New Guidelines Would Help to Protect Rural Land in County

Ventura County supervisors on Tuesday are set to approve new development guidelines aimed at protecting county farmland from being paved over with housing tracts.

The board will consider approving a policy that would require that any housing built on less than two acres in unincorporated areas be designated as “urban” development and allowed only on land in or directly adjacent to cities.

This would change the county’s current development policies, which designate one-acre lots as rural developments that can be built in most unincorporated areas. The current policy does not apply the “urban development” restriction except to lots under an acre in size.

“This is a major change,” said former Camarillo Mayor David Smith, who served on a special task force that recommended the policy changes. “It gives us more protection of our rural areas. It makes it less likely that there will be very large housing projects outside our cities.”

Supervisor Maggie Kildee, who also served on the task force, agreed that the proposed policy changes would discourage major developments in unincorporated areas.

Developers “would really have to sharpen their pencils to make their projects economically viable,” she said.

If approved by the Board of Supervisors, it would only be the third time that the county’s development policies have been changed since they were first adopted in 1969. The so-called Guidelines for Orderly Development are held so sacrosanct by some local planners and activists that they refer to them by the acronym GOD.

Although the guidelines simply state that urban development should take place within city boundaries, they are credited with preventing the kind of urban sprawl that has overwhelmed the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County.

“They’ve served as a pretty effective measure [against development] even as they are,” Kildee said.

But she said that the guidelines need to be revised because more developers are building larger houses in unincorporated areas like the Santa Rosa Valley that do not always have the infrastructure to support such developments.

Indeed, the proposed policy changes were prompted by objections from city officials around the county to a proposal that would have allowed a British-based developer to build on land that was formerly a citrus grove near Somis. Knightsbridge Holdings had sought to change the zoning on its agricultural land to allow the building of 189 houses on a 195-acre parcel.

Although the proposed policy changes are not specifically aimed at Knightsbridge, officials said they are intended to address growing concerns about future development on county agricultural land in unincorporated areas.

“The citizens and most officials countywide do not want farmland and green space filled in with housing units,” Smith said. “It’s a significant quality-of-life issue.”

Indeed, Moorpark officials would like to see even tougher development policies adopted. They are asking that only one house be allowed to be built on five-acre lots rather than two acres.

Councilman John Wozniak said the reason is that most of the city’s outlying areas are zoned for five-acre lots.

“We already have this type of zoning on the city’s borders,” he said. “If you were to have two-acre lots, that would actually increase the intensity of development right outside our city.”

The county’s planning staff, however, is recommending that the supervisors adopt a uniform policy for all unincorporated areas.

But Wozniak said that an exception should be made in the case of Moorpark.

“We are unique,” he said. “I don’t see why there has to be a uniform policy. Everything isn’t black and white. The county needs to be more flexible to the needs of the cities.”

Kildee said she understands the concerns of Moorpark officials and does not believe that the county would ever approve a major development outside the city’s boundaries.

But she also said that unincorporated areas are ultimately the responsibility of the county, and that the county should determine implementation of the proposed development policies.

“Ultimately, the county’s decision has to prevail,” she said.