Of the eight incorporated cities in Santa Barbara County, six have expressed a desire to expand their respective spheres of influence, according to Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) Executive Officer Mike Prater.
Guadalupe and Carpinteria are the two outliers, he told LAFCO commissioners during the board’s Oct. 2 meeting.
Although LAFCO’s due for its next sphere of influence review in 2026, Prater recommended that the board maintain each cities’ current boundaries until the following cycle in 2031 to give all parties involved ample time to conduct studies of the requested adjustments.
“Quite frankly, not one boundary has changed since the early 2000s,” Prater said. “I want to give those cities, and the county, quite frankly, equal opportunity to sort of study the issue and hopefully come together on a compromise so that there’s give and take about where these boundaries should legitimately be placed, … rather than haphazardly just draw a boundary—for which I’m not sure this commission has a majority vote on any one of the cities’ expectations.”
LAFCO Commissioner and 4th District Supervisor Bob Nelson said he would prefer a shorter timeframe between sphere of influence reviews and didn’t like Prater’s use of word “haphazardly.”
“ … 2031. That’s beyond when I would like to make decisions on some of these things,” Nelson said. “A lot of this does have a long history, but that’s why we’re up here to make these decisions not just adopt what’s been there forever.”
Prater clarified that LAFCO has the authority to direct staff to bring forward a sphere of influence change at any time.
“We’re not necessarily having to wait for five years,” Prater said.
LAFCO Commissioner and 3rd District Supervisor Joan Hartmann said she’d prefer to see the agency take a more proactive role when it comes to engaging with cities about sphere of influence issues, partly for the sake of clarity between each agency involved.
“Understanding exactly what a sphere of influence is, is tricky,” Hartmann said with a laugh.
LAFCO members and staff discussed a variety of future approaches to take, including the possibility of forming an ad hoc committee or facilitating workshops to engage the public in sphere of influence discussions.
The board ultimately agreed that its commissioners should each “go back to their respective county and city staff and make it a higher priority from their departments,” Prater summarized.
“We’ve been having recent discussions about where boundaries might go, where interests are, but we really … haven’t gotten to what kind of standards and expectations there would be on any of the entities that are thinking about a memorandum of agreement,” Prater said. “So that level of detail really needs to be fleshed out more and that requires a higher level of engagement. Right now, that hasn’t been placed as a high priority amongst the agencies we’re dealing with.”
This article appears in Oct 9 – Oct 16, 2025.