Growth and Quality of Life

In your editorial “No Simple Solution,” Aug. 23, you in fact offer a simple solution: Make room for all who wish to live in Ventura County. Land-use policy and community quality of life should not be determined by population pressures.

The notion that continued growth can be accommodated or is desirable may ultimately be answered by zoning build-out or by insufficient resources for further growth, such as water or clean air. Even now we may already exceed a long-term sustainable population level.

The suggestion that the quality of life in Ventura County should not be controlled by those residing here simply because others also want to live here sounds foolish to me. Must the livability of our communities continue to be degraded in a never-ending attempt to make room for more?

Our long-term prosperity depends on learning to live within a stable and sustainable community. Chasing growth for economic health or population accommodation will ultimately fail, leaving all of us diminished.

RAY KING

Ojai

* In “Farmland Vanishing at Faster Pace,” Aug. 21, The Times suggested that urbanization of farmland is quickening even though, as the article explains, farmland is being lost at nearly half the average rate of the previous 10 years.

SOAR co-founder Richard Francis greets the numbers with glee, insinuating that SOAR’s opponents can no longer rebut his conclusion that the numbers “illustrate the need for stronger measures to preserve farmland.”

It’s a nice spin, but the numbers reflect something that proves his ballot measure is not at all necessary. Between 1994 and 1996, 1,383 acres of agricultural land were “urbanized,” an average of 691 acres per year. Between 1992 and 1994, 1,032 acres were lost, an average of 516. According to the article, the average in the previous decade was 1,000 or more.

It would appear, contrary to Mr. Francis’ claims, that representatives of the public noticed this ag-land loss at least a decade before he did and set out to slow it down. And it appears as though our elected representatives have done a pretty good job stopping the bleeding.

The trouble is, during that same time frame (1992-96), a tremendous amount of developable real estate became tangled up in the “open space” web.

The loss of these resources has played a big role in creating the development pressures farmland faces today. As these vast tracks of land get down-zoned to open space, the only place left to turn for necessary, state-mandated growth is agricultural land.

Preserving the county’s agricultural land and heritage is an issue of utmost importance. Unfortunately, the people who are leading this charge are the same people who helped create the mess. And while preserving farmland will benefit us all, doing so by also locking up “open spaces” is a recipe for disaster.

SOAR, as it is offered today, is not even a viable option. Less would again have been more if they had simply stuck to Saving Our Agricultural Resources and left open spaces to a vote, and fate, of their own.

BRUCE ROLAND

Ojai

* Residents of Ventura County are about to be subjected to one of the most expensive campaigns ever conducted here. It will be paid for by the Coalition for Community Planning, a consortium of the building industry, business interests, some farmers and land speculators.

They will ask you to believe that attempting to stop urban sprawl is a “radical” idea. It will be claimed that, under current land-use policies, little farmland has been urbanized in Ventura County in the past six years. As we all know, the past six years have seen a decline in the housing market that is only now reviving. In the boom times of 1984 to 1994, Ventura County suffered a loss of 11,100 acres of prime farm and grazing land to urban development, more than 1,000 acres a year.

When this election is over, SOAR members will be living under the consequences of the outcome. Where will the moneyed interests of the CCP be living?

BRAD SMITH

Oxnard

* Re: “Thousand Oaks Gets State Warning on SOAR,” Aug. 19.

With this article, the merry developers and expansionists reveal a new tack in their efforts to overload Ventura County with more people and more development, traffic, pollution, stress, crime, taxes for social needs and other such goodies.

Getting newspaper publicity for false and misleading statements and setting up a “citizens group” calling itself the Coalition for Community Planning to attack SOAR and its slow-growth supporters are new thrusts for the November election campaign.

This group has promised us an early statement from some local farmers who are against SOAR. That is logical, of course, because there must be local farmers willing to sell to developers and retire to southern France.

The Times also quoted an official of the state Department of Housing and Community Development about a scare letter to the city of Thousand Oaks that a city does not have the right to set its own zoning restrictions and control building permits through its own processes, professional staff, planning commission and city council. That is to say, without state authorities moving in to protect expansion and more development, at the behest of Sacramento lobbyists.

Citizen alertness to the machinations of the well-financed developers and their political candidates is vital to efforts of Ventura County residents to protect our lifestyle from the carpetbaggers.

EDWARD SHUCK

Thousand Oaks

* Common sense tells us that stopping the paving over of Ventura County’s wonderful farmland makes economic sense.

There is ample land in California on which to build that is not suitable for food production. Let the builders look toward our hills and deserts.

JOHN M. COWART

Ventura