Decision on Sammis Housing Project Postponed

The Camarillo City Council won’t decide until at least September whether to allow The Sammis Co. to build a 1,129-home community off Pleasant Valley Road or to preserve the acreage as farmland.

Despite urging by Councilman Ken Gose to make a decision soon, the council voted 4 to 1 late Wednesday to delay until September a decision on whether to send the Sammis proposal on to the Planning Commission for processing.

“There’s no reason to prolong this,” said Gose, who opposes developing prime farmland. “Let them know where they stand.”

But after nearly four hours of debate, the council members decided they want city planners to review goals recommended recently by a council-appointed committee to see if they jibe with Sammis’ “Camarillo Gateway” project. The goals are used to update the city’s General Plan.

Until city planners report back, Mayor Stanley J. Daily said, “we are going to be at loggerheads with the Sammis organization.”

A 21-person committee appointed by Sammis came up with the housing plan as an alternative to a factory outlet mall. Sammis withdrew the mall proposal last November amid heated public opposition.

Members of the Sammis committee said Wednesday that they believe their new proposal falls in line with the council-appointed committee’s goals.

But Herb Warneke, chairman of the 42-member goals committee, disagreed. “Our goals are in direct conflict” with the Sammis proposal, Warneke said. “The city of Camarillo has to take care of its farmland.”

Warneke asked council members if they planned to respect the wishes of the committee they appointed, or to “encourage this development and have this city in a turmoil. . . . This is indeed a test of citizen involvement.”

Wednesday’s meeting came eight months after the Planning Commission recommended against Sammis’ application to change the zoning at the southeast corner of Pleasant Valley Road and the Ventura Freeway from agricultural to commercial to build a factory outlet mall. Council members gave Sammis 18 months to come back with a plan the community could support.

The council earlier this month accepted the goals report, which called for preservation of the city’s small-town atmosphere and of agricultural land unless a need for a particular project is demonstrated and no alternative sites can be identified.

Warneke and other opponents who spoke at the meeting said the city did not need the expansive Sammis development that includes a housing mix, an elementary school, 12 acres of business space, a civic center and public recreational facilities. The housing units would range from rental apartments to single-family homes.

The plan also calls for an Olympic-size swimming pool, an amphitheater, four baseball diamonds and two soccer fields, hiking and biking trails, a day-care center, a lake, and 30 acres of open space. Sammis owns only 87 acres of the 250-acre parcel the community would be built on; the rest is owned by two farming families that support the project.

Camarillo resident Justin Paroski, 16, who opposed the Sammis proposal along with his mother and father, sided with Warneke. “I don’t want this project,” Justin said. “I agree with the goals outlined by the citizens goals committee and I don’t think this project is right for right now.”

Project supporters saw it differently.

“The committee concluded that there was a need for the project,” said Camarillo realtor Randy Churchill, a Sammis committee member.

Resident Alan Feder, describing the Sammis proposal as “well-planned” and “well-thought out,” urged the council to approve it.

Sammis, Feder added, has a right to develop its property. “I see that land will be developed eventually,” he said.

But as Gose and Councilman Michael Morgan pointed out, Sammis’ 87 acres of celery fields were zoned for agriculture when the developer bought them.

“There is no inalienable right to develop that agricultural land,” Morgan said.

As part of the housing proposal, Sammis has agreed to find a way to pay for a new elementary school. Many speakers said they were upset to learn Wednesday that the payment for the school--as well as for the recreational facilities--may have to be subsidized by Mello Roos bonds, which are paid by residents through tax assessments.

Daily noted that people interested in buying the inexpensive homes may be priced out if the Mello Roos assessments grow too large.

“There’s no doubt that could get out of hand,” said Russell A. Goodman, a Sammis executive, who estimated that taxes for the school alone could range from $50 to $100 a month per household.

Goodman added that buyers of the more expensive homes would have to absorb more of the taxes. “The market demands that,” he said.

But despite the poor state of today’s housing market, Goodman said, “this would be providing something very new and different. . . . I’m really not worried about a demand for this project.”