PARKING EMERGENCY!

Santa Barbara Humane is asking the City of Goleta to eliminate 13 parking spaces on Overpass Rd. so that they can put in a new driveway/entrance when they rework their site. They currently have two points of access, one for the general public and one for staff and volunteers, with sufficient sight lines for safe access. Their site plan, including a new entrance, has received planning approval, but the City has not yet agreed to repaint curbs on Overpass Rd. that would eliminate a huge section of parking.

Overpass Rd. is already choked with cars and insufficient parking. Local businesses include a storage facility, Tierra Construction, and three agencies that directly serve the people and animals of the City of Goleta: Animal Services, ASAP, and BUNS. Goleta contracts with Animal Services to provide the full range of services as an animal control agency, from impounding stray animals to animal adoptions to licensing (mandated at the state and local level) and much more. Animal Services also hosts a pet pantry/resource center that supports low income pet owners. 

Parking on Overpass Rd. is already a nightmare, making it very difficult for staff, volunteers, and members of the public to access a critical government facility. Overpass Rd. is used as de facto storage for old cars. Tierra Construction employees use it as an employee parking lot. The street lost parking spaces when MTD reconfigured its entrances recently. Santa Barbara Humane has clear signage at its entrances that its lots are not to be used by neighboring organizations. The existing shortage of parking spaces would make the Animal Services shelter functionally inaccessible except at very quiet times of day, when the few spaces in its lot are not taken. It would also mean that at busier times, the general public, staff and volunteers would have to walk long distances, from available parking.

We respectfully ask the Goleta City Council to deny this request to repaint the curb and eliminate parking at a critical area, and instead to encourage Santa Barbara Humane to rework its site plan so as to use its existing entrances to direct cars to new parking areas via internal driveways.