After two productive meetings, progress on negotiations between the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors ad hoc subcommittee and the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians hit a roadblock when the county canceled the scheduled Dec. 8 meeting.
The county and tribe have spent more than a year attempting to reach agreeable terms concerning Camp 4, a 1,400-acre land parcel that the Chumash want to make part of their reservation. Following a six-month break from public negotiations between March and September, the discussions resumed for two meetings before failing to schedule one for November and the county canceling the December session.
In a Nov. 22 letter to the Chumash, ad hoc subcommittee members Doreen Farr and Peter Adam wrote that because the county’s negotiating team will change following the recent election, they want to suspend public discussions until January 2017.
In the coming year, Joan Hartmann will replace Farr as 3rd District supervisor, which according to the letter will rearrange the ad hoc subcommittee.
Chumash Tribal Chairman Kenneth Kahn responded with his own letter, calling the county’s “decision to unilaterally pause negotiations” for the second time this year “a political calculation and an effort to delay progress,” since the county has anticipated a change in 3rd District leadership for more than a year.
“Please know that I do value the noticeable de-escalation of tension between our communities in 2016,” Kahn added in the letter’s final paragraph. “While not substantive, it does represent a big step forward.”
The “de-escalation” refers to progress made in the last two meetings between the Chumash and county, during which the parties finally approached agreement on property tax reimbursement, building codes, environmental impact mitigation, and sales and transient occupancy tax—subjects that had previously been sticking points in the negotiations.
“I really appreciate the amount of movement you guys have made here,” Adam told Kahn and his team at their last meeting on Oct. 21. “This is the beginning, I think, of something we can really work with.”
Over the summer, legislation that would put Camp 4 into federal trust passed through the House Committee on Natural Resources, putting pressure on the county to reach agreements with the Chumash about the land before it became part of the tribe’s reservation.
Kahn told the Sun in a July interview that he hoped the bill would reach President Obama by the end of this year, which may not happen. Still, the county-tribe negotiations are racing the proposed legislation’s progress through Congress.
Kahn said that regardless of progress with the county, the tribe would continue pushing the legislation and pursuing the fee-to-trust process of annexing Camp 4 into the reservation.
“But what we will do is continue to work with the county on trying to find a common sense solution that will benefit the tribe and the entire community with mitigation factors for Camp 4,” he said.
More than five months after that interview, the Chumash and tribe have yet to agree on a “common sense solution”—and now, they’ll have to wait until January to continue working toward one.
This article appears in Dec 1-8, 2016.
