Local Residents Back Slower Growth Even if Jobs Are Cut

Ventura County is where Los Angeles really ends.

It is, in fact, what Los Angeles County used to be--a string of smallish cities separated by furrowed farms, a suburban patchwork pretty enough to lure immigrants with the promise of blue skies and a slower, simpler life.

It is what the San Fernando Valley was in the 1950s, what Orange County was in the 1960s.

But Ventura County residents now fear politicians are paving over paradise, and they want to stop them before it is too late, according to a new Los Angeles Times Poll.

The poll--the most extensive so far on political attitudes here--found that nearly two-thirds of Ventura County residents favor slowing growth and limiting development even if that hurts business and cuts jobs.

In both the newer communities of eastern Ventura County and the older towns of the west, residents say they want to halt suburbia’s sprawl across prime farmland and open space: About half even favor stripping control over farmland development away from elected officials--and giving it to voters instead.

Indeed, more than half of poll respondents say they believe bucolic Ventura County can prosper even if it grows very little or not at all in the years to come.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why,” said Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), a former real estate agent and Simi Valley mayor. “All you have to do is look at why people came here to start with. For the most part, they came to escape the turmoil of the inner city, to raise families, to have a safer and better quality of life. And they don’t want that to change.”

In conducting its survey, The Times Poll interviewed 1,286 adults in the county between Sept. 20 and 23. The margin of sample error is plus or minus three percentage points.

The poll found that even after seven years of pokey recession-slowed growth, nearly half of local residents say the county is still growing too fast, while about 44% say it is growing at the right pace.

And about half of registered voters would back a quarter-cent sales-tax increase to preserve the county’s rich farmlands by buying development rights from farmers, while 41% oppose the concept.

“I’ve been here for a long time, and every time I leave my home I see all this land that used to be beautiful farms but is just housing now,” said poll respondent Jeff Tanner, 61, a retired Navy medical corpsman from Port Hueneme. “I want the growth to stop. But I suppose it’s just a wish.”

That, of course, is the kicker.

While strongly favoring slower growth, a solid majority of residents doubt Ventura County can withstand the march of urban development any more than the rest of Southern California was able to pull up a drawbridge and stop expansion when residents thought their towns were big enough.

Fifty-eight percent of poll respondents said they believe it is inevitable that developers will buy up most local farmland, and that agriculture--still the county’s No. 1 industry--will virtually cease to exist.

“I’m sure it’s going to change,” said 32-year old medical supplies salesman Kevin Bradley, who moved to Moorpark from Los Angeles to start a family. “Even in the three years I’ve been out here, it just continues to grow and grow. I’m sure most of the land here is owned by some developer. There are some huge projects they’re putting in here in Moorpark right now.”

It’s not only in upscale Moorpark, the county’s fastest-growing city, where construction is taking off again. Huge housing projects in Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Camarillo and Oxnard--delayed by a recession that cut the county’s annual population growth to a meager 1% a year--are racing to catch the coattails of the county’s latest boom.

Ventura County has seen its population swell 5 1/2 times since 1950. And throughout the county, officials are projecting another surge in construction of housing, office buildings and industrial parks.

It has already started. For instance, housing construction was up 72% last year to 2,353 units from a recession low of 1,372 in 1993. And this year’s pace is even faster.

But many residents already here say they want no part of it: not in their backyard or neighborhood or hilltop or verdant valley.

“Growth is a very big thing with me,” said Linda Ketelhut, 48, a university payroll manager and Thousand Oaks resident for 21 years. “Traffic on the highways is just too much. Our schools are crowded. It’s too fast. When we moved out here it was so nice.”

So what to do?

Sensing the public mood, an array of longtime rivals on growth issues--environmentalists, builders, farmers and government bureaucrats--say they all agree something should be done to preserve the vast farm belts and open spaces that still separate local cities.

But many disagree on what.

In a swirl of activity, slow-growth activists are plotting to place farmland and open-space initiatives on ballots countywide and in every local city. Ventura and Thousand Oaks have already passed such measures.

In response, members of a task force that includes farmers, local officials and building industry representatives say they are working toward a better option: gaining consensus for tough new regulations that spare cropland while respecting the rights of property owners.

That task force hopes to lay out a series of reforms early next year that would make it more difficult for cities to annex greenbelt lands between communities.

The slow-growth activists’ more restrictive strategy seems to have the upper hand, given the results of The Times Poll.

By a 50-42% margin, registered voters say they would back a ballot measure that strips farmers of their rights to develop their land while seizing authority over land use from elected officials, and turning it over to voters.

Ventura voters were among the first in California to pass such an initiative in 1995, and sponsors want a countywide measure on the November 1998 ballot. But that measure would restrict development only in unincorporated areas. And cities could still annex county lands for development. So initiative sponsors are also considering ballot measures in Camarillo and Oxnard for next fall, said Ventura Councilman Steve Bennett, co-author of the successful 1995 measure.

“A fundamental core value of the citizens of Ventura County is to preserve this semirural feeling and the buffers between the cities,” Bennett said. “It’s not like a fad. People are not going to say in a few years, ‘Now I’d like to have urban sprawl. Now it’s OK for this place to look like the San Fernando Valley.’ ”

Bennett contends the initiatives--their model ruled legal by the state Supreme Court--can stop unwanted growth.

“We’re a generation that lived through the growth of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and we recognize that we don’t have to accept that as our inevitable fate,” he said. “It would be noble to say that in Southern California there was one county where the citizens came together and stopped the developers.”

Backers of the countywide measure say they must raise $150,000 by mid-January and turn in 40,000 signatures by the end of June if the 1998 initiative is to make the fall ballot and withstand attack.

With only $20,000 in the bank so far, sponsors began soliciting donations for the Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR) movement through mailings to core supporters last week. Solicitations of frequent voters in Camarillo, Oxnard and Moorpark will follow, Bennett said.

The Times Poll showed broad support for SOAR-type initiatives, about 50% among registered voters in both the east county and the west. Support among both liberals and conservatives also hovered near 50%.

The only real split on growth issues was based on income: Richer residents supported growth limits the most, while poorer residents--generally more dependent on the new jobs growth brings--supported them the least.

Correspondingly, Latinos were slightly less enthusiastic about growth limits than whites. White voters favored the SOAR measure 51% to 41%. But only 43% of Latino voters favored the initiative, while 52% opposed it.

County Supervisor John Flynn, a principal backer of the task force alternative to SOAR initiatives, said policymakers can confine growth within urban limits without voters deciding every project.

“We can grow within city limits,” Flynn said. “But we need to redefine how growth takes place. It could go upward sometimes, not outward. We need more cluster communities that use land more efficiently. We need to redevelop more in the downtown core of cities.

“That hasn’t happened so far,” he said, “because there has been no public clamor for it, and because it’s less expensive to keep going outward and encroaching on agricultural land. But the politics are changing. And I don’t think that’s going to be feasible anymore.”

Kevin Sweeney, a Ventura-based strategist for environmental causes, said the day has passed when local politicians can ignore residents’ support for preserving Ventura County’s trademark farmlands.

“The politicians who will succeed in the future are the ones who can bring hope that there will be open space left,” he said.

The Times Poll supports that conclusion, since 54% of residents believe the county can prosper with little or no growth.

That sentiment is strongest in the east county, where 61% believe growth is not necessary for prosperity, but falls to 51% in the west.

Dee Zink, spokeswoman for the Building Industry Assn. of Southern California, doesn’t buy it.

“We’re a tremendous part of the work force,” Zink said, referring to 11,000 construction jobs in Ventura County. “We have had little or no growth for many years, and the county has struggled with being prosperous.”

That doesn’t mean builders want to build on farmland, she said.

“While it’s easier to build on farmland,” said Zink, who is a member of the farmland task force, “we’ve always felt it was a shame to be building on farmland instead of hillsides. I don’t think farmland is going to go away.”

The slow-growth sentiments of Ventura County defy a truism that has guided Southern California cities for 100 years: grow or die.

Ventura author and planner Bill Fulton, whose book “The Reluctant Metropolis” analyzes the sprawl of Los Angeles into an unwieldy mass, said the Los Angeles Basin was filled by a ceaseless “growth machine” whose primary goal was to consume land profitably.

For a century, the Southland’s prosperity has depended on the ability of that machine--brokers, lawyers, contractors, agents and building industry unions--to build more and more subdivisions by converting land on the urban fringe, Fulton said.

“That machine still clearly exists,” Fulton said in an interview. “And in Ventura County, it exists in the more traditional way because we still have a lot of land to chew up.”

And no matter what anyone says, the county will very likely grow at between 1% and 2 1/2% annually, or 7,200 to 18,000 new residents a year, Fulton said.

Nonetheless, he believes the county could still maintain its farm industry, its greenbelts and its prosperity. “We can be prosperous if we confront our choices, instead of sliding around them,” he said.

That means altering city plans so houses are built on smaller lots and aging buildings are replaced with new ones designed to use land as efficiently as possible. Ordinances must also be altered to protect farmland instead of hillsides, and houses must be built in and around canyons, not on flat farmland, he said.

“We do have to chew up some land, so let’s decide what land that’s going to be,” Fulton said. Even after making such choices, Ventura County must deal with one essential fact: “There’s no suburban agricultural county in the history of the United States that has successfully maintained agriculture as an industry,” he said.

Sonoma County, north of San Francisco--which resembles Ventura County in its agricultural roots and proximity to a metropolis--is trying to be the first.

There, four communities passed initiatives last fall to lock in city boundaries for as long as 20 years--the first so-called urban limit lines in California.

Sonoma County is also a model for another farmland preservation movement--establishment of nonprofit trusts to buy farmers’ rights to develop cropland and pay for it with an added sales tax.

In The Times Poll, Ventura County voters favored by a 50% to 41% margin increasing the current 7 1/4% sales tax to 7 1/2%, which would raise more than $15 million a year.

Support was about the same in the east county and the west, though opposition was stronger in the east. The biggest split was between liberals, 62% of whom favored the tax, and conservatives, of whom only 40% said they would back it.

Not surprisingly, the strongest support for the new tax came from the county’s inland farming valleys--Las Posas, Santa Clara and Ojai--where respondents favored it 61% to 35%.

“My main concern is that if we keep taking the farmland and subdividing it, what are we going to do for food in 50 years,” said Joe McColloch, 64, of Ojai, a salesman and retired deputy sheriff.

But by state law, a sales tax for a specific purpose such as buying farmland must be approved by at least two-thirds of voters. Ventura County support would seem to fall far short of that.

Still, Flynn said he is encouraged by the poll results, and intends to ask the countywide farmland task force to back the quarter-cent tax measure.

“Fifty percent is pretty good support,” he said. “Twenty years ago it would have been 20%. . . . This is a turning point for us, and I think we have the public support to turn that corner and save the agricultural land.”

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Ventura County: Go Slow on Growth

A Los Angeles Times poll of 1,286 Ventura County residents found overwhelming support for slow-growth policies. Residents want to preserve the rich farmlands and open spaces that still separate the county’s 10 cities. About half favor taking control of development on farmland away from elected officials and giving it to voters instead.

County growing too fast: 47%

Growth just about right: 44%

Growth too slow: 3%

Don’t know: 6%

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POPULATION GROWTH

1990: 669,016

1997: 716,000

2000*: 755,400

2010*: 886,100

* Projected

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Favor limits on development even if it hurts the economy: 64%

Favor more growth even if it hurts the quality of life: 27%

County can be prosperous with little or no growth: 54%

County must grow to prosper: 39%

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Ballot initiative to preserve open space and farmland (registered voters)

FAVOR: 50%

OPPOSE: 42%

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Impose 1/4-cent sales tax to buy development rights from farmers (registered voters)

FAVOR: 50%

OPPOSE: 41%

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It is inevitable that farmland will be developed and agriculture cease as an industry: 58%

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If development occurs, residents favor building:

Schools: 20%

Teen/senior/community centers: 15%

Parks/open spaces: 15%

Business centers: 14%

New homes: 11%

(up to two replies accepted; top five responses shown)

Source: L.A. Times Poll, state Department of Finance

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HOW THE POLL WAS CONDUCTED

The Times Poll contacted 1,286 adults in Ventura County by telephone Sept. 20 through Sept. 23. Telephone numbers were chosen from a list of all exchanges in the county. Random-digit dialing techniques were used so that listed and non-listed numbers could be contacted. The sample was weighted slightly to conform with census figures for sex, race, age and education. The margin of sampling error for all adults is plus or minus 3 percentage points; for certain subgroups the error margin may be somewhat higher. Poll results can also be affected by other factors, such as question wording and the order in which questions are presented.

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About This Series

“Life in a Changing County” ponders Ventura County’s politics and growth, and residents’ views on key issues of the day. The stories are based on a poll of 1,286 residents conducted in September. Today’s installment, the second in a series appearing over four Sundays, describes how most local residents want to slow or stop growth and save farmland from development.