Time to Develop Solutions

The rising chorus of demands for tighter limits on development in Ventura County is getting a boost from a sudden flurry of big projects making headlines in recent days.

Although the knotty issue of “grow or no” has been debated here for decades, increasing momentum suggests that this may well be the year words turn into actions.

Adding urgency:

* Hidden Creek Ranch, a 3,200-home development north of Moorpark that could increase the city’s population by one-third, has received approval on its environmental impact report and is proceeding to the next step.

* Ahmanson Ranch, 3,050 homes plus a hotel, two schools, golf courses and commercial space, has fulfilled the last of its obligations to procure open space for donation to the public and is now free to begin building.

* Oxnard’s Southeast Plan, 3,165 homes on 815 acres of farmland, was declared dead last month--and then crawled from the grave as a proposal to build 350 houses and two schools on 203 acres of the same fields.

* Simi Valley approved similar revisions in a 364-home, two-golf-course development around the landmark towering rock wall know as Whiteface. The number of proposed homes was cut to 99, but a hotel and convention center were added and the developer withdrew an offer to donate 1,154 acres of open space to the public.

* The county approved a new public golf course adjacent to the Tierra Rejada greenbelt that separates Moorpark, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks, reviving debate over the compatibility of golf greens and greenbelts.

All of these steps come as Ventura County residents proclaim their passion for preserving farmland and open space as never before.

Just ending is a series of spirited town meetings, led by the county-appointed Agriculture Policy Working Group, at which hundreds of residents have offered support to various strategies for saving farms.

Just beginning is the countywide campaign called Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR), which aims to put on the November ballot a measure to establish urban limit lines beyond which any proposed development would need voter approval.

Already those efforts appear to have borne fruit in Camarillo. The day of the town meeting in Camarillo, a majority of its City Council members said they would support SOAR or a similar measure. The following evening, the council rejected the proposed Camarillo Park and Village project that sought to build 1,000 homes on 330 acres of farmland along the Ventura Freeway.

There is no universally popular strategy for saving farmland and open space. If we all agreed on what to do, we would have done it years ago. Many argue that our existing policies have been effective in keeping growth under control and extracting large donations of land to the public in return for permission to build.

But others point to the continuing march of projects like the ones listed above and stress two indisputable facts: While debate continues, development continues. And pavement is forever.

The Times congratulates all who are joining in this vital public discussion. We encourage those who object to the SOAR approach to come forward with alternatives before the November election. We will continue to cover this essential issue on our news pages and on our opinion pages. And we look forward to helping this be the year decades of talk give way to solutions we can all live with.