Report on Ventura’s Growth Renews Battle : Politics: Some call for stronger limits on new construction. But city analysts say last year’s rise in population was a one-time spike.

Armed with new statistics showing Ventura as one of the state’s fastest-growing cities, slow-growth advocates say the time is right to push for stronger limits on new construction.

A bastion of slow-growth politics only a few years ago, Ventura grew by 3,600 people, or 3.7%, in 1994 and now has 100,700 residents.

And that could become a rallying point for forces already forming to challenge the City Council’s business-backed majority in November’s election--and to support a farmland preservation initiative on the same ballot.

“I guess I’d consider it a wake-up call,” Councilman Gary Tuttle said of a new state report showing Ventura as the 15th fastest-growing city of the 470 in California last year.

“If this continues, our quality of life is going to suffer,” Tuttle said. “We’re going to have increased crime and water problems and a loss of more agricultural land.”

City analysts--and some council members--insist that last year’s rapid growth was a one-time spike caused by an improving housing market and pent-up demand. They say that most of the 555 building permits issued last year were from projects approved several years ago but stymied by the recession.

“For five years, we did nothing. Everything came in at once,” Councilman Jim Monahan said. “So if you average it out . . . over the last 10 years, you’ll find our rate is 1.5% per year.”

A decade of growth statistics show that Monahan is about right.

Another factor that skewed Ventura’s population growth last year was the annexation of 1,000-resident Cabrillo Village, planners said Friday.

Without that annexation, the city’s population increase would have been 2,600 residents, or 2.7%. And Ventura’s growth would have ranked 30th in the state in a year when the populations of dozens of California cities actually went down.

However, as city planners analyzed the new state figures, they also concluded that even if Ventura’s growth slows dramatically, the city probably will exceed its population goals for the year 2000 three years ahead of schedule.

Such projections could be politically explosive in a city where growth issues have been divisive since 1970. Ventura passed one of the county’s first growth-control ordinances in 1978.

And council members approved a comprehensive growth plan in 1989 aimed at keeping city development in step with its ability to provide water, which comes from local wells or reservoirs. An extended drought that ended in 1993 forced a three-year moratorium on new building permits.

Already, growth has emerged as a key issue in the fall campaign because of a ballot initiative that would prohibit construction on most farmland in and around the city without the consent of voters.

*

The Save Our Agricultural Resources initiative would preserve thousands of acres zoned for agricultural use that separate Ventura from Oxnard and from Santa Paula. Some farmlands that still exist in central Ventura would also be protected. The lands are now preserved only by voluntary greenbelt agreements between cities, which can be changed by council vote.

Residents involved in the greenbelt fight also are recruiting candidates to run in November, when the seats of Councilmen Jack Tingstrom and Greg Carson are on the ballot, along with Mayor Tom Buford’s. All three councilmen were backed by the Chamber of Commerce in 1991, when a slow-growth majority lost its advantage.

The city’s recent rapid growth could not only fuel political rhetoric, but also force a reconsideration of growth policies before the City Council gives developers permission to build any more housing projects.

*

“There will need to be another re-evaluation of our numbers and assumptions before the next (housing) allocation round in 1996,” said Everett Millais, city community development director.

The council currently plans to approve 1,700 more units between 1996 and 2000, which would add about 4,250 more residents, he said.

However, the new population figures indicate that Ventura and the three unincorporated areas for which it provides basic services--Saticoy, Montalvo and northern Ventura Avenue--already have an estimated population of about 106,000, Millais said.

The city goal for greater Ventura’s population is 109,500 by the year 2000, he said. So even with an annual growth rate of 1.6%--the city’s average for the last decade--the Ventura area would add another 3,400 residents by 1997 and reach its population target for the turn of the century.

Even if the City Council were to refuse to approve even one more house over the next two years, 900 dwellings already in the pipeline could still be constructed, Millais said. Those dwellings alone would account for about 2,200 new residents.

*

And most of the city’s new residents apparently do not result from new dwellings, he said. They come from a natural population increase--births outnumbering deaths--and from an increased number of crowded dwellings.

“Having a growth-control program that looks solely at new construction permits doesn’t account for what’s actually going on,” Millais said.

Council members on both sides of the growth issue agree that the City Council needs to reconsider the city’s population goals.

Councilwoman Rosa Lee Measures said the city’s goals are not realistic and should be increased because there is a strong demand to live in Ventura.

All growth controls accomplish, she said, is to push up the cost of housing by artificially restricting its supply.

“People truly want to live in our beautiful city,” she said. “But they’re not able to locate the home of their choice because we don’t have a significant menu.

“Growth is going to occur whether we provide housing or not,” she said. “If we don’t manage growth it will manage us. People will be doubling up.”

*

But Tuttle, who along with Councilman Steve Bennett was elected on slow-growth platforms, said it is time to rein in the city’s eastward expansion into farmlands.

He noted a number of new projects sanctioned by the current council, which has approved about 760 new dwellings since 1993.

“I think the citizens of Ventura had better be real careful of excessive growth,” Tuttle said. “They better support the greenbelt proposal, or they’re going to lose their quality of life. It’s really important right now, because we have council members who do not support the greenbelt concept. They think the greenbelt is there to develop.”

Tuttle said he as referring to Measures, Monahan and Tingstrom.

Tingstrom and Monahan both argued against establishing a 5,000-acre greenbelt between Ventura and Oxnard during hearings in 1993. They said the designation placed undue restrictions on farmers’ land and made it hard for them to borrow money.

The council finally approved the greenbelt for five years.

Monahan said Friday that failure to develop on the greenbelt lands near Ventura Harbor has contributed to its on-going financial problems.

*

East Ventura homeowner Sheri Vincent, who helped gather 9,000 signatures to put the greenbelt initiative on the ballot, said she sees the new population figures as another reason to fight for growth controls.

“Ventura is not going to remain what it is unless people say, ‘Listen, we want to live in the city that we moved to,’ ” she said. “We know that’s not completely possible but let’s not turn it into the San Fernando Valley.”

Vincent, a principal opponent last year of a land-swap proposal that would have allowed developer Ron Hertel to build about 400 homes on east Ventura farmland near her house, said her group has been trying to find candidates to run for the council in November. She specifically wants to target Tingstrom and Carson, she said. Vincent said she thinks Buford is a fair and reasoned public official.

So far, no candidate has been recruited, she said. But former Mayor Richard Francis, an attorney who wrote the greenbelt initiative, said slow-growth recruiters are active.

“I’ve been invited to a meeting of a group that’s trying to seek candidates for council,” he said.

He would not identify the organizer. But he said he is not a candidate, at least for now.

Francis did say that he likes two potential candidates whose focus would be on building new housing to help redevelop the aging downtown Ventura area.

“The more you focus on the downtown, the more you remove the (development) focus from the farmlands,” he said.

Francis is heading an effort to qualify a second initiative for the November ballot that would further protect parcels still zoned for agriculture. He said he hopes to turn in 9,000 signatures by June 1. But he was reluctant to rejoin the growth debate just because of an uptick in population.

“I don’t feel particularly polemic about this. I don’t see that this is death on wheels,” he said. “Growth is always an issue in the politics of Ventura. It has been for 25 years. It ebbs and flows with political trends, but it’s always there.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Growth Rates

Until last year, the city of Ventura grew at a much slower pace than Ventura County did as a whole.

Ventura Ventura County 1986 1.27% 2.40% 1987 1.37% 2.76% 1988 2.58% 2.77% 1989 1.42% 2.34% 1990 0.86% 1.63% 1991 1.50% 1.76% 1992 1.27% 1.42% 1993 1.04% 1.25% 1994 3.70% 1.60%

Source: State Department of Finance