Farmland Policy Group Debates Building Freeze

A group working on strategies to preserve Ventura County’s farm industry remained far from consensus Wednesday after members clashed over a proposal to temporarily freeze development on agricultural land.

Indeed, the latest “final meeting” of the Agriculture Policy Working Group raised more questions than answers about the group’s much-anticipated recommendations and ended only with plans for another meeting.

Members of the broad-based working group, which includes environmentalists, planners, politicians and building industry representatives, spent most of the meeting debating one of the committee’s newest proposals: a temporary moratorium on nearly all development of county agricultural land and open space.

A subcommittee of the group came up with the moratorium proposal, which is intended to halt urban sprawl until the county and its 10 cities can study placing growth boundaries around every municipality in the county. Voters would then be asked to approve the boundaries, and lift the moratorium, in a future election.

But some members of the group questioned the wisdom of proposing such an extreme measure as a freeze on development. Others took issue with the suggestion that the moratorium be placed before city voters this fall.

Still others advocated asking municipalities to enact the moratorium themselves, while some board members expressed opposition to all “ballot box zoning” proposals.

Failing to resolve the issue during the three-hour gathering, the working group members scheduled another meeting for Tuesday.

County Supervisor John K. Flynn said afterward that the proposed moratorium appeared to be a thinly veiled “poison pill” aimed at scuttling the Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR) initiatives proposed by slow-growth activists for the fall ballot.

Flynn has endorsed the more restrictive SOAR initiatives, which also seek to establish growth boundaries around each city. Under these initiatives, any development that would occur just beyond the established boundaries would require voter approval.

Moreover, Flynn and Supervisor Judy Mikels said city leaders are not likely to impose moratoriums on such short notice, if at all. They said the mere suggestion of freezing growth could turn council members off from the working group recommendations.

“A moratorium is a very extreme step to take,” Flynn told fellow working group members. “We’re shooting ourselves in the foot if we do that . . . we kill the whole thing from the beginning.”

Fillmore Councilwoman Linda Brewster, one of the few city leaders in attendance, questioned whether cities would support a freeze or even pay for an urban boundary study.

“It’s going to cost us a whole lot of money, and it’s not going to achieve a whole lot,” Brewster said. “It’s too darn confusing.”

Mitchel Kahn, president of the Ventura County Economic Development Assn., said a moratorium would only widen the gap between the cities that are well off financially and those that are not--one of the disparities the working group is trying to address.

Moreover, Kahn said he was increasingly concerned with letting the growth issue be decided at the ballot box, noting that the county Economic Development Assn. voted Tuesday night to oppose SOAR--and all such development initiatives.

Rex Laird of the Ventura County Farm Bureau, which devised the working group’s urban boundary plan, said he found it “disheartening” that members were “trying to gut the whole proposal” so late in the process.

“Are we trying to save farmland or are we trying to stop the SOAR initiative?” Kahn shot back.

SOAR leader Steve Bennett said after learning of the working group’s moratorium plan Wednesday that it seemed to serve no purpose other than to compete with SOAR.

“It’s clear that some people are trying to use a moratorium to muddy the SOAR initiative,” Bennett said. “It’s unfortunate, because at this point, they [working group members] have embraced nearly all the concepts of SOAR.”

One of the main differences between the SOAR and working group’s initiatives is the length of time each would be in place.

The SOAR growth boundaries would be in effect for 20 to 30 years, depending on the city. The working group’s proposed boundaries would be in place a minimum of 10 years, with an option for renewal.