Simi Invites Community to Help Plan for Future : Government: Mayor Greg Stratton has scheduled Vision 2020 so officials and citizens can brainstorm such topics as libraries and land-use.

Twenty-five years after it was founded, this city of more than 100,000 is about to undergo an ego-rattling identity check.

While critics sneer that Simi Valley is a lackluster bedroom community hopelessly short on culture, boosters have always crowed their confidence in its strong schools, safe streets and a government that runs like a well-tuned machine.

But this Saturday, Mayor Greg Stratton plans to open up the toolbox of government, put wrenches in the hands of civic leaders and citizens, and let them start tinkering with his city’s future.

More than 100 people--the public is invited--will come together at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in a massive brainstorming session that Stratton has dubbed Vision 2020.

They will begin hammering out policy to guide Simi Valley’s future in more than a dozen areas: land-use, recycling, education, medical services, library services, youth issues, senior issues and leisure opportunities.

And a steering committee will mix the resulting policy recommendations with responses to a questionnaire being sent to 10,000 homes, then produce a final document to guide Simi’s growth during the next 25 years.

But why fix what is not broken?

“People forget that things can be going bad and you don’t know it,” Stratton said last week. “You overlook some particular facet of the community, or some service goes to pot and you don’t realize it. And the next thing you know, you’ve woke up and you have problems.”

The germ of the Vision 2020 idea first took root more than a year ago, as Stratton was helping the city prepare to celebrate its 25th anniversary.

“It set me to thinking, ‘Gee, when I come back for the 50th anniversary, do I know what the city’s going to look like?’ ” Stratton remembers. “And what would I want it to look like? And how are we going to go in that direction--or are we just going to get lucky?”

Stratton and Paul Miller, the city’s former police chief and newly elected councilman, huddled over a beefy lunch one day at the Black Angus Steakhouse in Chatsworth.

“[Greg] expressed a concern that while things were running well and he was pretty pleased with the overall development of the city . . . he had a concern looking down the road,” Miller recalled. “The challenge is, as the city ages, how do we maintain that community?”

Today, Simi Valley’s streets are the third safest in the United States. Its numerous public parks are well-manicured and heavily used.

Its schools produce students with higher test scores than the state average. And its public culture--now focused around multiplexes and mini-malls--will be vastly broadened with a mix of music, theater and visual art when a new cultural center opens in November.

Now is the time to look ahead, Miller said.

“One of the nice things right now is we’re ahead of the curve when it comes to gangs and crime, and I’d like it to stay that way,” he said. “One of the ways to stay that way is to institute a planning process to assess where you’ve been, where you are and where you’re going.”

Some observers say Vision 2020 may be just the cure for growing pains in a city of subdivisions, strip malls and bustling growth that barely 30 years ago had one traffic light.

“Greg is just doing what we started to do from the very beginning, and it’s very good that he’s doing this,” said Lester Cleveland, Simi Valley’s first mayor, who took office in 1969.

That was the year that merchants and ministers muscled Simi Valley into incorporation, wresting control of their future from a Ventura County government that had let willy-nilly development turn the valley into a half-baked hash of unzoned residential and commercial buildings.

In barely two years, the new leaders began whipping the city into shape, recalled Howard Rogo, one of Simi’s first council members.

They straightened out snarls in the sewer system, which then was serving only 30% to 40% of the city.

“On a nice, hot summer day you could smell it, I’ll tell you,” Rogo chuckled. “And it didn’t smell like Chanel No. 5.”

They froze development for two years. They laid down slow-growth rules. Finally, they set up a system of Neighborhood Councils to let residents review plans and make recommendations before developers could build.

“There were a lot of eyesores,” before the Neighborhood Council system, Rogo recalled. “But we just worked the best we could around that. Property that was old or run-down, you found that developers were buying them and improving them . . . to today’s standards.”

Now that the city is older, though, it needs more than just a well-run bureaucracy to carry it into the next two decades, Rogo said. Stratton, he said, has the right idea.

“Somewhere down the line,” Rogo said, “you want to stop and say, ‘Hey, are we really looking in the right direction?’ ”

Nancy Bender, president of the Simi Valley Chamber of Commerce, agreed.

“Our city is still a fairly young city, but we have reached a maturity level where we’re kind of in . . . a maintenance mode,” Bender said. “Many of us feel it’s time to move it out and look at the next step for us.”

But Councilwoman Sandi Webb worries that Simi Valley risks over-regulation by turning the public loose on the policy-making process.

“I wasn’t real tickled” on hearing of the Vision 2020 plan, she said last week.

Webb said that the chief risk is that Vision 2020 will lock Simi Valley’s government into Draconian development rules and nit-picky design guidelines that will infringe on its residents’ rights.

With Vision 2020 review updates planned only every four or five years, bad policy could rule Simi Valley for twice as long as is allowed under City Council elections that happen every two years, she said.

“You can change that body quickly if people are not happy with what’s being done,” she said.

Vision 2020 must stay flexible and open to change, or it could take away citizens’ freedom, Webb warned. “It’s supposedly a free country. And yet if you’re not real careful, the person driving by can have more control over your property than you can.”

But that is an old song to former Mayor Cleveland, who recalled, “We used to hear that all the time.

“People were opposed to the Neighborhood Council system,” he said. “They thought it would lead to people looking over each other’s fences for violations. And of course, that wasn’t true. The city doesn’t have that kind of power.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

FYI

Simi Valley citizens who want to join the Vision 2020 session this Saturday, including a free box lunch, must register by no later than 3 p.m. Wednesday, said coordinator Alexandra Walker.

To register, call 583-6764.