Four wineries protested to establishing a Santa Barbara County wine business improvement district, and one winemaker threatened a lawsuit over it—but that wasn’t enough to stop its approval.
With at least 129 wineries in support of creating the district and approval from all eight cities, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to move ahead with a 1 percent assessment on all direct-to-consumer winery sales in the county. The business improvement district expected to raise approximately $1.65 million annually, which will go to the Santa Barbara County Vintners Association to market the county’s wine industry to the outside world, among other things.
“It seems to me that this is a way for the wineries across the board to pool their resources and advertise the Santa Barbara brand,” 3rd District Supervisor Joan Hartmann said during the board’s Feb. 11 meeting. “You’re going to be promoting our whole region. … I don’t think 1 percent is a big deal.”
The 129 wineries that petitioned their support represent almost 60 percent of the county’s average wine sales, with the four in opposition representing less than 2 percent, Santa Barbara County Deputy CEO Brittany Odermann said.
Hartmann asked staff that if there was a legal challenge, what that would mean for the county. Odermann said that protecting the county from potential lawsuits has been a part of all the county’s conversations with the Vintners Association.
“The agreement between the county and the Vintners Association would indemnify the county,” Odermann said. “That was a consideration from the very beginning.”
Initially, one city did vote the wine district down. On Jan. 21, the Lompoc City Council voted 2-1 to support it—but it needed three votes for the resolution to pass. With Councilmembers Jeremy Ball and Steve Bridge recusing themselves due to conflicts of interest, Councilmember Victor Vega’s lone vote against the district stymied it.
“We are actually imposing a tax on them, and we have no control,” Vega said on Jan. 21. “I just have a problem with us approving an ongoing tax that we have nothing to do with after that.”
He had a change of heart and requested a special meeting on the issue. He said he needed to be convinced that the assessment would benefit small wineries in Lompoc, and he wanted more information. Having only three council members who could vote on the issue “left me holding the bag here,” he said. “I was kind of surprised.”
During the Feb. 7 meeting, Vega said he wanted to make sure whatever motion the council made was from the local residents and included fair treatment of Lompoc, which the Vintners Association said made up about 10 percent of the county’s $165 million per year in wine sales on average.
Councilmember Dirk Starbuck supported the resolution both times but said he was skeptical about the Vintners Association and its ability to treat everyone equally.
“I’m very conflicted about whether it’s going to provide a value to our small vendors,” Starbuck said during the Jan. 21 meeting. “I’m going to count on this association to not be slighting the small people or the city. We get slighted a lot. When you use the word Santa Barbara County around me, it gets me hackled.”
Vintners Association CEO Alison Laslett assured the council that once the business improvement district was approved, all wineries would be treated equally and have an opportunity for input and to serve on the association’s board.
Now that the assessment is approved, the association’s membership will grow to more than 300 members, Laslett said.
“There’s certainly a learning curve in some of the participation. … but it is never intended that any winery with more sales has more of a say,” she told the council on Feb. 7. “In anticipation of this, we have been very clear that this is a regional organization that is meant to represent all wineries equally.”
This article appears in Feb 13-23, 2025.
Properties zoned Agricultural are conclusively presumed not to benefit from business improvement districts and are not subject to any assessment. Streets and Highways Code section 36632.