On the night of Sept. 16, hundreds of Santa Ynez Valley residents walked past the blinking lights and the clanging noise of hundreds of slot machines in the Chumash Casino, heading straight to the Salama Showroom. They weren’t there to gamble or attend a rock concert; they came to discuss land owned by the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians.
In 2010, tribe officials announced plans to annex approximately 1,400 acres at the corner of highways 154 and 246, commonly called Camp 4. Since then, the proposal has received ample criticism from local homeowners and several special interest groups.
Critics are worried the tribe will build another casino or use the land for more parking for the existing casino. But tribe representatives maintain they plan only to build tribal housing.
Away from the bustle of the casino floor, a panel of representatives from the tribe, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the All Mission Indian Housing Authority presented a mass of information.
Tribe representatives aimed to educate the community and alleviate fears that the tribe wants to build another casino.
“No, absolutely not, we are not building a casino on Camp 4,” said tribal chairman Vincent Armenta. “We are simply a tribal government, developing tribal land, for tribal people.”
Armenta discussed the tribe’s need for newer housing, explaining that members live in cramped modular units from the 1970s. Currently, only 140 tribal members are able to live on the reservation. The other 1,300 tribal descendants live in the surrounding community.
The only other undeveloped land the tribe has, the panel reported, is on a creek bed and therefore not suitable for housing.
A question-and-answer session followed the presentation, with emcee Sam Cohen voicing handwritten audience questions. First up: “What is to stop the tribe from building another casino on Camp 4?”
Carl Artman, former assistant secretary of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and law professor at Arizona State University, explained that there’s a lengthy process the tribe must follow to build such a facility.
“Could a tribe just turn around and put a casino on land simply because it’s taken into trust? No, absolutely not,” he said.
The ultimate response to the meeting was mixed.
“I don’t think they convinced anyone,” said Lana Marcussen, the legal consultant for opposition group Preservation of Los Olivos (P.O.L.O.)
She said the discussion was overly complex, and that throwing around so much technical jargon was a “snow job.”
Buellton resident and journalism student Gabrielle Moria felt otherwise.
“I thought the discussion was very informative,” she said. “I think it was pertinent to the concerns of the community. If they want to build housing, fine.”
A Sun reporter proposed the question, “Since legal wording is so important, why haven’t we heard a plain statement that says the land will only be used for housing? Wouldn’t that alleviate the concerns of casino/non-housing use of the land?”
The question wasn’t answered publicly during the meeting, though two separate panel members answered it in follow-up interviews.
“You don’t want to begin restricting land like that when you are taking it into trust,” Artman said.
Kevin Bearquiver, a regional representative for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, expanded on that sentiment: “It’s like [the tribe members] are saying, ‘We’d like housing,’ but we don’t have a proposal in front of us.”
Should a proposal come, it would fall under the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires that the land be assessed for its primary proposed use—and any alternative proposed uses as well.
“It appears that many of the concerns about what could happen if the tribe puts that land into trust are premature and based only on conjecture,” Artman said.
This article appears in Sep 22-29, 2011.