County to Oppose Homes, ‘Theme Park’

Ventura County will formally oppose a plan to build 3,165 homes and an agricultural theme park on prime cropland outside Oxnard.

The Board of Supervisors, acting on the advice of its agricultural policy committee, agreed Tuesday to write to the city of Oxnard and the Local Agency Formation Commission expressing concern over the project’s impact on the county’s annual $2.4-billion agricultural industry.

Oxnard is considering annexing land adjacent to the city’s southeast edge to build housing and the theme park.

But the five-member Agricultural Policy Advisory Committee, made up of prominent farmers, said the project eats up 815 acres of farmland while 2,927 acres of undeveloped land sit within city limits.

The project would also encroach on a greenbelt area established between Oxnard and Camarillo and would conflict with the Oxnard General Plan’s policy of supporting the preservation of agriculture, the committee said.

The project, still in the environmental review process, is expected to reach the Oxnard Planning Commission by the first week of August and is likely to be appealed by numerous critics. If it is, it would then go to the City Council, probably by the end of that month.

If approved by the council, the project would probably reach LAFCO--which has sole jurisdiction over annexation requests in the county--in September, officials said.