I was saddened and concerned to receive the mailer from the slate candidates for the Montecito Sanitary District, Barrett, Francis and Wicks, the other day. After reading it, I keep coming back to that phrase.
The brochure describes “the opposition's plan.” As the opposition, I was surprised to read this, because neither John Murphy nor I has advocated rebuilding in Montecito, and neither of us has opposed connecting to Santa Barbara. What we are on record doing is asking for the facts. We have said publicly that both options carry real advantages and real risks, and that we are waiting for the facts to be developed so they can be assessed and weighed accordingly. If they can point to a statement where either of us committed to a plan, they should produce it.
The condition of the plant is the most urgent problem this District faces. Critical systems are at or past the end of their useful lives, and that has to be addressed now. In June 2025, an engineering study found that 29 percent of the plant's assets had two years or less of useful life left, and 67 percent had less than 10 years. That 29 percent includes the plant's core treatment basins: a structural study found the concrete in the aeration basins, clarifiers, and chlorine contact basin is cracking from a chemical reaction that cannot be stopped once it starts, and that those structures need replacement or substantial rebuilding. But stabilization and the treatment decision cannot be separated, because what you build depends on where you are going.
That second decision, where Montecito's wastewater is treated, is the largest this District has ever faced, and it will outlast everyone currently serving on the Board. Montecito will live with it for forty years. A decision of that size has to be made on what is actually true: what the engineering shows, what the alternatives genuinely cost, what each path commits us to. Not on what is convenient to believe, and not on what we decided before we looked.
Let me be as clear as I can be about this. Connection to Santa Barbara may well turn out to be the right answer for Montecito. If the study shows that it is, I will vote for it and I will work to get it built. I am not defending the plant we have, and I am not defending the status quo. What I will not do is promise savings that no one has calculated yet.
That is why John Murphy and I keep saying we have not taken a position. Not because we lack one in waiting, but because the analysis is not finished, and we would rather be the directors who waited for the facts than the ones who guessed and happened to be right by accident.
What the mailer says, and what the record shows
Six statements in that mailer are wrong. One is about John Murphy and me. The other five are about the District, and each can be checked against public documents.
It describes an “opposition's plan.” There is no such plan. Neither John Murphy nor I has advocated rebuilding in Montecito, and neither of us has opposed connecting to Santa Barbara. Telling voters that the choice before them is one plan against another misstates the choice. The real difference is that they have decided and we are waiting for the study to report.
It says the District's discharge goes onto Butterfly Beach. It does not. The District discharges through a permitted ocean outfall that extends 1,500 feet offshore and releases through a diffuser at a depth of roughly 35 feet. There is no discharge at the shoreline.
It calls the Southland agreement a no-bid contract. The District issued a request for proposals. Two firms responded, Southland and ENGIE. In September 2025 the Board awarded Southland a $1,675,230 professional services agreement for an Investment Grade Audit. It is a study and design-development agreement, not a construction contract, and it does not commit the District to build anything. Woody Barrett sat on the Board that awarded it, and he voted in favor. He is now campaigning against his own vote.
It describes the adopted rate schedule as a mandate. In June 2026 the Board adopted a five-year schedule that sets a ceiling. Each annual rate within that schedule remains subject to Board review and approval before it takes effect. It is not an automatic escalation that no one can revisit. The increase is real, and ratepayers are entitled to question its necessity and its size.
I voted for the rate study and for the increase, and I stand behind both votes. It was the necessary decision, and it was made necessary by the years that preceded it. The District cannot maintain a failing plant and a 74-mile collection system on revenue last set in 2019. By the time I joined this Board, there was no version of responsible stewardship that did not involve raising rates. I will defend that vote to anyone who asks.
So did Woody Barrett. He voted to commission the rate study. He voted to adopt the five-year schedule. He voted for this year's increase. Then he put his name on a mailer attacking it. That is my objection. Not that rates went up, but that a man who voted three times for this rate action is now campaigning against it and hoping voters do not check.
There is a longer version of that story. The District's previous rate study was done in 2016. Rates were last raised in 2019. From 2019 until 2026, through years of inflation and with the plant's condition documented in the District's own engineering studies, this Board did not raise rates at all. Woody Barrett served through every one of those years, and was Board President from December 2022 to December 2025. Deferring revenue does not make infrastructure cheaper. It makes the eventual increase larger, which is what ratepayers are facing now.
It describes the District's effluent as partially treated. The District discharges secondary-treated domestic wastewater under its permit: biologically treated and disinfected to the standards the permit requires, and monitored for compliance. Secondary treatment is a defined treatment standard.
It reproduces a figure from a scientific study and labels it as something it is not. The figure comes from Monitoring the Microbiology of the Montecito Outflow Wastewater Plume, a final report submitted in January 2010 under the California Clean Beaches Initiative. Two things are wrong with how the mailer uses it.
First, the figure does not show effluent. It shows ocean currents, mapped by tracking floating drifters. Labeling those paths as wastewater discharge changes what the picture means.
Second, the panel the mailer reproduced is the one showing every drifter in the study: all 774 of them. The study released drifters at three separate stations, at the diffuser, 500 meters offshore, and 1,000 meters offshore. That panel plots all three sets together. The report contains a separate panel showing only the drifters released at the diffuser, which is the one that bears on where Montecito's effluent goes. The mailer used the other one, and labeled it as the District's discharge.
The study's findings do not support the mailer. Effluent was extensively diluted after discharge, consistent with the diffuser's design. No beach water quality criteria were exceeded, and the study found no direct evidence that the bacteria measured at the shoreline came from the plant. Carter Ohlmann, who led that study and now sits on this Board, has written publicly that the campaign material strips his work of its context and reverses its meaning.
A campaign piece is a small thing next to a forty-year decision. But it is the one document voters actually hold, and it is the only evidence most people will ever have about how a candidate handles information. A mailer is vetted. Three candidates put their names on it. Whatever else that document is, it is a demonstration of how these three handle facts when the facts are inconvenient. That may be the single most relevant thing a voter can know about anyone asking to make a decision of this magnitude.
Trust, competence and integrity are not separate qualities. They rest on the same foundation, which is a willingness to say what is true even when it does not help. I would rather lose an election than win one on a document like this.
The question the mailer does not raise
Some of the problems described in that mailer are the same problems Woody Barrett campaigned on in 2018.
He has served on this Board since 2018. His slate has held a majority since 2020. He was Board President from December 2022 to December 2025. That is not a minority voice blocked from acting. That is eight years of being in the room, six of them with the votes, three of them holding the gavel.
In that time, Mr. Barrett did not bring the connection to Santa Barbara to a decision. He did not move on the deteriorating plant until his final year as president. The District's own 2004 plan called for planning the plant's replacement, and by the District's own account, “Not much came of this plan.” The request for proposals that led to today's audit did not go out until February 2025. He used up the valuable time the District needed to study the question fully before acting. The last rate study before 2026 was done in 2016. Rates were last raised in 2019. The treatment decision now described as obvious and urgent was not advanced, the plant was not fixed, and rates stayed flat while costs rose sharply. The position this District is in today is, in great part, his responsibility.
To his credit, Mr. Barrett did have the Santa Barbara connection added to the study now under way, and every member of this Board, including me, voted for that. It was the right step. It is also the reason his mailer is so hard to square with his own record: he is campaigning to connect to Santa Barbara before the study he voted for has reported its findings. If the facts were already in hand, the study would not be running. If they are not in hand, no one can honestly promise what connection will cost.
Whichever path this District takes, the work after the decision is years of construction, financing, permitting and oversight. It will require decisiveness, hard work and execution. Mr. Barrett has had eight years to demonstrate all three, and has not done so. A board that held the votes for six years and did not replace a single failing blower is not the board I would trust to deliver a project of this size.
A word about the other two names on that mailer. Mr. Francis and Mr. Wicks have not served on this Board, and none of that record is theirs. Mr. Wicks has his own long association with this group: in 2020 he ran as part of the Committee for Montecito Water Security, a slate that backed candidates for both the water district and this Board at the same time. He has served on the Montecito Water District Board since December 2016, and the term Montecito most recently elected him to runs through December 2028. That is where he told voters he would be, and I think that is where he should stay. The water district has its own unfinished work, all of it important to Montecitans, and finishing the job you asked for is not a small thing.
I am not questioning anyone's motives or their commitment to Montecito. I am pointing at a record. Study has to become decision, and decision has to become finished work that residents can see and measure. That is the standard I am asking voters to apply, and it is the standard I expect to be held to myself.
What a complete comparison has to establish
Connection to Santa Barbara could offer economies of scale and relieve the District of operating a treatment plant. Those are substantial potential benefits, and they deserve serious consideration. What follows is not an argument against connection. It is the set of questions that has to be answered before anyone can honestly claim to know which path costs Montecito less.
Connection is itself a construction project
Sending wastewater to Santa Barbara requires more than an agreement to use another plant. The components discussed publicly include a lift station, twin force mains, electrical improvements, equalization basins and odor control.
- Lift station. Pumping capacity, operating pressures, redundancy, and the equipment needed to maintain service during maintenance or failure.
- Twin force mains. Two 18-inch pressurized pipelines running roughly a mile, from the plant to the vicinity of the zoo. That means a defined route, hydraulic design, excavation through developed ground, valves, connections and surface restoration.
- Electrical system. Nothing here can be reused. The District's electrical system dates to the 1960s and is ungrounded. It has to be replaced in its entirety, and that is true under either path. What differs is how it must be sized and configured, because a system built to run a treatment plant is not the same as one built to run a pump station, storage basins and odor control. We are going to spend this money once, and it should be spent on equipment that fits where we are actually going.
- Equalization basins. At least four million gallons of storage. The basins are needed for two separate reasons: to hold storm flow arriving faster than the transfer system or the City can accept, and because the City wants to receive our wastewater at night. Storing a day's flow for overnight delivery is a permanent operating condition, not a wet-weather contingency.
- Odor control. Holding wastewater through the day and pumping it to Santa Barbara overnight requires a defined odor-management system, with its own equipment and ongoing operating and maintenance costs. Without it, odors would reach nearby homes.
An earlier engineering analysis identified equalization as necessary to avoid affecting El Estero during extreme wet-weather events. The September 2026 committee report likewise identifies equalization as a significant cost issue, and questions whether the contracted study scope will produce enough information for the ultimate decision. Daily average flow cannot size this project. What matters is what happens during the storms that hit both communities at once.
A lower treatment rate is not a lower sewer bill
Santa Barbara's cost of operating its own plant is different from the price it would charge Montecito, and both are different from Montecito's total cost of collecting, conveying and treating wastewater.
Connection does not remove our collection network. Mains, manholes, local pump stations, maintenance and rehabilitation still require funding. Staffing and administration could change, and any savings there should be counted. But the collection function continues, and our system is an extensive network serving a relatively small customer base. The District's collection system master plan identifies 14 projects totaling about $29 million over the next 10 years, and that work is needed under either path. Comparing residential bills between communities cannot isolate the effect of treatment costs.
The transition matters too. The existing plant has to keep working through negotiation, design, permitting, construction and commissioning. The analysis should separate repairs needed under either path, improvements reusable in a future transfer system, and investments specific to continued local treatment. Both alternatives should be compared over the same planning period, with the same assumptions about inflation, borrowing, maintenance, replacement and risk, and the result should show the likely effect on customer bills.
Terms, not concepts
Before committing to connection, I would want the City's position on acceptable average and peak flows, delivery windows, wet-weather limits, and the terms for reserving capacity. I would want to know what happens during maintenance outages and emergencies, how disputes are resolved, how long the agreement runs, and what protections Montecito has if circumstances change. A technically feasible concept is not an agreement that provides dependable service.
Most of all, the City has to tell us what it will charge us to treat our wastewater. We do not have that figure. We do not have a range. We do not have a rough order of magnitude. No one advocating connection has it either, because the City has not offered it.
Who would set our rates
There is a question here that goes beyond money. Today, the cost of treating Montecito's wastewater is set by a board elected by Montecito, in meetings held in Montecito, answerable to the people who pay the bills. Under connection, the largest single component of that cost would be a price charged by the City of Santa Barbara and set by the Santa Barbara City Council, a body no Montecito resident votes for and none of us can hold accountable.
Our Board would still send the bill. But it would be passing along a charge it did not set and could not refuse, under an agreement that may run for decades. The terms of that agreement are the only protection our ratepayers would have, which is exactly why the terms have to be on the table before any decision, not after.
That is not an argument against connection. Plenty of communities buy treatment capacity from a neighbor and are well served by it. It is an argument that the price, the escalation, the capital-cost allocation, and the remedies available to Montecito are the heart of this decision rather than details to be worked out later.
Those costs will not stand still. The City's own climate adaptation plan, adopted in 2026, projects that El Estero is likely to flood in a 100-year storm by about 2050, and says the City will need to decide whether to protect the plant in place or relocate it. A connection agreement would determine how much of that Montecito pays.
Environmental benefits and future reuse
Connection would move discharge away from our outfall. Santa Barbara also discharges treated wastewater to the ocean and operates a recycled-water system. Connection changes the location and management of discharge. It does not by itself establish that Montecito's wastewater would be recycled or that ocean discharge would end. If a specific recycling outcome is intended, the comparison should identify the facilities, approvals and costs required to achieve it, under either alternative.
What I would support putting before the public
- A defined project scope and route for each alternative, with current capital estimates and clearly stated uncertainty.
- A documented transition plan, including interim work and opportunities to reuse investments.
- Comparable long-term costs and customer-rate projections, including financing and equipment replacement.
- Santa Barbara's proposed service and financial terms, with reliability and environmental comparisons.
I am willing to consider evidence supporting either alternative. Neither conclusion is established by a campaign mailer. Ratepayers deserve to see the costs, benefits, assumptions and commitments of both paths before the Board makes its final choice. I will keep pressing for that information, and for a decision grounded in it.
Sources, all public records: MSD NPDES Permit CA0047899, Table 1 and Attachment F; MSD Board packet of September 10, 2025, pages 65 to 66 and Exhibit B; MSD 2026 Sewer Rate Update; MSD WWTP Ad Hoc Committee Report of September 8, 2026; Carollo Enhanced Recycled Water Feasibility Analysis, TM2, February 2022; and Monitoring the Microbiology of the Montecito Outflow Wastewater Plume, final report, January 2010; MSD Life Expectancy Analysis, June 2025; MSD Seismic Risk Evaluation, 2025; MSD Request for Proposals, Design-Build Services, February 26, 2025; MSD Collection System Master Plan, Board packet of October 14, 2026; and City of Santa Barbara Wastewater and Water Systems Climate Adaptation Plan, 2026. A fuller account of the plant's condition and the two alternatives is in the short briefing paper on the treatment plant.