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Wednesday, May 19, 2004

The Board of Supervisors voted last night to delay the decision on the IV Parking Plan until June 1 . The meeting was very well attended, by both those in favor and those against the plan. The opposition got to speak first, and those 30 people spoke until about 5:15pm. After that the proponents got to speak, but I was out the door by then. From what I heard of the opponents, there were some very good issues; coastal access, cost of the permit, hardships on families, difficult for low income people, the list goes on. One of the most interesting things I learned about was the proposed way of enforcing the permits. Meter Maids would drive around in little cars with tons of cameras on top. These cameras would capture images of license plates, do some quick pattern recognition, and then display if they had a permit or not. These cars would also be equipped with GPS. I'm not sure if this violates privacy laws, with government officials roaming IV scanning plates and placing them at a time and location. Seems creepy.

Moving on to surfing, there were a lot of surfers there to say they don't want to lose Deveraux. I think the board members got the point. Sadly it appeared it pivoted the surfers against the environmental activists. Frankly, I'd rather enjoy surfing in the great outdoors then sit in meetings holding up environmentalists signs.

Sitting in the meeting, I couldn't help but feel like a pawn in the Surfrider Foundations plans. Surfrider had been involved with the planning process with the county from very early on. Surfrider proposed a plan to the planning process which was more or less accepted. Later on, however, Surfrider decided it wasn't good enough, and then rallied common-folk like you and I to help overturn the plan. I don't feel too pawnish though, there are just way too many things that haven't been thought out in the plan, and I am quite pleased that my first voyage into a board meeting turned out so well.
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Santa Barbara Surfing. Created by Tim Maddux. Continued by Pope.