprehensive, holistic approach to community planning is essential.

The importance of creating sustainable communities is the highly pertinent theme of a “Fall Harvest Picnic” sponsored by the Santa Barbara County Action Network, or SB CAN, and the Santa Barbara Council on Research and Education, or SB CORE. Keynote speaker James C. Murphy will explain why sustainability today is no longer merely an option, but an obligation. Murphy is a highly regarded expert who has worked globally on the front-end of this evolving field, most recently with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the world’s leading think tank for international affairs, where he was responsible for a new initiative in climate change and energy security.

Enormous global challenges - including climate change, the energy crisis, and now economic meltdown - demand that we look beyond short-term fixes, to long-term viability. We need to be aware of how current practices will affect future generations, how local economies relate to global stability, and how individual decisions affect whole communities. Taking a comprehensive, holistic approach to community planning is essential.

The importance of creating sustainable communities is the highly-pertinent theme of a “Fall Harvest Picnic” sponsored by the Santa Barbara County Action Network (SB CAN) and the Santa Barbara Council on Research and Education (SB CORE). Keynote speaker James C. Murphy will explain why sustainability today is no longer merely an option, but an obligation. Murphy is a highly-regarded expert who has worked globally on the front end of this evolving field, most recently with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the world's leading think tank for international affairs, where he was responsible for a new initiative in climate change and energy security.

The picnic will be held high on a hillside overlooking the magnificent Gaviota Coast on Sunday, Oct. 26. We will be celebrating the bounty of the fall harvest and honoring “H.O.T.” Heroes” - individuals and organizations making significant contributions to creating sustainable communities through their efforts in the areas of housing, open space, and transportation.

Last week, the Santa Maria City Council approved a plan for development at Mahoney Ranch South, next to Tanglewood, in a remote rural area on

Black Road

 At a hearing on Sept. 16, SB CAN and the Santa Maria Community Coalition pointed out that the final environmental impact report (EIR) was grossly inadequate, and inconsistent with several city General Plan goals. A summary of our concerns follows:

This plan is a prime example of leapfrog development and urban sprawl. It locates a residential development of 1,430 residential units, for potentially 5,000 people, in a rural, isolated area on prime agricultural land at the furthermost boundary of the city, miles away from the nearest public services and facilities.

Coming together on behalf of Measure A

By Deborah Brasket/Looking Forward

During an election year, when partisan politics are all the rage, it’s refreshing to have community leaders and organizations from vastly different viewpoints and political affiliations coming together to create and support an important ballot proposal: Measure A.

Without raising taxes, this measure will provide critical local funding for transportation projects, including improving and maintaining roads and highways, reducing traffic congestion, making streets safer for walking and bicycling, improving safety along rural highways, enhancing public transit and making it more affordable.

Measure A is a 30-year renewal of the current half-cent sales tax that was approved by voters in 1989 and set to expire in 2009.

Measure A is supported by all five county supervisors and every city council in the county. It is endorsed by organizations as diverse as SB CAN and COLAB, the Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Association and the League of Women Voters.

The full scoop on those oil seeps

By Deborah Brasket

Oil and gas have been seeping from the ocean floor into the sea for thousands of years, and the Santa Barbara Channel is home to one of the largest seep fields in the world.

This fact has been misused by some powerful interests, who would like to lift the offshore oil drilling ban. An industry-funded group called Stop Oil Seeps (SOS) is advocating for increased drilling off Santa Barbara’s coast, claiming this will reduce natural oil seeps harmful to the environment.

Don’t Be Duped by Big Oil & Friends

By Deborah Brasket

SB CAN's Deborah Brasket says there's no shortage of myths surrounding the calls for offshore oil drilling.

Lately, everyone from President Bush and Republican presidential candidate John McCain to local groups like SOS California and the Committee to Improve North County has been talking about the need to lift the ban on offshore oil drilling. They claim that lifting the ban will relieve pain at the pump, beef up reserves, and stop natural oil seepage.

Don’t believe it. As one pundit put it, this is just Big Oil & Friends’ version of a new kind of WMD scare: “wells of mass deception.” Don’t believe the myths they are peddling about offshore oil drilling.

Myth No. 1 — Lifting the ban will lower prices at the pump now

Hypermiling toward Fuel Efficiency

By Deborah Brasket

There's plenty we can do locally to coast our way to conservation. Second of two columns.

Peaking oil supplies and climate change have arrived simultaneously, creating a global crisis in which “massive disruptions of the status quo” thinking will be needed, according to Robbie Diamond, president of Securing America’s Future Energy, or SAFE. But with that disruption comes the opportunity for this planet’s inhabitants to pull together as a global community and rethink how we relate to each other and to the earth that sustains us.