Land-Swap Policy Urged for County : Growth: Two supervisors propose that cities give up vacant property for acreage annexed for development. It’s intended to block urban sprawl.

In an effort to limit sprawling growth by some of Ventura County’s cities, two county supervisors are proposing a land-swap rule that would force city officials to give up an acre of vacant land for every acre they annex for development.

Supervisors Maria VanderKolk and John K. Flynn, both members of the county’s Local Agency Formation Commission, want the five-member commission to adopt a land-swap policy to protect the county from the kind of urban sprawl that has crept across Los Angeles and Orange counties.

“More and more acres are slipping away from us,” Flynn said. “Do we want agriculture to continue as a viable Ventura County industry? I think so.”

The idea to trade open space for development was born out of frustration with the Whiteface project in Simi Valley. LAFCO approved the project last week. The city wants to annex 2,700 acres north of its borders so developers can build 1,500 single-family houses, three golf courses and a 1,000-acre park on undeveloped land.

VanderKolk opposed the project, and Flynn reluctantly gave his support, adding, “It seemed like an awful lot of land.”

At the commission’s July 15 meeting, the two supervisors plan to toss the land-swap proposal around with the other three LAFCO members, who said Friday it should at least be considered as a possible tool for preserving the greenbelts between Ventura County’s cities.

“I really disagree with what (Simi Valley) did,” VanderKolk said. “I do not see the development as being beneficial to the county or the city. My job is to look at orderly growth and say, ‘Does it make sense to expand here?’ ”

Basically, she said, cities that want to develop and then annex unincorporated land would be required to cast off an equal amount of undeveloped land from inside the city limits that could be preserved as open space.

The land-swap would not be a hard-and-fast rule governing all annexations, but a guideline for the steady growth that in some cases is drastically altering the county’s geography, she said.

The idea is not new. Flynn cited a successful 1983 LAFCO-engineered land swap in Oxnard, which gave up about 1,800 acres of land near Nyeland Acres in exchange for development of vast office parks on previously unincorporated land between Rice Road and Rose Avenue.

“That was a major quid pro quo,” Flynn said of the development, now part of Oxnard. “However, I can see objections coming” against the land-swap policy proposed by him and VanderKolk, he said.

City officials interviewed last week criticized the idea as unworkable, unneeded and even unconstitutional.

Moorpark officials, for instance, said such a policy would not be practical for their city.

Last month, the Moorpark council changed the city’s General Plan to allow annexation of a 4,000-acre parcel of unincorporated land northeast of Moorpark College, where the Messenger Investment Co. plans to build 3,200 houses. The annexation plan has yet to win LAFCO’s approval.

The problem is that Moorpark does not have 4,000 acres of unused or agricultural land to release to the county’s jurisdiction for use as open space, Mayor Paul W. Lawrason Jr. said.

If the LAFCO commissioners’ idea became policy, it would kill the Messenger project, he said.

But while the city cannot give up land, Messenger has agreed to dedicate 60% of those 4,000 acres to open space and recreational use, Lawrason said.

“We think that’s a pretty tremendous trade-off. . . . I think most anyone would look with favor on that part of it,” Lawrason said. “When you try to use a standardized, or cookie-cutter approach to the open space situation . . . it doesn’t always work.”

Moorpark City Councilman Scott Montgomery put it more bluntly. “It is patently illegal, selective and a terrible idea,” he said.

“It would be very unfair” and might violate property owners’ constitutional rights, Montgomery said. “What we’re talking about is the city returning lands for open space, essentially downzoning one person’s property because of an approval of somebody else’s property.”

Officials in other cities, while not opposing the idea, agreed that the proposed land-swap policy could cause trouble.

“In general, if there are cities who are looking at annexing lands that are in the greenbelt areas, then there’s precedent for the concept and it may make some sense,” said Everett Millais, Ventura’s director of community development.

But Millais also warned that city and county officials could be sued by property owners who cry inverse condemnation and property devaluation when their land is doomed to nothing but open space.

Other officials--including a LAFCO member--said the policy may not apply to some cities that have no opportunities either to develop neighboring unincorporated land or to give up unused land for open space.

“On the surface, it doesn’t seem like it makes much sense to me,” said LAFCO member Alex Fiore, a city councilman in Thousand Oaks, where most of the land inside and abutting the city is already dedicated to development. “I think it’s up to the city to determine its own fate as far as open space is concerned.”

Camarillo Mayor David Smith said his city has no plans to expand through annexation and has nothing to offer for open space in return. “So it’s kind of a moot point.”

Roseann Mikos, a spokeswoman for the Ventura County Environmental Coalition, applauded the policy proposal, saying it would prevent Ventura County’s remaining open space from being swallowed by development.

As for those who fear having their property devalued by an open-space designation, she said, “I don’t think people who buy property in those areas have a right to get the zoning changed. They might get approval, they might not. And if they don’t get approval, hey, that’s tough cookies.”

LAFCO member Dorill Wright, also a Port Hueneme City Council member, said if property owners protest having their land designated as open space, then city or county voters might have to be willing to buy the land or the development rights.

LAFCO member Larry Rose agreed.

He said owners of property designated as open space because of a land swap would have to apply for a change to the county’s General Plan, as well as apply for rezoning.

Like all property owners affected by such planning, they would be allowed to appeal the designation to LAFCO. If unhappy with the results, they could sue, he said.

“We can’t pretend that this is going to remain an idyllic community and not grow,” said Rose, who serves as LAFCO’s sole civilian member.

“The same reasons we can grow three, four vegetable crops a year here is the same reason people want to live here, and we have to accommodate that growth,” he said of Ventura County. “If we decide the lines are going to be drawn hard, we have to decide how development will go in those cities, and how that development is going to grow.”

LAFCO’s executive officer, Stanley A. Eisman, declined to say whether he supports the land-swap policy proposal.

But he it would make cities think twice about development by annexation.

“In the long run,” Eisman said, “it would tend to make cities examine the intensity of the (land) uses and to concentrate their urban uses in areas designated within their urban boundaries, rather than sprawling out at some low-density and low-intensity levels and cover the whole landscape.”