Council Rejects Greenbelt Renewal

With very little discussion, the City Council voted 5 to 2 Monday to reject Councilman Steve Bennett’s request to consider renewing a greenbelt preservation agreement with Oxnard, which is set to expire next summer.

Only Councilman Gary Tuttle supported Bennett’s request. This is the second time in two months the council rejected the proposal.

The council previously voted to delay renewing the city’s greenbelt agreement with Oxnard until at least January.

By then, the council’s two environmentalists--Bennett and Tuttle--will be gone, and a county task force--the agricultural policy working group--will release a report making the case for saving agriculture.

But Bennett again urged the city to act promptly.

“The council should reconsider because there is absolutely no risk to renewing a greenbelt agreement, while there is some risk to sending the wrong message if you decide not to do that,” he said. The 1993 greenbelt agreement between Oxnard and Ventura is not legally binding. It is a gentlemen’s agreement to not develop the land between them.

The current agreement requires review within five years and will expire next July. It took nearly a year last time around for the Oxnard City Council, the Ventura City Council and LAFCO--the state agency that oversees annexations to cities--to reach an agreement.

Bennett said Monday that his meetings with Oxnard citizens to organize a grass-roots Save Our Agricultural Resources initiative in Oxnard similar to Ventura’s had nothing to do with his desire to renew the greenbelt agreement.

“This was on my whole checklist--getting this done before my term was up,” said Bennett, who announced in early August that he will not seek reelection. “Last time it took about a year. It struck me that this is about time.”