Members of the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission recently revisited some language tied to the proposed ban on drilling new oil and gas wells due to a staff oversight.
“In April, we should have identified this amendment,” County Long Range Planning Division Manager Alex Tuttle said at the commission’s July 1 meeting.
While the commission moved a package full of zoning code changes forward to the Board of Supervisors in April, staff later identified those revisions as inconsistent with some elements of the county’s Coastal Land Use Plan.
“This is really a cleanup item to ensure that the prohibition language in the zoning code has similar prohibition language in our Coastal Land Use planning document,” Tuttle said. “So there’s no confusion as to what is or what isn’t allowed within the coastal zone … no discrepancy or inconsistency between the ordinances and the coastal plan.”
While the current Coastal Land Use Plan allows oil and gas wells “dedicated to exploration or production of offshore oil and gas fields” in a few agricultural designations, the amendment before the commission on July 1 added the word “existing” in a few sentences to clarify that new oil and gas wells “are prohibited in all zones,” the staff report states.
Since the original zoning package from April is still awaiting review from the Board of Supervisors, 5th District Planning Commissioner Vincent Martinez said he feared passing the July amendment was “putting the cart before the horse.”
“I’m a bit confused by this,” Martinez said. “We are projecting that the board is going to accept Phase 1.”
He was referring to the first part of a long-term proposal, where Phase 1 bans new development of gas and oil wells and Phase 2 gradually phases out existing oil and gas wells throughout Santa Barbara County.
In response to Martinez’s comment, Tuttle said because staff didn’t identify the Coastal Land Use Plan amendment ahead of the commission’s April hearing, “we’re a little behind the timeline here and what would normally be the sequence in terms of taking a package that would constitute both amendments to the zoning code and to any comprehensive plan element.”
“As you put it,” Tuttle said to Martinez, “it’s to complement the zoning amendments that are already in process.”
Martinez was the sole dissenter in a 3-1 vote to move the Coastal Land Use Plan amendment forward to the Board of Supervisors.
In April, Martinez and former 4th District Commissioner Roy Reed dissented in the 3-2 vote to support the original zoning amendments.
Reed left the Planning Commission in May. On July 7, the Board of Supervisors appointed Orcutt resident Tony Guy to fill the vacancy.
This article appears in July 9 – July 16, 2026.
