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Dear Foothills Supporters: The 9AM Wed. Jun 29 Planning
Commission hearing will take place at the SB County Admin. Bldg. at
Santa
Barbara County Planning Commission Hearing Room
123 East Anapamu Street
Santa
Barbara, CA The County Planning Commission is holding a hearing
on WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29th at 9am and IT PLANS TO APPROVE THE PROJECT. To do that,
they will issue a statement of overriding considerations. Those overriding considerations
suppress numerous environmental impacts. They allow inconsistencies with State
laws and County policies and they advance significant changes to the project that
reduce mitigations that should normally accompany these impacts.
In a
couple of instances they justify reducing mitigation ratios because it is impossible
for the developer to meet those requirements.
The San Marcos Foothills
Coalition and the public were given less than one week to respond to more than
400 pages of documents released on June 17. SMFC strongly objected to this short
time for Public Review. We could not review the documents ourselves and we could
not hire our expert consultants in that short time, much less have them provide
us substantive comments. Therefore, we know it will be hard for you to stand and
talk on 29 June during the public comment period. But we hope you will attend
and speak your mind and heart. At least, tell the Planning Commission that you
need more time to form your comments.
At this hearing, you will be asked
to focus your comments on the issues in the revised documents. Therefore, our
points tend to be focused on these areas of concern, although we have some many
other important issues that should be raised. Because we are frantically reviewing
the documents, we have not completed our analysis of all the material, we will
have other information to share in the next few days. If you wish to have more
information for your comments,e-mail Mark Holmgren (maholmgren@yahoo.com).
Thanks
for caring about the SMF and for wanting to make this the best possible project
for the natural resources and the community.
Documents relevant to this
hearing can be found on line at two sites:
Staff
Report
Revision
Letter
Recirculation Document Volume IV same as revision letter
Response
to Comments on Draft EIR Recirculation Document same
A copy of the EIR
Revision Document can be obtained by calling County Planning and Development at
(805) 568-2000.
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