More than a year after spending nearly $500,000 on cleaning up the Santa Ynez Riverbed, the city of Lompoc is weighing its options on how to address the problem again.
Between September 2018 and January 2019, the city, along with a variety of nonprofits and some Santa Barbara County agencies, evicted people who were illegally living in the riverbed and connected those individuals with social services, such as substance abuse treatment programs or homeless shelters. The city also collected millions of pounds of trash, biological waste, and hazardous material.
After this costly effort, the city assigned a police officer to work as a homeless liaison to patrol the riverbed and prevent the homeless encampments from returning. But, despite city staff’s request, money wasn’t allocated to continue this effort during the last budget cycle in spring 2019, according to a staff report from the Feb. 18 City Council meeting. The city is also experiencing a police officer shortage that’s unrelated to the budget issue.
“Due to lack of investment in enforcement, unfortunately, the Police Department and homeless service outreach providers have reported the riverbed has been reinhabited with illegal campsites,” the staff report states.
During the February meeting, city Community Development Director Christie Alarcon updated the council on the current status of the riverbed. She said that according to an assessment the police department conducted in January, there are about 10 to 15 camps in the riverbed, which are home to about 20 homeless individuals.
This is less than the 60 to 80 people who were living in the riverbed prior to the city’s 2018 eviction process. The estimated cost of $128,820 to clean up the riverbed is also less than what the city spent during its previous effort. Along with this cost, Alarcon told the council that dedicating two police officers to maintaining and patrolling the riverbed would cost an estimated $300,200 annually.
The council didn’t vote to move forward with a specific plan at the meeting. Lompoc Mayor Jenelle Osborne, who requested that this item appear on the council’s agenda, told the Sun that the purpose of the meeting was for council members to gain a better understanding of the current situation in the riverbed. Following Alarcon’s presentation, council members proposed various recommendations that city staff will research and report back on during a future meeting.
Osborne said she would like the city to look into the possibility of setting up a properly trained volunteer group that could occasionally go into the riverbed to pick up trash after the city funds another large-scale cleanup.
“Eventually [the police department] will be fully staffed and we’ll have a quality-of-life team,” Osborne said. “We don’t have that right now.”
Councilmember Jim Mosby also suggested that the city look for outside help while the department deals with its police officer shortage. But rather than a volunteer group, he said he’d like city staff look into the feasibility of contracting with process servers who can serve people legal notices telling them to leave the riverbed.
No matter what path the city pursues, it’ll cost money. The council discussed the need to reach out to the county to see if it would help fund some of these efforts, but Osborne told the Sun that the county had declined to help pay for the last cleanup.
She said that the entity responsible for taking care of the primarily affected area of the riverbed within River Park is a point of contention between the city and county. Although it’s county land, it’s city-owned property and therefore the county feels as though the city is responsible for taking care of the area, Osborne said.
During the meeting, Councilmember Dirk Starbuck expressed his frustration over the city largely being left alone to deal with the issue.
“Let’s just go down there and ride a motorcycle,” Starbuck said. “The Sheriff’s [Office] will respond if your kid is down there on a quad. They will send out four quads of their own and find your kid. Somehow they can’t look left or right when down there.”
During public comment period of the meeting, Brian Halterman, a pastor at Micah Mission and manager at Bridge House Homeless Shelter, said the city should stop looking for somebody else to blame for the problem and instead focus on how it can do better.
Halterman told the Sun that the homeless population in Lompoc is unique in that it’s not transient. Most of people who are homeless in the city have long-term family ties to the city, which means they became homeless while living in Lompoc.
Halterman helped connect individuals with services during the city’s previous effort to evict people from the riverbed. He said while not everybody remained in stable housing afterward, it was still largely successful.
“When I know there’s two women who are no longer being trafficked … that’s a success, period,” Halterman said. “I’m still dealing with a client today who is on the verge of entering programs and housing. The fallout is still going and it’s positive.”
In order to create a sustainable situation where the city doesn’t have to continuously spend money on large-scale cleanup efforts, Halterman said the City Council must determine what it’s trying to accomplish—whether that’s cleaning up the river to avoid any potential environmental problems or finding solutions to homelessness.
If it’s the latter, he said, the city should commit resources to a homeless liaison team to patrol the riverbed after it’s cleaned, pursue opportunities for day shelters within the city, and designate a safe parking area where homeless individuals can sleep in their vehicles at night.
“If we’re trying to solve this, we need to hone in on and be specific about what we’re doing,” Halterman said.
Reach Staff Writer Zac Ezzone at zezzone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 5-12, 2020.