Builder Seeks Exemption on Home Limits : Moorpark: Three city councilmen would approve move to avoid lawsuit. But slow-growth advocates object.

A majority of the Moorpark City Council wants to exempt a major home builder from newly proposed limits on homes built each year, prompting an outcry from some slow-growth advocates.

Three councilmen said they support exempting Carlsberg Financial Corp. from any future limits on growth that would affect the company’s plans to build 550 homes in the southeast corner of town. They say such an exemption is the only way to end legal confrontations with the Santa Monica-based developer.

But growth-control advocates are accusing council members of caving in to pressure from the company.

“Three of them are a bunch of wimps,” said former City Councilman Clint Harper, who helped draft Measure F, the city’s existing growth control ordinance in 1986.

“I think they do great damage by excluding the largest acting developer within city limits,” he said. “They’re showing no judgment and very little backbone. I shudder to think what kind of consideration other projects will receive, when you have three councilmen running scared every time a developer even says, ‘Boo.’ ”

The matter comes up for consideration at tonight’s council meeting.

Mayor Paul Lawrason, Councilmen Bernardo Perez and Scott Montgomery support making the Carlsberg development exempt from any future changes in the city’s 1986 slow-growth ordinance, which expires at the end of 1995.

An eight-member committee of council members, planning commissioners and residents are now working on a draft law to replace Measure F. The present draft would reduce the number of building permits issued each year from 270 to 250.

And, perhaps more importantly to developers, the draft changes would limit the number of unused allocations for building permits that a developer could carry over into future years.

Committee members say the changes would even the pace of development, making it steadier from year to year.

But developers say that the economy dictates the amount of building and they have to be able to hold onto housing allocations in slow years so that they can build when people are buying homes again.

Because of the recession, no developers have applied for permits during the last three years and there are more than 1,400 allocations for permits waiting to be used, Montgomery said. Those allocations would be wiped out if the present draft ordinance is adopted.

Montgomery argues that if the council does not make an exemption for Carlsberg, the company will rush to build the homes before the stricter growth-control ordinance is adopted next year. He said Harper misunderstands the issue.

“In my opinion if we don’t allow the exception, we will be requiring them to begin to build 550 homes within a 12-month period,” Montgomery said.

He also said he feared the city could not defend itself against a lawsuit, if it tried to force Carlsberg to comply with future growth control measures after approving its 550-home project.

In 1988, the city settled a $17-million lawsuit with Urban West Development after attempting to make the company comply with Measure F after its housing project had already been approved. To settle the suit, the city exempted their 2,500-home tract from its slow-growth law.

In 1991, Carlsberg sued the city over the limit on homes the developer would be permitted to build at the northwest corner of Tierra Rejada Road and California 23.

The idea of an exemption from future growth controls was raised in ongoing negotiations between the developer and the city to settle that lawsuit.

Montgomery said he did not want the city to be a target of another lawsuit, especially when Carlsberg indicates it is willing to abide by the existing law.

Carlsberg President Ron Tankersley said he did not want another confrontation either.

“We’ll live with the existing law,” he said. “But what we can’t live with is the uncertainty of a future ordinance that hasn’t even been adopted. We don’t want a situation where the council will grant permits and then take them away. We can’t live with that kind of uncertainty.”