Rival Growth Plans Taking Shape in Simi

The Simi Valley City Council on Monday hammered out the wording of slow-growth measures it plans to put before the voters on the November ballot, rivaling similar propositions by a private group.

After weeks of drafting and redrafting proposals, the council decided to hold a special session Wednesday to vote on the measures agreed upon Monday night.

Simi Valley Urban Planner Pat Richards said that all four initiatives--two by the council and two by the citizens group--will probably be placed before voters in November.

Homeowners who favor the rival slow-growth initiatives criticized the council measures.

The council’s proposals “attempt to confuse the people so that they don’t know what to vote for,” said Ed Sloman, a member of Citizens for Managed Growth and Hillside Protection. Sloman complained that council members “are rushing through the initiatives” but “aren’t bringing it up to the standards of what people want.”

Measures Called ‘Rigid’

Councilman Glen McAdoo said the council did not want the competition. “The one thing we didn’t want to do was compete with the initiatives that are now on the ballot,” said McAdoo, but council members felt they had to offer their version because the other propositions are too rigid and “lock things in so tightly for 20 years.”

The council’s proposals would control growth for 10 years.

The growth initiative proposed by Citizens for Managed Growth and Hillside Protection would place year-to-year controls on the rate, distribution, quality and type of housing development in the city and would permit the city to issue 10,800 building permits through the year 2010, starting at 875 this year and dropping each year afterward.

Wood Ranch Exempt

The group’s initiative would exempt the 3,000-unit Wood Ranch development in western Simi Valley as well as housing projects of four units or less.

The city’s growth limitation plan would attempt to limit population--now 93,000--to 103,220 in 1991 and 114,354 in 1996.

A total of 3,636 building permits could be issued through 1991 under the city plan, and officials would be allowed to cut back the number of permits issued if problems, such as traffic congestion, arose with particular projects.

The citizens’ second measure would ban the grading of slopes steeper than 10% for industrial or commercial development and ban grading of slopes of 20% or more for residential projects. The council’s hillside plan would forbid commercial and industrial hillside development on slopes of more than 10% unless it were in a specific plan.

The city’s current hillside ordinance does not limit industrial or commercial construction but forbids residential building on hillsides with grades of 20% or more.

Citizens for Managed Growth has issued statements that its hillside initiative “will be more likely to survive a court challenge and . . . is less likely to be manipulated to benefit or favor certain developers when it is implemented.”

The group also argued that its initiatives, which qualified for the November ballot with signatures of more than 10% of the voters, are “more likely to survive attempts by the building industry to destroy it through subsequent state legislation.”

Similar Situation in Moorpark

Jennifer Shaw, attorney for Citizens for Managed Growth, said the group’s plan “tells people how big the city will be in the ‘horizon year’ of 2010 and our plan assures people that the city will not get bigger than 136,000,” whereas, under the city’s plan, “after the 10th year, they can do whatever they want.”

An unconnected but similar situation, with rival homeowner and government-sponsored growth limits, has emerged in Moorpark, the city directly west of Simi Valley.

Arguing that Moorpark’s rapid growth has overtaxed city services, the Committee for Managed Growth succeeded in placing an initiative on the Nov. 4 ballot that would limit new housing permits to 250 units annually.

The Moorpark council sharply opposed the initiative and last week gave unanimous approval to the concept of putting its own alternative measure on the ballot. That measure, which awaits formal adoption next Monday, calls for keeping the city’s population, now about 16,000, within county growth projections of about 33,000 in the year 2000.