Shelby Builder’s Remedy Project Clears Goleta Planning Commission

“It was an obstacle course,” said Goleta Planning Commissioner Rita Serotkin, describing a recent journey to pick up a student at Dos Pueblos High School. “Just trying to get across to the high school took 15 or 20 minutes, because cars are coming out of the parking lot and going into the parking lot … and then they’re backed up from the light at Storke — that’s a whole other issue,” she warned. “It’s a nightmare. And in all of that there’s the electric bikes, weaving in and out.”

Serotkin’s day-in-the-life came during the Goleta Planning Commission’s hearing for the Shelby development at 7400 Cathedral Oaks Road. The project looks to build 56 single-family homes about a quarter mile from the Glen Annie and Cathedral Oaks intersection and up the road from Dos Pueblos High. Serotkin voted to pass the project, despite her reservations, as did three of her colleagues, who noted the value to the community of the project’s 11 “affordable” homes. Commissioner Cary Penniman was the sole vote against.

Penniman questioned the sections of the environmental impact report (EIR) that had mentioned or omitted the implications of the 800-1,000 homes slated for Glen Annie Golf Club, which is next door to Shelby, just past city limits in the County of Santa Barbara. The 56 homes at Shelby alone would create a “significant and unavoidable” impact on traffic, according to the EIR, and the project is to compensate with sidewalks, bike lanes, a bus stop, and a school carpool plan. For Penniman, converting the golf course to homes was a foreseeable negative for circulation and fire that would have an untenable impact on public safety.

“Any new projects in El Encanto Heights are not safe to approve,” Penniman said, referring to the namesake creek and the foothills it flows through. Several public commenters agreed with him, one noting four fatal accidents between Winchester and Glen Annie in the past four years, and another calling the backup at the highway a “lethal hazard.”

The discussion raised the issue of the rezoning of properties to comply with state housing law. Every eight years, each municipality in California must make it possible to build an assigned number of homes, often requiring rezones to achieve the number. Goleta did it for about a dozen properties — at the Kenwood Village Project nearby it increased the density, or the number of homes per acre. The county rezoned more than twice as many, including Glen Annie Golf Club, changing the recreational zoning to residential. To achieve the rezones, each jurisdiction conducted a “programmatic” EIR of all affected properties in 2023-2024.

A year after the dust settled, Goleta’s council came to understand to their profound dismay that the programmatic EIR meant individual projects no longer had to do a separate EIR, except for health or safety reasons. In fact, during an October 2025 review of the latest state housing policies, Councilmember Stuart Kasdin said he felt “terrible that what I told the public was wrong” during the rezone process. Because of the rezones, the city’s housing document was delayed, opening the door to the builder’s remedy, which limits local planning actions in exchange for income-restricted housing.

Shelby took advantage of the builder’s remedy to gain density, waivers, and concessions by creating 11 deed-restricted homes — five lower-income, six in the moderate range — among the 56 residences. Shelby also filed an application under Senate Bill 330, which streamlined permitting times and standards. The session before the Planning Commission on March 2 was the second of the five hearings the project may have, Commissioner Joyce Maynard observed; revising the EIR would eat up more meetings. The first hearing had been a design review on February 10. Next up would be certification of the EIR at City Council.

The last word on housing tends to be water. At the hearing, the practice of “water wheeling” came up, an artifact from the decades Shelby has been in process, including during a water moratorium. If water could not be secured, Shelby had considered buying it outside the Goleta Water District. Each water user would contract with the other provider, and pay the Goleta district to “wheel” the water through its pipes. City Planner Lisa Prasse said the project now had a preliminary, conditional water letter from Goleta Water District.