June 15, 2000

The Honorable Gail Marshall
Third District Supervisor
Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors
105 East Anapamu Street
Santa Barbara, CA 93101


Dear Supervisor Marshall:

Chancellor Yang has forwarded your April 18, 2000, letter to the Highway 217 Review Committee and asked the Committee to respond. The following letter is the product of long consideration and deliberations by the Highway 217 Review Committee.

In that letter, you suggest a process that could lead to a final design for Highway 217. We recognize some of the positive aspects of the process you outline. The suggested process, however, differs substantially from what was described in your earlier letter of February 29 to Chancellor Yang. In particular, your letter of April 18 proposes a competition between "the County's project and the University's proposed alternative," whereas on February 29 you stated, "I am committed to finding a solution to the Highway 217 issues that accommodates all stakeholders, including UCSB." We support your statement of February 29, implemented via a fully collaborative process in which we expected to work with County personnel to arrive at a single solution that accommodates all stakeholders. We do not, however, support a competition between a "County project" and a "University alternative" that you suggested in your April 18 letter.

Since its inception in early December 1999, UCSB's Highway 217 Review Committee has met more than 25 times. We have reviewed numerous documents associated with the Goleta Old Town Revitalization Plan, including those provided by County staff. Committee members have organized or attended many meetings with County staff, the Goleta Old Town PAC, Goleta Old Town developers, and personnel from other governmental agencies (e.g., the Airport Authority, SBCAG, State Senator Jack O'Connell). The Highway 217 Review Committee also has retained an engineering/traffic consultant (HNTB Corporation) to examine alternative highway designs and their potential impacts, and an architect and urban planning consultant (Professor Barton Myers) to examine larger, regional planning issues.

The University has invested considerable time and effort in the Highway 217 issues because all campus constituencies have made it clear that they oppose traffic lights on Highway 217.

Historical documents show that UCSB repeatedly opposed stoplights on Highway 217, both at public meetings and in written comments in response to the Plan's EIR. For example, there were 34 written comments dealing with Highway 217 in the June 1997, Draft Program EIR. Most of these comments were from the UCSB community, and all respondents opposed any changes to Highway 217. UCSB's opposition to the stop lights throughout 1997 is documented in, for example, a May 7, 1997, letter to the Chairperson of the Planning Commission; an August 5, 1997, letter to the County Board of Supervisors; and the records of an August 18, 1997, meeting with you at UCSB's Faculty Club.

More recently, all major campus organizations, including the Academic Senate (composed of all faculty), Graduate Students Association, UCSB's Associated Students, and Staff Assembly have passed resolutions calling for delays in the County's planning for Highway 217, so that alternatives to the stoplights can be considered. Furthermore, the Committee has received numerous e-mail messages and letters from UCSB personnel expressing strong opposition to stoplights on Highway 217.

The Highway 217 Review Committee represents the entire UCSB campus. An important part of our mandate is to insure that the campus's voice is heard. During work hours the UCSB campus constitutes a community of nearly 25,000 people. We are the largest employer in the County and UCSB faculty, staff, and students reside in all five supervisorial districts. Tens of thousands of other County residents visit UCSB each year to enjoy access to artistic, intellectual and athletic resources.

UCSB is interested in maintaining cordial relationships with the surrounding community. We are committed to working with local government agencies on issues of common concern. We are working hard to find a "win-win" solution to the Highway 217 issues that meets the needs of both UCSB and the residents of Santa Barbara County. We have instructed our consultant (HNTB) to find alternative solutions that meet the needs of the Goleta Old Town Revitalization Plan without imposing stoplights on Highway 217.

We were delighted, then, by your letter of February 29, 2000, to Chancellor Yang in which you recognized that stoplights on Highway 217 were "unacceptable to the University." You "instructed County staff and consultants to work with University faculty, staff, and consultants to develop highway designs that serve southern areas of Goleta Old Town and meet the needs of UCSB and the community for safe and efficient travel on Highway 217." In addition, you assured Chancellor Yang that "County personnel will work with University personnel to develop a Highway 217 design that is acceptable to the University, while achieving the goals of the Goleta Old Town Redevelopment Plan." Editorials in local newspapers (e.g., Santa Barbara News-Press, Valley Voice) expressed support for this collaborative approach.

To this end, our consultant (HNTB) prepared one alternative design for Highway 217 and this design was discussed by a joint meeting of University and County staff and consultants on February 18, 2000. After this positive and constructive meeting, we instructed HNTB to work on alternative designs that would meet the County's concerns. Subsequent iterative consultation with County staff has resulted in an approach whereby the University would finish the design of alternatives and subcontract through HNTB to obtain the services of the County's traffic consultant, Associated Transportation Engineers (ATE), to conduct analyses of the traffic impacts of a variety of designs. This information will then be given to County staff so that they can conduct environmental analyses on all designs and finalize the "acceptable design" that you desired.

On April 20, 2000, the University and County staff and consultants met to discuss the University's alternatives and to define the scope of ATE's traffic analyses. Since that time, the University's and County's staff and consultants have been working closely together to establish base conditions for the traffic analyses and to refine the scope of work for ATE. HNTB has established a subcontract with ATE. Much of the scope covers work that is obligatory even in the absence of any input from UCSB. For example, the 'no-project' and 'County project' alternatives, the latter involving signalized intersections at Fowler and Ekwill, constitute the majority of the scope. These analyses will be obligatory when the specific project proposals and EIR's for the Fowler and Ekwill intersections are prepared. A cooperative spirit of finding mutually acceptable solutions has marked this process. In turn, County staff have been very cooperative and the County has agreed to conduct the environmental analyses for the specific projects and all alternatives. The Highway 217 Review Committee felt strongly that the County and University were working together to find a solution that would meet all of our needs and that the final solution would become the preferred project for the proposed Highway 217 changes.

The Committee was dismayed by the change in your position and by the process described in your letter of April 18, because the process you suggest sets up a competition between two plans (the County's project and UCSB's alternative) rather than a consultative, cooperative process to find one mutually-acceptable design. Instead of furthering the established process of consultation and cooperation, you suggest that this should be replaced by a competition that pits the University's "alternative" against the County's "project."

This "fair and open process" contains no incentive for the County to consult or cooperate with the University to find a mutually acceptable solution because the County's interests will now shift to defending "its own" plan, and attacking the "alternative." A May 5, 2000, meeting of Committee members with County planners, including Mr. Patton, Mr. Dobberteen, Mr. Comati, and Ms. Plowman, confirmed that, although County staff were open to a mutually-acceptable "silver bullet", they viewed such a solution as extremely unlikely and that, indeed, the public review process would become a contest between the County's and UCSB's plans.

In short, your proposed process reduces UCSB-County cooperation and isolates us from the county planning process. Your process makes it difficult for us to work together to find a mutually acceptable solution, because in effect you have frozen the county plan in place. Our position has never changed: we stand ready to work with you, County staff, and the community to solve this problem. We ask the County to abandon the current plan for stoplights on Highway 217 and work with UCSB and its consultants to find a solution that works for all concerned. We believe that more constructive progress will result if both the County and the UCSB community adopt a collaborative approach to the development of a specific plan for Highway 217.

The timetable that is outlined in your letter of April 18 has proven to be too tight. As you recall, Associated Transportation Engineers (ATE) is the County's traffic consultant and, with them, we have endeavored to define a scope of work for the traffic analysis. As stated earlier, the majority of this scope is for the "no-project" alternative, and for the "County project" involving signalized intersections at Ekwill and Fowler and Highway 217. This information would be obligatory for the County's supplemental environmental impact report even in the absence of new input from UCSB. Owing to complicated negotiations among University and County personnel and their consultants, it has taken about six weeks longer to define the scope of work than outlined in your schedule. The County's schedule shows UCSB's refined alternative being completed by July 12. Our consultant informs us that this work cannot be completed until August 21.

Thank you for your continuing cooperation. We believe that the process we have outlined, i.e., full cooperation between UCSB and the County to find a mutually acceptable alternative, will allow a "new project to be thoughtfully considered which meets the needs of the community as well as the University."

Sincerely,



Professor Scott D. Cooper, Chair
UCSB Highway 217 Review Committee
On behalf of the Highway 217 Review Committee



cc: Chancellor Henry T. Yang
Supervisor Susan Rose
Supervisor Naomi Schwartz
Supervisor Joni Gray
Supervisor Tom Urbanske
Mayor Harriet Miller
John Patton, Director of Planning and Development
Phil Demery, Director of Public Works
Matt Dobberteen, Planning and Development
Jonny Wallis, Chair, Goleta Old Town Project Area Committee
Richard Watts, Chair, Academic Senate
Highway 217 Review Committee Members