The Santa Barbara County supervisors met behind closed doors for several hours late Tuesday morning trying to make sense of last Wednesday’s announcement that the Santa Ynez Band of the Chumash has initiated the process of taking a 360-acre piece of land adjacent to Chumash Casino Resort into “federal trust status.” This opaque designation essentially grants the tribe carte blanche to do whatever they want with the land by Highway 154 and Meadowlark Road — now used for passive grazing and occasional special events such as the most recent Intertribal Powwow — unencumbered by local land-use restrictions or considerations.
In a nutshell, the supervisors have little inclination to sue the tribe and even less legal standing to do so. For now, it appears no immediate changes are immediately on the horizon.
Supervisor Joan Hartmann, who represents the district, said she’d been in talks with the tribe to ease the regulatory burden it faced when seeking special event permits, as well as about a possible partnership with tribal leadership over plans to build new sports playing fields on the land, not to mention glamping-like amenities. The announcement caught Hartmann and her fellow supervisors flat-footed and gave them only 30 days to alert the public, hold a hearing, make comments, and weigh their options…