Development Plans Anger Residents

About 150 angry people packed the Somis Elementary School auditorium to make one thing perfectly clear: Under no circumstances will they tolerate any kind of development in their rural town.

Residents appeared before the Las Posas Citizens Committee, an advisory committee created by county supervisors, to oppose a proposal by Shell Oil Products Co. to build and operate a 24-hour gas station and food market at California 118 and Somis Road. They also opposed an unrelated California Department of Transportation proposal to widen the highway through the community.

And they opposed a developer’s plan--raised unsuccessfully twice in the last 10 years--to build about 95 houses on agricultural land.

But because the Tuesday meeting was the committee’s first since it was reconstituted after years of inactivity, members decided not to vote on any of the issues. The committee has no power, but can advise the Board of Supervisors.

Instead, committee members reaffirmed their commitment to be stewards of their area’s agricultural land and decided to invite Caltrans officials to a public hearing about the highway widening.

They also decided to vote on the gas station proposal at their next meeting Nov. 11, as well as study the county’s criteria for an environmental review of a plan by Knightsbridge Holdings to convert agricultural land into a subdivision.

“The problem is not a Knightsbridge problem, it’s a development problem,” said committee member Barbara Kerkhoff. “Do we want to give permission for development to come in and chip away at our agricultural land?”

The Las Posas Citizens Committee, which was formed in 1975, had been inactive for several years, but county Supervisors Judy Mikels and Kathy Long recently resurrected it to give residents a greater voice in decisions affecting their community.

The Nov. 11 meeting will be held at Somis Elementary School at 7:30 p.m.