Moorpark Hopes Tax Breaks Will Attract Company : Business: City helps assemble $8 million in state and local incentives. The Newhall firm may move to Arizona.

Moorpark has helped package about $8 million in state and local tax breaks to lure a Newhall-based company with 700 jobs to the city and head off the firm’s flight to Arizona.

The rapidly expanding company, Special Devices Inc., which makes small detonators used to spring car air bags, has outgrown its Newhall plant and wants to expand to more than 1,000 employees by the year 2000.

Company officials picked a 285-acre parcel in an isolated part of Moorpark last spring, saying it is ideal for a new plant. The company would spend about $12.5 million building the facility on 15 acres, leaving the rest as open space, city officials said.

While company officials like the location, California state taxes and local fees would make the cost of building in Moorpark more than $10 million higher than in Mesa, Ariz., said Moorpark Councilman Scott Montgomery.

City officials in Mesa, where Special Devices Inc. has another plant, have offered to give the company a graded parcel and have promised quick approval of construction plans, Montgomery said.

“All the processing fees for Mesa add up to about $62,000,” Montgomery said. “Here in California, the county and city fees alone add up to about $1.6 million. In addition, because of the environmental review process, it would take them about 10 months longer to build here. And we wonder why businesses are moving out of state?”

A Special Devices executive did not return phone calls Thursday.

But city and state officials said they expect to meet with company executives next week to go over the incentive package. A decision is expected by the end of the year.

The combined recruitment of Special Devices is part of an ongoing effort by a Ventura County “Red Team,” a group of local officials, state legislators and economic development experts in the Wilson Administration.

Montgomery said that Moorpark and Ventura County are offering to cut about $1 million in fees, including about $700,000 that would go to road maintenance and construction.

The city also has pledged to cut through red tape and reduce the time it would take the company to get a building permit from 10 months to about six. The county would speed up its agency reviews and the city would combine Planning Commission and City Council hearings into one.

Even more significant are pledges for $5 million in state tax breaks, and an offer by the California Department of Transportation to contribute land that would add about $2 million to the package, Montgomery said.

The state tax credits could be claimed after the new plant is designated an enterprise zone by the Legislature, a proposal that Assemblyman Nao Takasugi (R-Oxnard) and state Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) plan to introduce next year.

As an enterprise zone, the company’s plant would be granted an estimated $5 million in payroll and income tax credits, said Wright spokesman John Theiss. The tax credits would be for jobs the company creates over the next five or six years, Theiss said.

The incentive package was developed over several months in conjunction with the state Trade and Commerce Agency, part of the county’s Red Team, said the agency’s Tom Alfano.

“Along with officials from the city and county, we meet with the companies to hear what their needs are,” Alfano said. “We look for creative ways to lure new businesses to the state and keep the ones we already have here.”

In June, Gov. Pete Wilson sent a letter to Special Devices President Thomas Treinen encouraging him to stay in California.

Key bargaining sessions are set for next Tuesday and Wednesday in Westlake Village. Moorpark officials are optimistic because the $8-million package now rivals Mesa’s tax advantages.

“That’s close to making up the difference,” Montgomery said. “Besides that, they would be able to stay in California, which is something they have said they want to do.”