Council Deadlocks Over Extension of Moorpark Growth-Control Ordinance : Planning: The 2-2 vote means the 9-year-old law, called Measure F, will expire Dec. 31. Officials vow to find an alternative way to manage growth.

Worried about potential lawsuits, the City Council deadlocked on whether to extend its growth-control ordinance, meaning that the measure will expire on Dec. 31.

Voting 2 to 2, the council split on whether to extend the ordinance another year, but pledged that it would figure out an alternative way to manage growth.

Councilman Bernardo Perez and Mayor Paul Lawrason were against extending the ordinance, while council members Pat Hunter and John Wozniak favored making the extension.

Although city planners said there are no projects in the works that will be ready for construction within the next year, Hunter and Wozniak said it was important to make a statement in support of growth control.

“The overwhelming majority of citizens in Moorpark have let it be known that they are in favor of growth control,” Hunter said.

The decision comes on the heels of a recommendation by the city’s Planning Commission earlier this month to let the 9-year-old ordinance--called Measure F--expire at the end of December. The commission was concerned that extending the ordinance would leave the city open to litigation.

Lawrason and Perez agreed with the commission, adding that without great demand for building permits the measure was unnecessary.

“I am not really worried about potential lawsuits,” Perez said. “I just don’t think it is necessary.”

The council was advised by the city attorney this spring that Measure F’s reliance on numerical limits for growth control is legally indefensible. A similar ordinance in the San Diego County city of Oceanside was recently struck down by the state Supreme Court.

An attorney from the Building Industry Assn. of Southern California, which won the Oceanside case, told the council Wednesday night that extending the ordinance could open the city to future lawsuits.

Although no one came forward to speak in favor of extending the measure, the council did receive a letter from the Moorpark chapter of the Environmental Coalition of Ventura County.

The letter cited five projects that could add as many as 17,600 residents to the city’s current population of nearly 28,000 over the next decade. The largest of those projects, the Messenger Investment Co.’s Hidden Creek Ranch development, calls for 3,221 residences to be built over 12 years on the northeastern edge of the city.

City officials said they plan to examine alternatives to numerical caps. Measure F has restricted growth by forcing builders to compete for 270 allotments each year. Each allotment is then used to obtain a building permit for a residential unit, or can be stockpiled for later use.

A limited amount of development over the past five years has resulted in the city having a surplus of more than 1,600 unclaimed allotments. But even if those allotments were all scooped up at once, builders would have to wait to actually build because the ordinance limits the number of permits issued each year to 500.

Alternative growth restrictions that the council said it would consider include requiring developers tomeet community needs for such items as air quality, police services, fire services, emergency medical services, schools, libraries, parks, recreation, water supplies and roads.

The city’s existing General Plan, as well as state and federal environmental laws, already require that all development meet some of those basic criteria, Lawrason said.