Slow-Growth Groups Ponder Joint Effort in Simi Valley, Camarillo and Moorpark

The leaders of slow-growth organizations in three Ventura County cities have met to compare notes and discuss pooling their resources.

But no concrete plans for joint action emerged from the gathering last week that included leaders of citizens groups that have lobbied for restraints on development in Simi Valley, Camarillo and Moorpark.

“We can’t be concerned only about our own communities,” Thomas Rusch, president of the Assn. of Camarillo Residents, told the group of about 45 people gathered at Camarillo Library. Rusch said explosive growth “doesn’t have to be in my backyard to wake me up.”

David Penner, treasurer of Citizens for Managed Growth and Hillside Protection, the citizens group in Simi Valley, said the meeting allowed each group the chance “to understand some of the problems that other cities are facing in Ventura County.”

Value of Unity

“We may be able to lend each other some type of support, whether moral or emotional, and we might be able to get further with unity,” Penner said.

One Moorpark resident suggested the formation of a joint legal-defense fund to fight developers.

Bob Crawford, president of the Moorpark Committee for Managed Growth, said developers outmaneuver city officials in the three communities.

“There is no comparison between a major developer and a part-time, inexperienced and small City Council,” Crawford said.

Penner suggested that residents may have their best defense in the initiative process, which can be used to limit growth.

His Simi Valley group has placed two initiatives on the November ballot in the city of 93,000 people.

Curbs on Grading

One initiative, to protect the hillside areas, would prohibit grading on slopes of 10% or more for industrial or commercial development and on slopes of 20% or more for residential development.

The second would place yearly controls on the rate, distribution, quality and type of housing development in the city to prevent air pollution and traffic congestion. The number of new housing units permitted each year would begin at 875 this year and decline substantially each year. By the year 2010, a total of no more than 10,800 housing units would be allowed.

Slow-growth advocates in Moorpark, a city of 15,000, have taken similar steps to fight the City Council’s approval of a massive housing development.

The development would call for as many as 325 homes a year to be built over 12 years. It would be excluded from requirements included in an initiative that the group was able to qualify for the ballot.

The initiative would limit construction of housing units to 250 a year, excluding projects such as housing for senior citizens, low-income families and single-family homes on five acres or more.

Camarillo slow-growth proponents said they have had few problems regarding residential development, but they were concerned about the proposed construction of a large industrial development between Camarillo Airport and the Ventura Freeway.

Industrial Zone Blocked

However, the Camarillo association, formed in March, indefinitely blocked plans by the city to create the requested industrial zone for at least another year. The plan called for a large business park spreading over 337 acres of farmland.