SANTA YNEZ VALLEY - Making a case to appeal or not to appeal a decision to allow the Chumash Tribe to add more land to their reservation in the Santa Ynez Valley will be before the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors Tuesday.
The Board of Supervisors will hear public comment on a decision by the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to allow the Chumash to annex about seven acres of land.
The land is located across Highway 246 from its hotel and casino in Santa Ynez and has been a political and legal controversy in the Santa Ynez Valley for the past decade.
The BIA has given its second approval to the Tribe to annex the 6.9 acres onto its reservation.
The Chumash says it wants to build a cultural center, museum and retail complex on the land.
Valley opposition groups are urging Santa Barbara County Supervisors to appeal the BIA approval before a deadline later this week.
Opponents warn annexation would remove County authority over future use of the land by the tribe as well as its share of future tax revenue and would violate the Valley's Comprehensive Plan for land use.
"They (the County) are not going to be able to influence what happens there, they are not going to be able to receive the revenues that they normally would receive", says Mark Oliver of the Santa Ynez Valley Alliance, one of the local citizen groups opposing the annexation, "that leads to the second thing, the economic impact, just the 6.9 acres is going to be a loss of revenue to the county through various tax mechanisms of 43 million dollars over a 50 year period, that's a lot of money at a time when the county is strapped for cash."
In a statement released last week, Chumash Tribal Chairman Vincent Armenta said he was disappointed the Board of Supervisors agreed to hold the public hearing on the annexation.
Chairman Armenta says the Board is bowing to pressure from a small group of opponents that are intent on blocking anything the Tribe does including the planned Chumash Museum and Cultural Center which Armenta says will benefit the entire Santa Ynez Valley.
The public hearing before the Board of Supervisors is expected to get underway at about 10:00am Tuesday morning inside the Board Hearing Room at the Betteravia Government Center in Santa Maria.
The Board of Supervisors is then expected to meet in closed session to decide if it will file a formal appeal of the BIA decision to grant the Tribe's annexation.
