Ventura Planners Recommend No-Growth Policy

Ventura planners said Wednesday that the city should reverse its development stance from slow-growth to no-growth because the drought and increased population have strained resources.

The Planning Commission recommended on a 4-3 vote Tuesday that the City Council suspend allocations of new building permits to residential developers for two years, or “until Ventura’s resources catch up with its ability to sustain planned growth,” Vice Chairman Tim Downey said Wednesday.

A city moratorium on new water hookups already stands in the way of new housing developments, Downey said.

“The drought has changed the rules by which we play, temporarily,” he said. “The commission felt that it would be unfair to the developers out there who were proposing new projects to ask them to go through the process . . . only to have us say, ‘We like your project, but we don’t have any water.’ ”

Public service limitations also dictate that the city cannot grant permits for all of the 2,563 housing units requested by developers, said Mark Stephens, Ventura’s senior planner. “In the best of all worlds, we can only give out a little over 370.”

By the year 2000, Ventura’s population may exceed the 102,000 residents that its roads, schools and utilities can handle, Stephens said.

Two years ago, city planners estimated that the Ventura planning area would have 94,000 residents by 1990 and figured that city services could accommodate construction of another 1,850 housing units by the year 2000, said Commissioner Marilynn Viles.

However, the City Council already has allotted permits for 400 of those units for low-income housing projects and may need to set hundreds more aside for proposed downtown redevelopment, Stephens said. And local 1990 census tallies expected by June may reveal that the Ventura planning area’s actual population is closer to 96,000 or 97,000 than to the original estimates, Stephens said. The planning area includes 92,575 residents who live inside city limits, according to census figures already released. Added to that would be an estimated 4,300 residents who live in unincorporated areas such as Saticoy and northern Ventura Avenue, he said.

If the City Council approves the Planning Commission’s recommendation, construction of two housing projects already in progress could be stopped during the two-year no-growth period.

Developers of the existing 98-unit Weston Village apartment-condominium complex on Telephone Road at Portola Road may not get permits to build 252 more units, although utilities and newly built streets are already in place, Stephens said.

And developers of Seneca Gardens, at the east end of Seneca Street, may not be able to add 57 low- and moderate-income apartments to the 60 units already built, despite the city’s approval several years ago of a single-meter water hookup to serve all 117 units, he said.

The commission recommended that developers of those projects be allowed to argue their positions before the council.

John Ashkar, a Weston spokesman, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Steven Perlman, planning consultant for Seneca Gardens, said that developer S. H. Bulmer “has kept his word and his promise on every effort.”

Perlman asked of the no-growth recommendation, “Does that mean that this project that has paid many hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees and (for) infrastructure never gets to finish because the game changes in the middle?”

City Council members are divided on whether to approve the two-year no-growth plan.

Councilman James M. Monahan said he favors completion of at least Weston Village and Seneca Gardens, and as many other projects as water supplies will allow.

Monahan suggested at Monday’s council meeting that recent heavy rainfall should allow the city to increase daily water allotments by 100 gallons per household. But other council members said such action would be imprudent, since water supplies are still below normal despite the recent heavy rain.

“I feel that there are some projects in the pipeline that need to be carried out,” Monahan said. “I just don’t think we should stop the wheels from grinding. We’re practically dead now.”

However, Councilman John McWherter said that unless Ventura’s water reserve “rebounds and catches up, we should suspend” the allocation of permits for new housing development “forever.”

McWherter said that processing permit applications during the water-hookup moratorium “is just a big waste of the staff’s time.”