Simi Valley Will Consider Renewing Its Commitment to Slow Growth

This city is not nearly as large today as city officials predicted nearly 10 years ago, when they approved a slow-growth ordinance.

But the ordinance expires in July, and today the City Council will hold a hearing on renewing it to limit future building in Simi Valley to no more than 500 new houses, condominiums and apartments a year.

The City Council adopted the ordinance in 1986, requiring all developers to line up for building permits in four specific housing categories.

Big developers and small-scale builders alike lined up their project proposals in the four areas: affordable housing, senior housing, custom lot subdivision tracts and all other projects.

Simi Valley grew at a steady pace as the city doled out permits in accordance with its slow-growth ordinance. The city’s population now rests at about 104,000, lagging behind the 110,000 forecast a decade ago for 1996.

“I think most people realize there’s a rate at which you want to grow,” said Mayor Greg Stratton. “You want to grow not too fast because otherwise your streets can’t handle it.

“Slow, consistent growth is really the way for a community to develop,” Stratton added. “When it’s too fast, the infrastructure can’t handle the growth. But when it’s too slow, the economy stagnates.”

The ordinance also controlled how Simi Valley developed, by divvying up building permits evenhandedly among the categories so that there was no shortage of affordable apartments or housing for the elderly--traditionally among the less profitable types of housing stock.

Building industry officials said they disliked the ordinance because its limitations on construction cramped competition that would have kept housing prices lower.

Industry officials have been working with Simi Valley planners for the past year to come up with the latest version of the city’s growth-control ordinance. The council must consider putting it on the March, 1996, ballot for voter approval so it can take over when the old ordinance expires in July. If approved, the new ordinance would expire in 2004.

“Basically, we think that the existing General Plan is more than sufficient to control growth in the city, because, effectively, the city is very, very close to being built out,” said Eric Taylor, a representative of the Building Industry Assn.

“Much of the remaining growth that will occur in the city is likely to be within what you might call in-fill areas--smaller parcels within the city or around the periphery,” said Taylor, who is also a senior vice president at VTN West, a developer based in the San Fernando Valley.

He said the city lacks the kind of business opportunities available in more wide-open communities like Moorpark, and its planners want to choose carefully how the remaining space will be filled.

Besides, Taylor said, the growth Simi Valley experienced beginning in 1986 was stunted by the recession of the early 1990s. Fewer houses were bought and, thus, fewer were built, he said.

“For the past several years, growth has governed itself,” Taylor said. “If there was a lot of land left, yes, Simi would be very well-positioned to accepting growth.”

Indeed, VTN West’s own Whiteface housing project, a proposed complex of 1,490 homes for the elderly on the city’s northern edge, has been put on hold until the landowners are confident enough in the economy to proceed, Taylor said.

There are other signs that Simi Valley has room for more growth, according to city staff reports on the proposed ordinance.

While the Ventura County Organization of Governments predicted Simi Valley’s population would reach 110,105 by 1996, it is estimated now to be only 103,660.

What’s more, Simi Valley has beefed up its infrastructure in the past 10 years, forestalling dire predictions made in 1986 that the city would be straining at the seams by next year.

The city’s sewer and drainage system is big enough to handle another 10,000 homes, city planners estimate, and the sewage treatment plant itself could handle another 13,000 homes.

The water supply is also more than adequate, with the Calleguas Metropolitan Water District predicting it will have an increasing surplus of water through the year 2010.

And a 1991 decision the city made to impose traffic impact fees will compel developers of new homes and commercial buildings to finance the upkeep of city streets.