Oxnard Issue: Would Guidelines Allow Too Much Growth?

Oxnard’s proposed new General Plan, designed to guide development for 30 years, has been criticized on the grounds it would allow excessive population growth. The plan envisions

the city’s 41,857 dwellings increasing to 55,319, a 32% boost. The population might swell by 41,000. Commercial development could grow by 130%.

Stephen J. Maulhardt

vice president of business development and government relations for the Oxnard Chamber of Commerce

I don’t think it causes too much growth. I think it’s a very restrictive plan because it has a lot of development controls and periodic reviews of relationships between

industrial development and housing. The law requires that you do a general plan based on a worst-case scenario. It estimates growth at the fastest possible rate that can be thought of, along with the maximum number of jobs produced and maximum number of automobile trips. By using all those worst-case maximums you get a document that looks a little scary. But what happens in real life isn’t worst case. Real life moves a lot slower. I think the proposed plan is very similar to the plan we’ve been operating under. That plan could probably be in place another 10 years before it built out what was estimated. This plan overestimates what will happen because the market will not require the kind of development the plan theoretically could allow. There’s a lot of stuff in the current plan that is still undone. The same thing will happen with this one. It projects a certain amount of growth, but probably only about 75% will be realized over that 30-year period.

Scott Weiss

candidate for Oxnard City Council and founder of Citizens to Protect Oxnard, a slow-growth organization

Absolutely! From 1980 to 1987 Oxnard averaged 420 new houses a year. This General Plan will add approximately 1,000 new homes a year for the next 10 years. It also

will call for a 134% increase in commercial development and 312% increase in industrial development. Industrial and commercial development will attract more people to the area, causing the prices of houses to rise. The General Plan reflects the pro-growth attitude of the current City Council. In fact, this General Plan would make Oxnard the only city in Ventura County without growth limits. It will have very negative impacts on the quality of life in Oxnard and Ventura County. We will see more crime, more traffic, overcrowded classrooms, more smog, increased infrastructure costs and water problems. We will also see destruction of prime agricultural land and our beaches and wetlands. Without specific growth limits, the City Council will be free to continue the rampant development we have seen recently. I would like to see more concern for the quality of life for our community.

Sue Chadwick

chairwoman of Oxnard’s Economic Development Advisory Board

No. First there is the managed growth element that’s in the plan itself that says growth cannot occur if development doesn’t support it and pay its way. In other words,

infrastructure has to be in place--the development pays for all of that. The thing I like about it is that it’s monitored by City Council on an annual basis, so that makes me feel like there’s not going to be too much growth. The plan is specific. It says that residential will be phased in, so that’s positive. Without the infrastructure being there, it won’t get approved as I understand it. Another reason I say no is that there is this perception that Oxnard is growing like Orange County. That’s just not true. During the last 15 years, growth has averaged between 1.4% and 2.2% in Oxnard. That’s less than other cities that have a growth cap or a no-growth plan in place. Development brings in needed revenue to keep this community viable. I don’t think we should lose sight of that either. A community needs to keep growing. Not that it has to grow by leaps and bounds, but there still needs to be that economic development that takes place to be viable and healthy.

Richard Maggio

Oxnard’s community development director

No. The rate of growth in the General Plan that is proposed over the next 30 years is actually slightly less than what has occurred over the previous 10. In terms of

housing growth, the city of Oxnard increased 1.63% per year during the last 10 years. This was less than the county’s average of 2.39%. Although we are the largest city in the county, the city ranked sixth in terms of annual housing growth behind Moorpark, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Camarillo and Ventura. The General Plan for the next 30 years anticipates similar amounts of increase and also projects there will be less growth on an annual basis than what was experienced in the past. Also, the city continues to remain in third place in terms of growth in retail sales. . . . The plan does propose to try and bring the city to its commercial potential in proportion to its size. A new greenbelt is being proposed--meaning no development would occur--between Patterson and Harbor Boulevard. That further restricts where we can grow because the greenbelts will have set those limits.

Rodney Fernandez

executive director of Cabrillo Economic Development Corp.

I think it allows too much growth. It’s not consistent with the wishes of the majority of the people in the community. I don’t think the process included enough low-income people

in terms of participation. The key to success is to have a general plan for Oxnard that clearly provides a balanced mix of housing. Twenty percent should be for low-income families and 30% should be for moderate-income families. And that’s a minimum. To develop goals for housing you have to look at the makeup of the community and what’s been done in the last 10 years. What the City Council keeps forgetting is that the strength of Oxnard is in its mix of people. The thing that makes that community viable economically is that it has a broad mix of income roots. They’re in a fallacy if they continue to develop the majority of their housing in the higher-income spectrum. They’re going to have labor and economic problems which are already surfacing. The Chamber of Commerce has been working for a couple of years to get a more balanced housing program, but it really hasn’t been supported by the staff or council.

Everett Millais

Ventura’s community development director

We have some real concerns about the scope of the growth, about their jobs/housing balance, and about some of the things the plan seems to indicate in

terms of air quality or agriculture--that there’s really no significant adverse environmental effects. We disagree with that. The plan now being considered since the city of Ventura made its comments in January provides for annual monitoring of housing and employment by Oxnard’s city staff. One of our concerns was that that would get out of balance and provide more jobs than housing. If they do that kind of monitoring, that will help. But I have some real concerns about the overall increases proposed, if they come to pass. They seem to indicate that since their population is projected within the limits set by the county air quality plan, there is no significant air quality impact. We really disagree with that. There are air quality impacts now, and to add that kind of additional population will have substantial adverse impacts in our opinion . . .. Most of this additional growth will go on prime agricultural land. That’s something that really can’t be mitigated either.