City Sets Sights on Preserving Hillsides : Moorpark: Officials want an ordinance more stringent than county’s guidelines to protect ridgelines from development.

Moorpark officials are moving to protect the city’s rolling hills through a hillside preservation ordinance that would prevent planned developments from irreparably changing the city’s landscape.

Partly in anticipation of several major developments in Moorpark’s elevated areas, council members Wednesday directed city staff members to draft the ordinance, which would outline measures the city could take to protect its ridgelines.

“For too long, we’ve been talking about it without taking action,” Councilman Bernardo Perez said Thursday.

“This would provide a level of certainty in the minds of the applicants and the decision makers in the city,” Perez said. “As it stands now, there’s a lot of room for latitude on the part of applicants arguing for and the council ultimately awarding variances on hillside developments.”

The city now uses Ventura County’s guideline that development should not occur on slopes with an incline of 20% or greater.

But Moorpark officials have increasingly discussed the need for a more stringent policy specifically tailored to the city.

“I think it’s important because it’s a natural evolutionary stage for any city that has the natural rolling hills that we have,” Councilman John Wozniak said. “You don’t want to look up one day and see nothing but houses on those ridgelines.”

The council’s move to develop a guiding policy on hillside development was prompted in part by a Sept. 20 memo from city planning commissioners urging council members to move ahead on the drafting of an ordinance.

“The city still does not have a viable hillside protection ordinance,” commissioners wrote in the memo. “We are gravely concerned that we and the City Council will not have the proper tools at our disposal to critique projects which propose to severely grade our hillside resources.”

Planning commissioners also suggested that city planners put aside other work and prepare a draft ordinance by November--a suggestion the council did not accept.

Mayor Paul Lawrason said Thursday that he expected a report on the draft ordinance to be ready by the end of the year.

If the city does not proceed with the ordinance now, Lawrason said, developments being planned could wind up at odds with future city policy.

“I’m concerned about the timing,” Lawrason said. “I would not want to see an application commence with no guidelines in place and then at some time in the future when he’s almost done, we lay a whole new set of criteria on him.”

One developer that shares that concern is Messenger Investment Co., which is planning to build about 3,000 residences on 4,000 acres northeast of the city limits. Some of the project calls for building on grades of 20% or greater, Messenger Vice President Gary Austin said.

“We’re watching it very closely,” Austin said, adding that he was concerned that the ordinance would not allow developers enough flexibility.

“I hope they establish policies rather than rigid criteria, because those rigid criteria tend not to work,” Austin said.