Madame Chair, Honorable Supervisors, County Staff, thank you for giving me the opportunity to address you today.

I am here as one representative from the UCSB Committee on Highway 217. Our committee includes representatives from all segments of the UCSB community (students, staff, and faculty), and was formed late in 1999. Our primary task is to evaluate impacts of the Goleta Old Town Revitalization on the UCSB community; as far as we can tell, those impacts were not addressed by earlier studies and hearings.

One of our first tasks was to review the records, and understand the evolution of UCSB's position. It is clear that at all times, including the present, the UCSB community has strongly supported the revitalization of Goleta Old Town. The majority of the community has repeatedly expressed opposition to just one aspect of the Revitalization Plan - the proposal to put stoplights on two new intersections on Highway 217.

Specifically, 73 written letters were submitted in January 1997 in response to the draft EIR for the Revitalization Plan; no letters indicated support for the signalized intersections on the 217 and 34 letters representing 4 agencies and 95 individuals indicated lack of support. Most of the latter letters came from the UCSB community, including one from Robert Kuntz, one each from the Graduate Students Association (GSA) and Undergraduate Legislative Council (LC), and numerous letters from individuals. One letter, B54, from Mr. Mike Shinn, specifically noted the decrease in safety on the 217 that signalization would cause.

The written record also shows that UCSB opposed stoplights on the 217 in letters on May 7, 1997 to the Chair of the Santa Barbara Planning Commission, on August 5, 1997 to the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, and in a meeting on August 17, 1997 with Supervisor Marshall. At that last meeting, according to contemporaneous notes, `[UCSB was] committed to working with her on acceptable alternatives to the two signalized intersections. She committed to working with UCSB in like fashion.

Over time, it appears that a misunderstanding developed as to UCSB's position. By late 1999, when funding was put in place for the 217 work, an interpretation had developed that the UCSB community had somehow agreed to the signalized intersections.

This interpretation is not supported by the written record.

Since the formation of the Highway 217 Committee six months ago, four major representative bodies at UCSB: the faculty's Academic Senate (AS), the staffís Staff Assembly (SA), the GSA, and the LC have reiterated, by decisive majorities, opposition to signalized intersections on the 217. The AS, SA, and GSA called for a moratorium on further planning of the signalized intersections.

There are many grounds for the opposition of the UCSB community. Two prominent concerns are:

1. Like all Universities, UCSB is, to a certain extent, an `ivory tower'. Our desire is to make UCSB less of an ivory tower. The easier it is for our nearby community, which is the entire South and Central Coast, to travel to us to enjoy our intellectual, cultural, and athletic assets, the less our isolation. We strongly desire to improve, not impede, our connections with all nearby communities. Our consultation with an Architect and Urban Planner, Prof. Barton Myers of UCLA, underscored the importance of the 217 to our connections to the community. He indicated that the most effective way to strengthen our ties to Goleta and points north would be to improve access to UCSB via Fairview Avenue, Los Carneros Road, Storke Road, and El Colegio Road, and not by impeding access to UCSB along the 217.
   
   
2. Fatality rates, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), for UCSB and Airport bound traffic will at least double, and possibly triple, if stoplights are put on the 217. Old Town traffic routed onto the 217 via the new, signalized intersections, will also suffer an increase in fatality rates. Indeed, the original reason that 217 was approved, in 1957, as a freeway, appears to be to protect the lives of UCSB student travelers.

Since March, we have been working assiduously with County staff to develop a suitable alternative that achieves access to Goleta Old Town, while sustaining safe and smooth access to UCSB. Our discussions with the County technical staff have been fruitful, collaborative, and constructive. We have raised private monies for the support of consultants, including a well-known engineering firm, HNTB, to help in evaluations necessary for both a design involving signalized intersections, and for safe and smooth alternatives.

I am here today for several reasons. Our positions at UCSB needed reiteration, as did the fact that UCSB did not and will not ever stop participating in the planning process.

I must comment that it appears that approval of this contract with RBF would be inconsistent with the requests of the vast majority of the UCSB community for a moratorium on the planning of signalized intersections on the 217.

More specifically, we request clarification as to how the RBF work delineated in the agreement offered for approval today will dovetail with the ongoing collaborative work of the County, UCSB, and our consultants. Are the RBF geometrics and traffic analyses in Section 3.2, and structure type selections in Section 4.1 going to be consistent with the alternates which will be arrived at by our joint collaborative work? If the RBF work will not allow alternates, then how will we come to a resolution?

If the RBF contract specifically prioritizes the schedule of work so that a design mutually acceptable to all stakeholders will be accommodated at no cost to UCSB, we could support today's action. I have read the proposed agreement, and as far as I can tell, it is not currently consistent with the criteria mentioned.

If the RBF contract includes only work on the option of signalized intersections, then approval of the contract today would be unwise. First, if signalized intersections are not favored after the collaborative design process now underway involving the County, UCSB, and consultants, some money spent on the RBF contract will have been wasted. Second, the financial necessity of repeating RBF's design work on a safe and smooth alternative might actually impede a superior alternative from being implemented.

Finally, it may be that approval of the RBF contract will today foreclose the possibility of a safe and smooth alternative being ever developed for the 217. If that is the case, we ask you to vote no today.

Thank you.