Oxnard Planners Say Growth Is Under Control

City planners launched into a marathon session on Oxnard’s future Wednesday night by arguing that Ventura County’s biggest city has not grown out of control.

In fact, the city is just pulling out of the biting recession of the early 1990s by shoring up its industrial job base, city Community Services Director Matthew Winegar told the City Council and Planning Commission in a joint meeting.

“Development has not been as fast as forecasted,” he said. “Oxnard is housing-rich in terms of having more people living in the city than jobs. The focus in recent years has been on job development.”

By focusing on the slow growth of the 1990s, planners sought to demonstrate not only that the city is not growing at an uncontrolled pace, but also that it need not go outside its boundaries to accommodate new development--a key issue for advocates of preserving open space.

Currently, there is room for 12,460 new housing units within the city and its surrounding sphere of influence, planners said.

Winegar said residential growth has been only 75% of what was projected in 1990, while industrial growth has been just a fraction of what was expected. The city projected that 1.2 million square feet of industrial space would be added each year in the 1990s, but in some years this decade the figure has been as low as 100,000 square feet, he said.

Those statistics provided ammunition for dozens of farmland preservationists who packed the council chambers for the meeting.

Alarmed by a number of major housing projects planned for areas outside Oxnard’s boundaries, many have said there is plenty of room for growth within the city. Before moving ahead with plans to annex farmland and build subdivisions, officials should focus on land closer to home, they contend.

Officials are considering three projects that would add about 4,000 homes and require about 1,100 acres of farmland to be annexed.

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But in a shift toward slower growth, a majority of City Council members have sharply criticized the largest project under review, the Southeast Plan. That proposal calls for 3,165 homes on 815 acres of farmland, a hotel and an agricultural theme park.

Preservationists continued their assault on the Southeast Plan Wednesday night. They handed out bumper stickers promoting a farmland preservation initiative planned for 1998. And they exploded into applause when city planners said officials have the option of keeping Oxnard’s growth boundaries just as they are now.

“Whenever we develop into the greenbelt, there’s a domino effect: It goes on and on and so on,” Oxnard attorney and preservationist Joseph O’Neill told officials at the meeting. “To grow for all the wrong reasons destroys the very reason we live in Oxnard.”

Noting the concerns over unchecked growth, City Council members are exploring ways to ensure development proposals are more closely scrutinized.

At a meeting Tuesday, for instance, council members authorized city staff members to draw up an ordinance that would expand the Planning Commission from five to seven members. Councilman John Zaragoza suggested the plan, saying it would bring more diverse views on land use to a body that he says looks favorably on most development plans.

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Meanwhile, Councilman Tom Holden continued to promote a plan for Oxnard to adopt “urban growth boundaries.” Such restrictions, proponents say, would make designated farm areas and wetlands off-limits to developers for many years.

At Wednesday’s meeting, city Planning Director Joyce Parker described urban growth boundaries as a tool to prevent urban sprawl and protect agricultural land.

“In Ventura County, we’re surrounded by agricultural land--it’s a vital part of our economy and we want to recognize that,” she said, noting that the staff report for the meeting included extensive discussion of farmland preservation.

Nonetheless, some officials say new growth restrictions are unnecessary and that Oxnard has the proper commissions and regulations in place to monitor development.

Councilman Dean Maulhardt, for instance, has said he does not support the countywide ballot initiative planned for next year by a group called Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources, or SOAR. And Maulhardt was the lone councilman to oppose Zaragoza’s Planning Commission expansion.

Aside from the Southeast Plan, the city is considering two other major housing plans.

The Northwest Golf Course Community Plan proposes about 450 new homes on 330 acres of mostly farmland near Victoria Avenue.

And the North Shore at Mandalay Bay development calls for a gated community of 365 homes to be built on sand dunes.