Goleta Water Moratorium May End as City Looks to Rezone for Lower-Income Housing

The Goleta City Council faced a dilemma on Thursday evening that was leavened by a letter from the Goleta Water District stating that the moratorium on new water hookups was likely to end this year. In a joint meeting with the city’s Planning Commission, the council was examining where to add zoning for apartment buildings within existing neighborhoods and along the Hollister Avenue viewshed. With 17 sites up for debate by the councilmembers, commissioners, landowners, and members of the public attending the workshop, at 11 p.m. the meeting was continued to Tuesday, July 25, at 5:30 p.m.

The possibility of an end to the nine-year water moratorium in Goleta is spurring developer interest, according to city staff. Rain delivered by this winter’s storms put the Water District within spitting distance of a couple conditions of the Safe Water Supplies Ordinance of 1991 that allowed new water connections: when deliveries from Cachuma reached 100 percent of the allocation and when enough new groundwater formed a buffer against drought. The Goleta Water District, which is a separate political entity from the city, wrote that water from Cachuma was restored and groundwater storage was due to reach the drought buffer some time this year.

Goleta planning staff confessed to being relieved to receive the water news, as the moratorium was among the city’s issues in giving the state certainty that its proposed rezones for housing were feasible. Every eight years, California’s Housing and Community Development department sets out quotas requiring additional zoning for residences of varying income levels. This cycle, the sixth, doubled Goleta’s previous requirement, and the state’s scrutiny of cities’ Housing Elements had intensified statewide. Goleta’s housing allocation in the 5th Cycle was 979 units; it is 1,837 in the Sixth.