Santa Paula to vote on plan allowing more development

Santa Paula voters will go to the polls today to decide, for the fourth time in the last year, whether to allow more development in the mostly blue-collar town of 29,000.

If approved by a simple majority, Measure A7 would amend the city’s general plan to extend its growth boundaries to allow new development in Adams Canyon. Developers would be allowed to build up to 495 luxury homes, a 200-room resort hotel and spa and an 18-hole golf course in the canyon northwest of town.

The initiative, the lone item on the ballot, would also require developers to donate 460 acres for public use and a school site and to pay for construction of recreational venues, including soccer and other ball fields.

Resident Steve Smead, an insurance agent who wrote the initiative, said this is the first time that residents are bringing such a ballot measure to a vote instead of a developer. Smead is confident of its passage, saying it assures the city a good deal.

“Most residents won’t know it’s being built while it’s under construction or know it’s there once it’s done unless they go up there to enjoy the public parks,” Smead said.

But designer John Anthony Turturro, a city planning commissioner who opposes the plan, said that, except for a few minor changes, the proposal is essentially the same as previous failed development initiatives and that it remains a bad idea. “Adams Canyon has always been a sprawl-generating project,” he said. “Half the community, business interests and those who see this as a benefit with tax revenue and impact fees want it.... Many communities have made the mistakes we’re set to make here.”

Pinnacle Development Group, an Arizona developer, joined with Arnold Dahlberg, a San Diego County-based owner of thousands of acres north of Santa Paula, to propose Adams Preserve, which would create homes on lots averaging 12 acres. The homes on custom lots would be valued at $3 million or more each, generating total property taxes of about $5 million annually for the city.

But attorney Jim Procter, brother of Santa Paula Vice Mayor John Procter, said the economic incentives being touted are based on unproven and untested theories. The numbers also don’t consider the cost of providing city services: police, fire protection, utilities and road maintenance.

“People who believe that this will be a panacea for the city’s financial problems are kidding themselves. It’s not going to happen,” Procter said. “Even if $5 million is generated, it’s not going to materialize for 20 years, even under the best of circumstances. Armed with that knowledge, why would we even want this?”

Polling places will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

For details, visit the Ventura County recorder’s website at recorder.countyofventura.org and click on elections and then polling places.

greg.griggs@latimes.com