2 Ways of Life Collide in Fast-Growing Moorpark

Moorpark, the third-fastest growing city in the state, has a split personality.

Growth has brought unwanted elements of big-city life--traffic congestion, day laborers crowded into single-family houses, graffiti and empty commercial buildings--into Moorpark’s downtown.

Meanwhile, the 2,500-home planned community of Mountain Meadows in the hills south of downtown is a world apart. The houses, which range in value from $350,000 to $500,000, line broad parkways landscaped with lush grass and trees, and residents enjoy the use of public swimming pools, parks and new schools.

Those who live downtown cling to memories of Moorpark’s past, when not all that long ago the biggest excitement in town was the twice-daily arrival and departure of the coastal passenger train. Now that Moorpark’s population has more than doubled since 1984--from 12,000 to more than 25,000--longtime residents wonder why growth has left them without the amenities enjoyed in the hills.

Congested Areas

Many of the community’s newer residents say they have few ties to downtown and see it as suffering from the ills that brought them to Moorpark from more congested areas.

Those strong and contrasting feelings about the community have crystallized over several issues facing the Moorpark City Council--the lack of a downtown park, a proposed downtown redevelopment area, increasing traffic congestion and a fast-food restaurant proposed for the city’s busiest corner.

Last week, hill residents came to the City Council meeting to support building a McDonald’s, which they say will generate $100,000 a year in tax revenues for the city, at the northeast corner of Los Angeles Avenue and Spring Road downtown.

The proposal, which the council is still considering, would be near apartment buildings. City Council members worry that it would add to traffic at what is already the city’s most congested intersection.

Development Blocked

Yet 18 months ago, hill residents successfully blocked a development proposed for a site near Mountain Meadows that included a fast-food restaurant. At the time, they said it was inappropriate to place such a restaurant near homes.

“Some of our leading citizens want to ram this . . . down the throats of Moorpark,” said Councilman Clint Harper, referring to the downtown McDonald’s. The project’s advocates were “the same people who wanted us to do something about” the commercial project near Mountain Meadows.

The community split was evident at a meeting this summer of the Downtown Neighborhood Council. One of the purposes of the meeting was to explain to downtown residents the reasons that the Moorpark Board of Education and the City Council were battling in court over a downtown piece of property.

A Ventura Superior Court judge recently issued a compromise ruling that ordered the school district to sell the 8-acre property to the city, which wants to build a park there. But the school district’s explanations of its position failed to satisfy downtown residents.

Downtown residents “don’t need to be placated,” said former city councilman John Galloway, a longtime Moorpark resident who was defeated in November by an opponent from Mountain Meadows. In response to a lengthy explanation of the school district’s position, he said: “We do not appreciate someone from out of town making things less than clear.”

That “us versus them” perspective seems to color many of the comments made at public meetings on various city issues. Affluent Moorpark residents feel “that we don’t belong here any more,” said Barbara Shultz, who lives downtown.

Shultz and others took offense at comments they said were made by school board members and City Council members. They said downtown residents were being taxed for a park that has not yet been built.

Ethel Sulkis, a retired Moorpark schoolteacher who has resided in the city for 28 years and now lives in a small house near the city’s center, said: “This is a town made up of the people in Mountain Meadows versus the people downtown. Sure, I’d like to live up there and be one of the snobs.”

‘Envy and Jealousy’

But former mayor John Lane attributed such comments to “envy and jealousy.” He said the feelings of downtown residents who say they have not shared equally in the town’s prosperity stem from “the same old class argument--the haves versus the have-nots.”

“I’ve lived in this town over four years and for the first three years, all I ever heard about was ‘the people on the hill,’ ” Lane said.

While campaigning citywide in 1987, Lane said, he never heard hill residents disparage residents in older Moorpark. He said he understands their distrust of newcomers.

“The people on the hill do take an active role in city government, and many residents up here . . . unselfishly hold food drives for the Moorpark Pantry . . . without asking for thanks or a pat on the back,” he said. The Moorpark Pantry is a charity canteen that feeds homeless and poor people.

Downtown residents remember a different past. Not long ago, they say, everyone knew everyone else. Or at least they nodded to one another upon entering the Cactus Patch, a restaurant where Moorpark politics and scandals were hashed out over cups of coffee.

Now, newcomers in the hills socialize with their neighbors, and those who live downtown stick together, city observers say. They gather in small, separate knots outside City Council meetings. Even the congregation at the United Methodist Church of Moorpark, a center for community interaction for 97 years, seems to have been split, said the Rev. Walter Dilg.

Social Events

Although new and old residents mingle after Sunday services, church social events seem to draw only the younger, newer residents. “When we have social events, we don’t have the fellowship of the whole church,” he said, adding that the church is trying to overcome that.

The strongest focus for downtown residents’ distrust is the City Council’s effort to redevelop nearly all of Moorpark’s downtown, an area that includes about 1,300 houses. The city has formed a redevelopment agency whose purpose is to attract commercial activity and housing to the area.

City officials say redevelopment will allow tax revenue to be used to pay for sidewalk, storm drain and street repairs. They say they will be able to lend residents money to rehabilitate their houses.

But residents fear that the redevelopment plan is a ploy to seize their houses. The City Council has attempted to calm those fears by putting a measure on the November ballot that would prohibit the city from using eminent domain laws to seize any houses in residentially zoned areas. City officials acknowledge, however, that a few houses in commercial areas could be condemned.

“Maybe my mind is twisted,” Sulkis said, “but I think developers would love to come in here and take down these homes and build crackerjack houses. . . . I’m mad as hell about redevelopment.”

Joseph Latunski, an outspoken 30-year resident of downtown Moorpark, said: “Now that the new group has moved into Moorpark, they want to get rid of the elderly, the Mexicans and the poor. What we need to do is stop redevelopment and fire half of City Hall.”

Adding to the distrust among downtown residents is that all five Moorpark City Council members live in the hills. Until 1988, downtown residents or their allies had formed a council majority.

Hill Residents Afraid

Downtowners may be alienated, but hill residents say they are afraid. Parents of fourth- and fifth-graders attending Flory School downtown worry about their safety and their quality of education.

Flory is the only school in the district that serves grades four and five, so it serves students from all areas of the city, and its enrollment would be about 75% Latino if white students were not bused in from the hills.

Younger children go to neighborhood schools.

Newer residents “think the downtown area is a drug zone,” said Tom Baldwin, a school board member. “I tell them it’s a lot of hogwash, with Moorpark having the lowest crime rate in the county.”

Annual statistics issued by the FBI last month confirmed that, indeed, Moorpark’s crime rate is the lowest in Ventura County.

Some Fears Unwarranted

But Baldwin said some of the fears of downtown residents are unwarranted. He lives neither in the hills nor downtown. And that was a hurdle he had to get over to be elected to the school board, even though his anti-growth views address downtown residents’ concerns, he said.

“I think part of the problem . . . is that the downtown people have never trusted people who have never lived in downtown,” Baldwin said.

Moorpark Mayor Eloise Brown, who lives in the hills but consistently allies herself with downtown residents, said the old-timers need to realize that tax revenue brought in by developments such as Mountain Meadows makes it possible for the city to consider buying land and building a downtown park.

“There would be no money . . . without those new homes,” she said. “One thing I think they need to be told is that there is a partnership going on here--it may not be a partnership of choice--but maybe we need to come to that realization.”