Moorpark to Consider Extending Slow-Growth Rules From 1986 Initiative

Amid skepticism from some community leaders in Ventura County’s fastest-growing city, the Moorpark City Council has formed a committee to consider extending a 6-year-old slow-growth ordinance.

The committee of city officials and residents will consider extending and possibly amending Measure F, a voter-approved initiative that limits new building permits to 270 per year.

Measure F grew out of residents’ concerns over the city’s explosive growth in the 1980s, when the city’s population doubled from about 8,000 to 16,000 between 1980 and 1986.

But as the Measure F campaign progressed, a pro-growth City Council issued a record 2,350 permits to developers in the 10 months before the November, 1986, ballot measure.

Those additional housing permits allowed the explosion in population to continue, with the number of residents reaching 25,000 by 1990.

Measure F is due to expire at the end of 1993. And now City Council members rather than private citizens are taking the lead in extending it.

The council’s action comes only four months after its approval of new planning guidelines allowing the construction of nearly 5,000 homes over the next 20 years--roughly doubling the city’s population to 48,000 by 2010.

“I don’t think there’s anybody on the council presently, possibly with the exception of Bernardo Perez, who has the guts to stand up to the developers,” said Clint Harper, a school board trustee and former council member who helped campaign for Measure F in 1986.

Perez and Councilman John Wozniak, who campaigned with Harper for the slow-growth initiative, will represent the council on the committee to extend the initiative. The panel will also include two planning commissioners and residents.

Despite the inclusion of two strong Measure F supporters on the committee, Harper said, “I know the council will do what they want no matter what the recommendation of the committee.

“Very often the council uses the committees as window-dressing.”

Council members said, however, they are serious about controlling growth.

Extending Measure F wouldn’t stop growth in the city, officials said. But it would pace the growth so that developers wouldn’t put up houses faster than the city could build the roads, sewers and schools to accommodate new residents.

But the council appears divided over how stringent the growth-control ordinance should be.

Councilman Scott Montgomery said he would consider exempting developments proposed by Messenger Investment Co., Levy Co. and JBR Development Co., which together would add up to 4,553 new housing units.

That is more than 90% of the total number of additional homes tentatively allowed under the new planning guidelines.

Moorpark officials are looking primarily to such large developers to pay for the construction of bypasses that would take truck traffic off of California 118 and California 23 in the center of the city.

By exempting these large projects from the growth limits, Montgomery said, the city could have a freer hand in negotiating concessions from the developers.

For instance, he said, the city may allow one of the developers to build 300 units in one year, exceeding Measure F’s limits. In return, the city could demand that this developer help build new highways north of town.

Montgomery said the city could sign separate agreements with these large developers setting out how much they could build and how fast.

But Wozniak maintains that it would defeat the purpose of a slow-growth ordinance if the city negotiated different annual building limits with each developer.

“Once you have a development agreement, the argument is ‘What good did Measure F do you?’ ” he said.

Instead of exempting big developers from the slow-growth ordinance, Wozniak said, he wants to tighten the measure.

Wozniak has proposed that the council eliminate about 1,000 unused building allocations that have accumulated during the past several years of sluggish building activity.

Measure F allows the city to accumulate unused permits from previous years and use them to issue up to 500 permits a year.

Under Wozniak’s proposal, the council could “wipe the slate clean” when Measure F expires on Dec. 31, 1993, and start accumulating unused building allocations again when the new ordinance takes effect Jan. 1, 1994.

Gary Austin, vice president at Messenger, called such slow-growth measures artificial restraints. Developers need flexibility in determining when and how fast they build so they can meet the demands of the market and remain profitable, he said.

Although construction activity would vary each year, Messenger hopes to build an average of about 215 new housing units each year over a 15-year period, Austin said.

Altogether, Messenger has proposed building 3,221 new housing units on its 4,500-acre property northeast of Moorpark College.

Measure F, however, says no single developer can get more than half of the maximum number of building permits allowed in any given year, unless they meet special conditions such as making extraordinary public improvements.

Without using permits left over from previous years, that would limit Messenger to building 135 new units per year, forcing it to take up to 24 years to finish its project.

But one of the original authors of Measure F dismissed Austin’s concerns.

“I don’t care about” developers, said Bob Crockford, 61, who served on Moorpark’s advisory committee to the county before the city incorporated in 1983.

“I care about the city,” Crockford said. “I care about the children and the people who have to sit in increasingly long lines of traffic.”

Crockford said he’ll be happy if the city just extends Measure F without changing it.

“If they don’t do it, the citizens will,” he said, predicting another citizen-led slow-growth movement if the city’s ordinance is not strong enough.

But Crockford said, “I’m hopeful that the character of the people on the council is such that they might do a reasonably good job. Hope springs eternal.”

Residents interested in serving on the committee that will study extension of Measure F should contact City Hall. The council expects to appoint committee members in October.

Planned Moorpark Development

If extended, Moorpark’s slow-growth ordinance would limit the pace of new construction in the city. The following planned developments have not yet received building permits and could be affected:

MAXIMUM DEVELOPER UNITS LOCATION Tom and Pat Schleve 231 71 acres at Walnut Canyon and Casey roads JBR Development Co. 712 445 acres between Walnut Canyon Road and Campus Park Levy Co. 620 285 acres at Poindexter and Gisler avenues Messenger Investment 3,221 4,500 acres northeast of Moorpark College Moorpark Schools 120 About 12 acres at 280 Casey Road