Cities Decry Plan to Build 6 Homes on Protected Land

The county’s decision to allow a small luxury-home development in the protected Tierra Rejada Valley greenbelt has officials from Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks and Moorpark questioning the county’s resolve to preserve the region.

The three cities and Ventura County have had a long-standing agreement to protect the rural character of the 2,200-acre greenbelt by stopping commercial or intensive residential development there.

In this case, county officials asked for input from the three cities, each of which wrote letters strongly opposing the development.

Despite that opposition, the county Board of Supervisors voted 4 to 0 Tuesday to change the zoning on the property from one home for every 40 acres to one home for every 10 acres.

The board also gave final approval to a proposal by Norfolk Ventura Properties to build the six luxury homes on 60 acres below the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. In 1987, the developer donated 100 acres for the library and plans to donate another 224 acres for parkland.

That is little consolation to city officials, who say their input was ignored.

“The purpose of the agreement was to ensure that development would not be based on the political whims of the moment,” Thousand Oaks Councilwoman Jaime Zukowski said. “If the Board of Supervisors is not willing to stick by that, maybe we should take the example of the city of Ventura and turn the issue over to voters.”

Voters in Ventura approved a measure in November that prohibits development on thousands of acres of farmland in and around the city until the year 2030--unless the development receives permission from a majority of city voters.

Supporters of the Ventura measure are contemplating a countywide greenbelt initiative, which would protect the Tierra Rejada and other bands of sparsely developed land separating the cities in Ventura County.

*

Although officials from other cities have not said they would support such a move, they did agree that Tuesday’s vote called into question the county’s support for the greenbelt agreement.

“Of course we have to question the county’s commitment,” Simi Valley Mayor Greg Stratton said. “Maybe we do need to sit down and figure out what the agreement means.

“We’ve obviously got some fuzziness in it, if all the cities said no and the county turned around and said yes. It leads you to question how good the agreement really is.”

Stratton and Moorpark Mayor Paul Lawrason both said they were surprised that the county would first ask for the opinions of each of the three cities and then “ignore” the opinions.

“I don’t believe that we ignored the cities,” Supervisor Judy Mikels said. “We may not have agreed with them, but we did not ignore them.”

Mikels said the decision would not undermine the greenbelt agreement, as some city officials have said, but enhances it because it brings more land into the greenbelt.

If the company that owned the land wanted, it could have used all the property and still built the six homes, but on 40-acre lots, Mikels said. Each of those homes would have required roads and lighting, and they would have been visible from all over the valley, she said.

*

Mikels said she supported the development because it would keep the homes clustered in an area that is out of sight from most of the greenbelt.

“This is by no means intensive development,” she said.

Despite his opposition, Stratton agreed on that point, saying the plan had some merit.

As an incentive for approval, the developer will turn over 224 acres of open land to the Rancho Simi Park and Recreation District, including Mount McCoy--a prominent Simi Valley hill.

All the property will eventually be added to the 2,200-acre greenbelt. As a good-faith measure, the company has already transferred about 80 acres of land to the park district.

The lots will be sold and developed individually, and construction may begin within the next three years, county officials said.

Supervisor Frank Schillo said he felt city officials had not received a chance to see the benefits of the proposal and said a meeting with city officials might resolve the problem.

“[The cities] are our partners in this,” Schillo said. “But if the cities feel that we’ve ignored them, maybe we should sit down and discuss it.”