Only You Can Prevent Urban Sprawl

Consider two alarming facts:

1. Between 1980 and 1990, the paved-over urban area of Los Angeles grew twice as fast as the population.

2. Currently, Ventura County is losing 1,000 acres of agricultural land per year.

Certainly, urban sprawl is relentlessly pressuring Ventura County. Piecemeal development projects are constantly proposed for land that has long-term designations to remain open space and agriculture.

County supervisors and city council members find themselves faced with steady pressure by development interests. Many of these politicians are enticed by the knowledge that the development community constitutes one of the largest blocs of campaign contributors in the county.

Only a major grass-roots political effort by average citizens can make Ventura County the first in Southern California to stop urban sprawl.

We need to join together now and pass a citizens’ initiative that provides an effective safeguard of our precious open space and agricultural areas.

The proven safeguard is to pass ballot measures modeled after the successful Napa County model. We call these measures SOAR (Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources) initiatives here in Ventura. These initiatives, approved by the California Supreme Court, require politicians to obtain approval of the voters before they convert land designated open space or agricultural into development.

The essential component of SOAR-type initiatives is to force politicians to follow the good Comprehensive Development Plans that have been adopted throughout the county. These documents designate some areas to be developed and others to remain open space/agricultural for the term of the plan. The plans coordinate healthy growth and the maintenance of critical open space buffers between our cities.

The problem is simple. Politicians constantly make piecemeal exceptions to Comprehensive Development Plans. The result: disorderly urban sprawl.

It would be convenient if we could preserve our precious greenbelts by simply passing one SOAR initiative for the whole county. However, although a countywide SOAR would stop county supervisors from making exceptions to the plan, it would not apply to cities as they sprawl out into greenbelt areas.

Consequently, to obtain truly effective control of urban sprawl, our county needs citizens in each city to pass a SOAR-type initiative also.

Will this be easy to do?

Certainly not. Powerful forces that profit from development will spend millions to stop SOAR. Consider: 100 acres zoned for agriculture are worth $3 million. The same 100 acres zoned to development are worth $15 million.

How can ordinary citizens, working at the grass-roots level, overcome a multimillion-dollar campaign of misinformation?

By uniting and working strategically. We don’t have to match their money, just neutralize it. We do need to raise a minimum of $150,000 to get our message out. And, most important, many hundreds of supporters need to step forward to campaign in their local area and gather signatures for the ballot measure.

To this end, citizens throughout the county need to organize their communities. Concerned Oxnard citizens have invited organizers of the city of Ventura’s successful SOAR 1995 campaign to speak to them about this concept Wednesday in the chapel at Heritage Square, Oxnard. We need many more such meetings to build the human resources to counter the massive amounts of money that will be hurled at us.

Feel free to call SOAR at 653-0831.