Limits on Day-Care Providers Proposed : Camarillo: Only two facilities would violate the recommended ordinance. The City Council is expected to consider it on Jan. 27.

The Camarillo Planning Commission is recommending a wide range of limits on day-care providers, including restricting their proximity, limiting outdoor play areas and mandating off-street parking.

Under the proposed Camarillo law, day-care homes that take in six or more children would have to be at least 300 feet, or six houses, apart, although providers could pay about $1,200 to apply for exemption from this requirement.

The ordinance, expected to go before the City Council on Jan. 27, would also require that children at such facilities confine their outdoor play primarily to the back and side yards.

And day-care providers would have to have at least two off-street parking spaces on their property. The spaces could be in a driveway.

Camarillo Planning Director Tony Boden said the city has received only two complaints from residents living near day-care providers.

One of them was Edward Mutz, a 60-year-old retired engineer whose house on Mandalay Court lies between two day-care facilities.

“It’s disturbing to a neighborhood,” Mutz said.

A family that lives two doors down from Mutz began taking in children 13 years ago and was eventually licensed to keep the state maximum, which is 14 under a pilot program in Ventura County.

Mutz and his wife didn’t complain until a family living directly behind them turned their house into a day-care center.

“I don’t appreciate 16 or 14 kids behind me and another 14 in front of me,” Mutz told the Planning Commission on Tuesday.

Mutz said he is awakened early in the morning by car doors slamming and horns beeping from parents dropping off children at the day-care homes, he said.

During the day, one group of children might be playing in the yard behind the Mutzes’ home while another plays in the cul-de-sac in front.

“Summers were sometimes intolerable,” said Mary Mutz, 60.

In addition to the noise, the Mutzes and their neighbors were concerned about safety when the children were playing in the street and about parents parking in front of their houses, Edward Mutz said.

The Mutzes added that Sharon Thiesen, the day-care provider who lives two houses from Mutz, has been keeping the children inside or in her back yard since she learned about her neighbors’ concerns.

City planners said the proposed ordinance is reasonable.

Although Camarillo voters have rejected two school bond issues in the past 1 1/2 years and the commission has recommended day-care restrictions, Camarillo is supportive of children’s welfare, Planning Commissioner William Q. Liebmann said.

“The city recognizes the provision of day-care services as a useful and valuable community service,” he said.

Liebmann said the Camarillo ordinance would be more liberal than laws in other cities that require day-care providers to pay for a permit.

In Ventura, providers serving more than six children must pay at least $1,380 for the permit application, senior planner Mark Stephens said.

The city has no set restrictions on how close two day-care centers can be, but considers the issue on a case-by-case basis, he said.

Oxnard similarly requires day-care providers to pay more than $1,000 just to apply for a permit, said Dennis Trenten, the county’s licensing supervisor for day-care facilities.

In contrast, day-care centers in Camarillo would pay no fee unless they were seeking an exemption to the distance requirement.

Only two existing day-care providers would be in violation of the distance requirement, city officials said. Those are the two near the Mutz home.

Under the proposed ordinance, the first day-care operator to register after the law takes effect would be legal, and the other would have to apply for an exemption or reduce the number of children to six or less.

For the most part, day-care operators said they were satisfied with the proposed ordinance, except for the distance restriction.

“What exactly is the purpose of limiting quality child care to be 300 feet apart?” day-care provider Annie Zimmer asked the commission Tuesday. Zimmer said the best child-care providers maintain enough supervision of the children that neighbors don’t complain.

Thiesen, who said her family depends on the second income from her 13-year-old business, agrees.

She’ll apply for a special permit if necessary, Thiesen said. But she said she’s not concerned only for herself.

“What I’m afraid is going to happen is a potentially excellent day care is not going to have a chance to start because there happens to be another 12 in the area.”