Fire hazards. Height violations. Improper noticing.
Claims tied to a Santa Ynez Valley resident’s appeal of a neighboring family’s permit to add two new ground-floor bathrooms—together totaling 150 square feet—to their home didn’t hold water during a Santa Barbara County Planning Commission review.
“When I first got this, I thought, why is this even before us?” 4th District Planning Commissioner Roy Reed said at the commission’s Sept. 3 meeting. “Since it’s quite obvious none of the issues have any degree of merit.”
County staff refuted each of appellant Jan Vandebos Naify’s criticisms against the two-bathroom project, which she formally appealed on May 27, two days after county Planning and Development greenlit homeowner Thano Adamson’s request.
Adamson responded to Naify’s claims in-person at the Sept. 3 appeal hearing.
“She claims she wasn’t adequately noticed. Notices were properly issued by the county as proven by the appellant’s ability to file this appeal,” said Adamson, who described Naify’s actions as “tantamount to personal harassment.”
He said the claims listed in the appeal were “based on false statements and inaccuracies, which not only disrupt our lives, but more importantly, waste the commission’s time and incurs unnecessary community resources and taxpayer funds.”
A much larger development project at Adamson’s 10-acre rural property on Alamo Pintado Road, just north of Ballard, faced opposition from Naify in 2021—when the county approved Adamson’s plan to build a 2,600-square-foot single-family home there.
Naify’s appeal of the county’s 2021 decision put a half-year halt on the house’s development. When the case came before the Planning Commission in 2022, Naify told commissioners that she’d had “undisclosed” quarrels with her neighbors, the Adamsons, in the past.
“It always stuck out to me as the perfect example of an unmeritorious appeal,” 3rd District Planning Commissioner John Parke said at the commission’s Sept. 3 meeting, referring to Naify’s 2021 appeal.
“We’re doing it all over again,” he continued.
Parke was part of the unanimous vote that denied the 2021 appeal. During that hearing, he commented that if Naify’s accusations were the basis of a litigation proceeding instead, her claims “would border on malicious prosecution.”
The Planning Commission also rejected Naify’s recent appeal of the two-bathroom project unanimously.
“I don’t want to speak at length about this because I think we should be expeditious in our treatment of this matter,” Parke said about the bathroom appeal. “I’m counting two, three, six professionals from county planning and county counsel who are salaried employees. They’re taking up the time to review this, to prepare for it.”
The price of filing a land use appeal with the county is $812. In order to move forward with a staff analysis and a public hearing, an appeal must be filed no later than 10 calendar days after the land use decision in question was made.
In Naify’s case, the bathroom appeal hearing took place more than three months after the county’s approval of Adamson’s request.
“There’s no cost-recovery mechanism,” Parke continued. “The applicant doesn’t pay for this, they pay for staff work and the processing of their application. … The public pays for it.”
This article appears in Sep 11 – Sep 18, 2025.