Village Beat
Rufus O’Dea, Keith Hamm, and Abe Powell have been hard at work building the new path on Hot Springs Road, which includes hand packing gravel and decomposed granite
by Kelly Mahan Herrick Kelly has been editor at large for the Journal since 2007, reporting on news in Montecito and beyond. She is also a licensed realtor with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, and is a member of Montecito and Santa Barbara’s top real estate team, Calcagno & Hamilton.
Connecting the Community:
Hot Springs Neighborhood Trail Complete
A
ribbon-cutting ceremony was held this week on the newly completed Hot Springs Neighborhood Trail, which connects Olive Mill Road from Casa Dorinda to East Valley Road. Since the debris flow in January 2018, the Bucket Brigade, led by Abe Powell and a committed team, has worked to restore many areas of the community, and at the same time, has taken the opportunity to build walking paths on North Jameson Lane, Olive Mill, and Hot Springs roads. The completion of the Hot Springs path marks the creation of more than two miles of new routes that aim to safely connect all six schools in Montecito. “Our goal is to complete another six miles of trails over the next three years,” Powell told us during a visit to the path on Hot Springs Road.
The long-term goal is to have an eight-mile Montecito Neighborhood Trail Network (MNTN) that connects the six local schools (MUS, CSS, Laguna Blanca, Crane, OLMC, and Cleveland), the community churches, the two business villages, and offers a clear path from the mountains to the beach. “The community needs this, and deserves this,” Powell said, adding that he hopes to continue the pathway on East Valley Road to the Upper Village, and from Hot Springs to Sycamore Canyon. In order to build these semi-rural pathways, the Bucket Brigade has been working with the county and homeowners, building the path in public right-of-way. The most recent pathway project was part of a larger recovery project on Hot Springs,
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