Simi Initiatives to Limit New Housing, Hillside Building Qualify

An initiative to establish extensive controls on construction of new housing in Simi Valley and another that would curb building on city hillsides have qualified for the Nov. 4 ballot, city officials said Monday.

The two measures have been advanced by a community group called Citizens for Managed Growth and Hillside Protection, which contends the city is growing too rapidly.

The measures needed about 4,100 signatures each to qualify. The group collected 6,493 signatures on the housing petition, and Ventura County officials verified 5,446 of them. The hillside plan garnered 6,634 signatures, 4,185 of which were ruled valid.

“I think there’s a concern that things are a little out of control in the city with growth and hillsides,” commented David Penner, a spokesman for the slow-growth group. “The initiatives drew a large sentiment of support.”

The City Council has opposed the initiatives as too restrictive and is drafting its own proposals. But, with the qualification of the citizens group’s proposals Monday, council members will have to take the formal step of placing them on the ballot.

The growth initiative would place year-to-year controls on the rate, distribution, quality and type of housing development in the city, which supporters say would limit traffic congestion and air pollution.

It would permit the city to issue 10,800 building permits through the year 2010, starting at 875 this year and steadily dropping to 100 in 2010. It would also exempt the 3,000-unit Wood Ranch development in western Simi Valley, as well as housing projects of four units or fewer.

The hillside measure, intended to preserve the city’s scenic and rugged ridge lines, would ban grading of slopes steeper than 10% for industrial or commercial development and ban grading of slopes of 20% or more for residential projects. That would toughen the city’s existing ordinance, which does not limit industrial or commercial construction but forbids residential building on hillsides with grades of 20% or more.

Simi Valley, in the last two years, has seen a burst of building as home mortgage interest rates fell and the recession in the home-building industry eased.

The number of city-issued dwelling permits jumped from 665 in 1983 to 2,727 last year. Population, meanwhile, rose to 89,700 last year, from 78,256 in 1981, reflecting brisk growth even during the housing slump, according to estimates by the state Department of Finance.

City Council members have criticized the two initiatives as too elaborate--the hillside plan runs more than 40 pages--and rife with contradictions with existing city and county regulations.

Instead, the council held a series of public hearings, including one Monday night, on its own managed growth and hillside protection recommendations.

“We take the essence of their initiatives and reflect them in a more workable document,” declared Councilman Greg Stratton.

The city slow-growth plan would attempt to limit population increases to county-adopted projections--103,220 in 1991 and 112,650 in 1995.

A total of 3,636 building permits could be issued through 1991, and the plan would allow officials to cut the rate at which they issue building permits if population grows more rapidly than expected in the first years.

The council’s hillside plan would bring commercial and industrial hillside development under city control, forbidding such projects on slopes of more than 10% unless the council gives special approval.

Times Staff Writer Alison Bethel contributed to this story.