Growth Ordinance to Miss Ballot Deadline

With a deadline looming, Moorpark City Council members have decided to abandon the idea of putting a managed-growth ordinance on the fall ballot but said they would press ahead on forging new growth standards.

Council members said Wednesday night that they did not want to be rushed into a new ordinance before the July deadline to qualify for the November ballot.

“We won’t make the November deadline,” said Councilman Bernardo Perez. “There’s just too much work remaining.”

Instead, the council decided to continue hammering out standards meant to replace the city’s growth-control ordinance, which expired at the end of last year.

The council voted last fall to abandon the nearly decade-old ordinance called Measure F, which limited the number of homes that could be built each year. That ordinance was deemed legally indefensible by the city attorney after a similar law in Oceanside was struck down by the state Supreme Court early last year.

Since 1993, a committee of local residents and city officials had tried to come up with a new ordinance--with even stricter numerical caps--that would have taken effect when Measure F expired Dec. 31, but the Oceanside case scuttled those plans.

Since then, the City Council has been working on replacement standards based on “quality-of-life thresholds.”

The standards would require developers to pay for such things as police services, new roads, parks, schools and other city services.

The council will again discuss the new standards June 19.