City Forced to Back Off From Law on Growth : Moorpark: Precedent-setting court ruling will impel the council to revamp ordinance that restricts the number of homes built each year.

Over the next 20 years, planners expect Moorpark to be the fastest-growing city in Ventura County. But efforts to control the explosion of homes and businesses are running into a new barrier: the threat of lawsuits.

Moorpark is one of the first cities in California to grapple with the consequences of a precedent-setting court case that struck down a growth-control law in Oceanside.

Building industry officials say other cities in Ventura County had better keep an eye on Moorpark’s plight because, sooner or later, they’re all going to face the same challenge to their ability to shape their futures.

The Moorpark City Council, warned by its attorney, already plans to back away from a strict growth-control ordinance that limits the number of homes built each year.

Called Measure F, the law was passed in 1986 as a response to unprecedented growth that transformed Moorpark from a sleepy agricultural town to a burgeoning suburb. During that decade, Moorpark was one of the fastest-growing cities in the state, more than tripling in population from 7,800 in 1980 to about 25,000 in 1990.

Planners say the city’s size could double again in the next 25 years.

Measure F expires at the end of 1995, so for the last two years, a committee of residents and city leaders has been working on an ordinance to replace it. Last summer, the committee came up with an even stricter proposal.

The draft ordinance would have limited growth by using a complicated allocation system: Builders would compete for 250 free allocations each year, using them to obtain a building permit or stockpiling chits for two years and obtaining a permit later.

The proposed rules would also have limited the number of permits issued each year to 500.

But just as the committee completed its proposal, the city got wind of the precedent-setting court case.

Oceanside had lost a six-year legal battle over its slow-growth law to the Building Industry Assn. of Southern California. Defending its growth-control plan had cost Oceanside $2 million.

In April, the state Supreme Court declined to hear the Oceanside case. Attorneys for Oceanside have balked at taking the case to the U. S. Supreme Court, letting it stand.

For Moorpark, the significance was immediately clear.

“We went through the whole process and then the Oceanside case hit, so we had to scrap everything and start from scratch,” said Jim Aguilera, the city’s planning director.

Aguilera said the committee redrafting the ordinance has been looking at alternative methods of controlling growth. Existing law assures that homes will not be built without adequate water supply, schools, roads and sewers. Aguilera said the committee is considering adding other criteria such as requiring an adequate library system, but has not yet put anything in writing.

Moorpark is the first and as yet only city in Ventura County to change its growth-control ordinance because of the Oceanside case.

“That’s because theirs is the first ordinance to expire,” said Dee Zinke, spokeswoman for the Building Industry Assn. It was a warning from Zinke’s organization that prompted the Moorpark City Council to abandon numerical limits on the number of homes built each year.

“It’s an issue of timing,” Zinke said. “We plan to participate with each city when it comes time to revise those ordinances.”

Simi Valley’s growth-control ordinance, which limits the number of allotments to 320 per year, expires in July, 1996.

A committee there is drafting a new ordinance that planners expect will be ready by October. Simi Valley planners said they knew about the Oceanside case but were still unsure how it will affect their ordinance.

Growth-control ordinances are often unnecessary, Zinke said. Economic conditions have kept growth in Moorpark at roughly 1% for the last five years. And she said environmental laws and existing planning mechanisms are adequate protections from uncontrolled growth.

Faced with several projects that could double the city’s population in the next 25 years, residents of Moorpark want some additional protection.

Dan Hentschke, city attorney for Oceanside, said that despite having to gut its growth-control ordinance, Oceanside will still be able to manage growth.

Tying development to a community’s ability to absorb the increasing demands on city services, roads and the water supply is the safest hedge against uncontrolled growth, Hentschke said.

“And for the time being,” he added, “the lackluster economy is the other solution.”