Many thanks to all of you who submitted comments to the County on this monumental process. It is vital that we speak up now before the horse gets out of the barn so to speak.
Today SYVR submitted a comment letter to the Santa Barbara Recreation Master Plan (Rec Plan) and Draft Environmental Impact Report Notice of Preparation (NOP). The County posted the documents on the web, difficult to review and took the entire month for our review and comments to come together. Afterall, we have over five years of information to share with them on equestrian needs, the Santa Ynez Valley community needs and the virtual lack of any equestrian recreational trails of facilities in the County when surrounding Countries offer at least one equestrian designated trail and campground.
In the letter we also provided links to reference documents as we have in the past, equestrian trail guidelines, examples of the extensive mountain bike area development near Mohawk Group Camp at Cachuma, and even a series of biological studies that evaluated each trail user type (Mountain bikes, hikers, horses) for their impacts on eagles...yes, eagles!
Below is the final letter, but be warned, it is quite long going section by section to follow the County's documents. It's made even longer by the attachments.
Things may go quiet again until summer or fall 2025 while the County digests and responds to all the issues we and others have brought up. We will send out notices when the Draft EIR is available for our review and again, our comments.
Again thank you all for your efforts and interest to hang in there through this process. We should all be grateful for each other!
Comments