Santa Barbara vintners and their wine country neighbors remain in planning-process limbo, as the updated winery ordinance’s second public hearing before the County Planning Commission ended with commissioners sending the new rules back for further revision by staff. That’s also what happened during the July 22 hearing, and the next hearing is scheduled for September 19.
The winery ordinance update has been in the works for nearly five years, and the main points of contention remain almost exactly the same. Some wine country residents fear that unchecked growth will result in quality-of-life impacts, primarily in regard to traffic, road safety, and noise from special events. Vintners, meanwhile, appear to be unanimous in their belief that the new ordinance, as written, would greatly restrict the ability for new, particularly smaller wineries to be built and be successful.
Wednesday morning’s four-hour hearing featured 32 public speakers; 28 were pro-wine industry. The other four, Mary Beth Kerr, Bob Field, Alan Davenport, and attorney Ana Citrin, spoke to represent the concerns of neighbors, with a particular emphasis on the Ballard Canyon area, where one winery that’s open to the public exists and one has been seeking approval under the existing ordinance for more than five years. These neighborhood advocates contend that Ballard Canyon Road is wildly unsafe, with Davenport presenting a graph that showed an uptick in crashes from 2012 to 2015. “I believe our concerns regarding noise and the roads and traffic safety are not being given priority,” said Kerr. “That, quite frankly, scares me.” She read off the names of four people who have died on nearby roads in recent years — none of which had any connection to wineries or tasting rooms — and cited some “undocumented crashes,” as well.