At the start of the county’s planning commission meeting on Wednesday, Chair Laura Bridley acknowledged that this meeting would be her last. Bridley had announced her resignation a week earlier, on August 27, saying she was doing so in part because the state mandates were eroding local discretion.
“I’ve decided to step down because the kind of planning that I was thinking we were doing is kind of waning in my eyes,” she said.
State Assemblymember Gregg Hart, at that time Santa Barbara County’s 2nd District Supervisor, nominated Bridley to the Planning Commission in April 2019, after former commissioner Cecila Brown stepped down. Bridley brought approximately 40 years of experience as a planner and a consultant, having worked both in the public and private sector. By early 2020, her fellow members elected her chair…