When residents of the Santa Maria Airport Mobile Home Park teamed up with city and county officials to try to develop a plan to relocate the park, they thought they would be further along by now.

However, their idea to move the park to another piece of airport property remains grounded by Santa Maria Public Airport officials, who are not interested in new residential development within their boundaries.

Residents of the 96-unit park along with Santa Barbara County Supervisor Joe Centeno and the Santa Maria Valley Affordable Housing Committee are focusing their efforts on a 23-acre site near Pioneer Park, south of Foster Road near the county public works yard, as a possible relocation spot.

Centeno and the others on the committee are looking to establish partnerships between agencies to tackle the valley's affordable housing problems.

“We are trying to do something,” Centeno said. “We are committed to get low-income folks into home ownership.”

When he first learned about the park and the residents' situation - sometime in the next decade, the park has to be closed - he thought it would “be an ideal place to begin to develop a project,” he added.

But the relocation site in question is still on airport property, and the Santa Maria Public Airport Board of Directors have made it clear they are not going to discuss residential development on airport land.

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As a result the two sides have not sat down to talk, and the process has stalled, leaving the residents frustrated and uncertain about their future. They have expressed their desire to move as a group, so they can maintain their neighborhood and would like to stay in the area so their children can still attend school in the Orcutt Union School District.

“Things with the county and city is almost ready to go,” said Elias Barriga, president of the resident association Vecinos Unidos, or United Neighbors. “We are waiting for the airport to get flexible.”

Barriga said residents want to see the airport involved in these talks.

“They say they will help us but we don't have any of those answers,” Barriga said of the airport board. “We don't want to have the airport stay out of (discussions) because we think they have a lot of responsibility for the problems we have had over the years.

“If they have projects going on they have a responsibility to share with us some of the planning to relocate the park and work with (Centeno's group).”

The mobile homes must be moved so the airport can fully develop a business park and golf course that are planned at the south end of the airfield near Foster Road and Highway 135.

Plans for the business park are moving through the city's development process and airport officials maintain that the park can remain for at least another eight years. Therefore, airport officials say any plans for the park closure, which includes a state-mandated conversion impact report, probably won't begin for another five years.

Without that impact report, many of the questions surrounding the relocation can't be answered, said Board President Carl Engel.

In addition to Centeno, Santa Maria City Council members Alice Patino and Leo Trujillo are also on the housing committee that is looking for ways to help the residents.

“We have a community of people out there that will be displaced, and so we thought this would be a perfect time for this task force to work with the airport district to figure out where we could place these people,” Patino said.

Simply moving the mobile home park to a new location on airport property does not solve the problem, according to airport officials, who contend they will meet to discuss the relocation when they have something to bring to the table.

“Everyone wants us to get into a meeting, and we don't have anything to offer,” Engel said.

The airport is being singled out as an easy target to build affordable housing, Engel claimed, because the authority to approve any project on its property lies with the city of Santa Maria, not Santa Barbara County - and developing something through the county's system would be much more difficult.

The airport land near Pioneer Park is off limits to building, according to Engel, because the Federal Aviation Administration will not allow houses to be built in or near the airport flight path.

The FAA is aware of the current homes on airport property, an agency spokesman said, but it is not a favorable situation.

Additionally, he said that in exchange for receiving federal Airport Improvement Program funds, airports make grant assurances - legally binding promises to the FAA - and one of Santa Maria's grant assurances does not allow for residential development on or near the airport.

“The FAA has advised the mobile home operator that the mobile park is an incompatible land use and the homes should be moved off the airport as soon as it becomes possible,” said FAA Communications Manager Ian Gregor, in an e-mail. “We're giving them time to do so because of the complexity of the task.”

Airport director Ted Eckert acknowledged the need for more affordable and workforce housing in the Santa Maria Valley, but he said the airport is not the proper location.

“A few mistaken people think an idea (for affordable housing) would include the area (near) Pioneer Park, but from an airport official's point of view and from a lifetime in the profession of flight safety, that is not an alternative in my book,” Eckert said.

He also opposes the proposed Orcutt Aquacenter at Hummel Drive and Union Valley Parkway, which is not on airport property, but close by. Even if the board decided to sell the 23 acres that are being considered for housing, the same problems would exist, he said.

Descriptions of the airport as being uncooperative are not accurate, Eckert said.

“I would not say that we wouldn't meet to talk about anything,” he said, but added that it would be easier to enter discussions if the property in question were outside the airport boundaries.

Malia Spencer can be reached at 739-2219 or mspencer@santa

mariatimes.com.

March 26, 2007