SIMI VALLEY : Residents Protest Plan for Gun Range

More than 50 Simi Valley residents attended a City Council meeting Monday to protest a proposal to build an outdoor police shooting range northeast of the city.

“We know what . . . distant gunfire sounds like and we don’t want to hear it,” said Bill Souder, a resident of the nearby Indian Hills subdivision. “Our quality of life will be degraded due to this noise.”

Resident Larry Fried agreed. “I want to enjoy my house and my back yard. I don’t want to hear gunshots.”

Several other residents said they felt their property values would drop if the range were built half a mile northeast of the subdivision.

Residents have collected 300 signatures of homeowners who oppose the shooting range. They said they do not trust the findings of an environmental study on the site, which concluded that noise levels from the range would be so low that they would not disturb the residents.

Souder and other residents said they would volunteer to help the city and the Police Department find another site for the shooting range. They also asked city officials to study the possibility of building an indoor range.

Deputy City Manager Bob Heitzman said city staff members have determined that building an indoor range would cost about $400,000. The outdoor range would cost about $65,000.

City officials have been searching for a site for a shooting range for two years. They said the city spends thousands of dollars every year in overtime pay, travel expenses and lost time for each of the department’s 105 officers to go to a gun range in Camarillo.

Officials estimate that the city could save as much as $50,000 a year if it had its own shooting range.