Santa Maria Valley Latinos urged a regional governing body to use transit money to fund farmworker transportation and enhanced bus service rather than to fix potholes.

About 20 members of the Latino community came to an unmet-transit-needs hearing Thursday at the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments meeting in Santa Maria.

The speakers urged the board to use $3 million of state Transit Development Act money for more frequent bus service, later bus hours and farmworker routes. The money comes from a statewide sales tax on gasoline.

Each year the county receives $12 million in TDA funds. While the South Coast channels its $6 million for the Santa Barbara Metropolitan Transit District and Easy Lift for bus services, half of North County TDA funds - in Lompoc, Santa Maria and the county - has gone to fix roads.

Last year 55 Latinos - many of them farmworkers - asked the board to direct that $3 million to help meet their transit needs. But the board said the request did not fit the definition of an "unmet-transit-need" since it was for a limited group rather than the general population.

Under current SBCAG policy, only unmet transit needs that are considered reasonable to meet and for the general public - rather than a limited group - may be funded.

However, that distinction doesn't make sense to Jesus Estrada, coordinator of the Oaxacan Indigenous Binational Front. SBCAG has approved transit projects for Vandenberg Air Force Base and for seniors, Estrada noted.

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"The military group is a group. Seniors are a group," Estrada said. "Farmworkers are a group but we form part of the community. That's what I haven't been able to understand."

Thursday's public hearing will be followed by a second one in Santa Barbara Feb. 17. The board won't determine which transit requests to fund - if any - until April or March. But SBCAG staff said they would work with local transportation agencies to analyze service expansion requests.

Jessica Scheeter, executive director of the Coalition of Sustainable Transportation (COAST), said the next step is getting the SBCAG board to change its definition of unmet transit needs so that farmworkers could be included.

Specifically, COAST would like to see more stops on the Guadalupe Flyer, which travels from Santa Maria to Guadalupe, and a bus route to the farm fields east of Santa Maria.

"The people who came today opened the eyes of some on the SBCAG board to see who this community is made up of, and that they do have specific requests," Scheeter said. "I think the need is obvious."

Estrada said he plans to meet with each SBCAG member to try to gain votes. He hopes new board members, like county supervisors Salud Carbajal and Brooks Firestone, will be sympathetic.

"I happen to be a son of a farmworker, so I understand what the families are going through today," Carbajal said, translating his comments into Spanish.

"I could have easily been in the audience at a younger age."

Not all the speakers saw increased farmworker transportation as a solution.

Scott Wenz said he felt the real problem is the need for a guest worker program such as the bracero program in the 1950s. Such a program could alleviate some of the transit problems, he said.

"These people were brought here under legal contracts, had legal standing within the United States, and had contracts. There was not a major problem of this nature," said Wenz, who is president of nonprofit Cars are Basic, but said the comments were personal rather than representing his organization.

The meeting was not just for farmworkers. Corinne Bernstein asked for later bus service on Sundays while Barry Stotts, who advocates for the disabled, commented that it takes time for activists to effect change.

"We'll continue," Estrada said. "If they don't do it this year, we'll do it next year Š until we achieve our goal."

* Staff writer Erin Carlyle can be reached at 739-2218 or by

e-mail at ecarlyle@pulitzer.net.

Jan. 21, 2005