Recognition
SBCAG marks 60 years
October 19, 2026
Six decades of partnership have helped Santa Barbara County communities plan together, invest locally and bring state and federal transportation dollars home.
Every day, people travel across Santa Barbara County without giving much thought to where one city ends and another begins. For 60 years, the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments brought local governments together to work across those same boundaries to solve shared problems and invest in the transportation system that connects them.
The SBCAG Board of Directors marked the agency’s 60th anniversary Thursday with U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal, federal, state and local officials, former board members, community partners and staff. — looking back at six decades of working together and ahead to the needs of the next generation.
What began in 1966 with five cities and Santa Barbara County around one regional table has grown into a partnership among all eight incorporated cities and the County. Today, SBCAG is governed by a 13-member Board of Directors made up of all five county supervisors and one elected official from each of the county’s eight cities. SBCAG helps communities plan together, secure funding and make long-term transportation investments that can be difficult to accomplish alone.
“I say that we’re a small agency that does big things,” said SBCAG Executive Director Marjie KIRN. “We’re behind the scenes bringing people together and making things happen.”
“What really helps make this organization work is that everybody is at the table and everybody has a voice,” said SBCAG Board Chair and County Supervisor Bob Nelson. “We stand on the shoulders of past directors and, ultimately, the taxpayers of Santa Barbara County who fund these projects and trust us to deliver on the promises we’ve made.”
From planning together to investing together
SBCAG’s story began in October 1966, when Santa Barbara County and the cities of Carpinteria, Guadalupe, Lompoc, Santa Barbara and Santa Maria established the Santa Barbara County-Cities Area Planning Council. Communities were growing, challenges increasingly crossed local boundaries and working together created new opportunities to pursue federal funding.
Transportation soon became a major part of that work. By the 1970s, the organization had taken on state and federal transportation planning responsibilities. In 1989, Santa Barbara County voters approved Measure D, the county’s first half-cent transportation sales tax. A year later, the Area Planning Council became the separate public agency known today as SBCAG.
Voters followed Measure D with Measure A in 2008, creating a 30-year local transportation investment program for highways, local streets and roads, transit, bicycle and pedestrian improvements, Safe Routes to School and other transportation priorities. Those locally controlled dollars also help Santa Barbara County compete for state and federal transportation funding.
Today, that work can take many forms. SBCAG helps plan and fund highway and interchange improvements, local streets and roads, bus and passenger rail service, and bicycle and pedestrian connections. Sometimes SBCAG leads a project. Other times, it helps a city, the County or a transit provider secure funding and regional support for a local priority.
For the people who use those investments, the purpose is simpler: helping people get where they need to go.
Planning today for what comes next
SBCAG continues to advance transportation priorities planned years ago while beginning the work that will guide future investments.
Highway 101 improvements continue through Montecito and Santa Barbara. Elsewhere in the county, SBCAG and its partners are studying future transportation needs along State Routes 135 and 166 and in the Lompoc Valley, while advancing projects such as the Santa Ynez Valley Trail.
The projects and needs may change, but the idea behind the organization remains much the same: communities can accomplish more when they work together.
“Somebody around 60 years ago was thinking about our futures. And we have to do the same thing for the next generation,” KIRN said. “We have to come together and say, ‘Hey, this is going to be a problem in five, 15, 20 years. We have to work on it now so the future generation can say, ‘thank you.’”
U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal pointed to SBCAG’s ability to bring local, state and federal partners together around shared priorities.
“SBCAG is the hub of all the spokes — federal funding, state funding and local funding,” Carbajal said. “You are the ones that make it all happen.”
SBCAG’s 60th anniversary is being recognized throughout Santa Barbara County by its eight cities, the County and local, state and federal partners.