SOAR and Property Rights

The opponents of Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR) have raised the flag of “property rights.” However, property rights are not absolute. What you do with your property can indeed be limited by how that will impact my property.

You cannot build a wrecking yard next to my house. You cannot open a liquor store next to a school. Zoning and planning laws are constitutional and can be enforced.

If you want to turn a farm into a shopping center and thus turn my quiet street into a thoroughfare, I have the right to stop you. If I have been paying taxes to build schools for my children and you now want to convert an orchard into houses to overcrowd our schools, I can stop you.

On the other hand, if you want to spread manure on your fields to grow onions on land zoned agricultural before I moved here, I cannot stop you. You do have the right to use your property in the same manner that it has been used for decades.

Developers buy Ventura County farmland--some of the most productive soils in the world--with the belief that zoning laws are made to be changed. We see too many city council and Board of Supervisors members who agree that zoning laws are mere paper barriers to be torn up as soon as they are printed.

SOAR proposes to change this. If the initiative is enacted, anyone who buys land will have to expect that the zoning that applied beforehand will still apply afterward.

DAVID E. ROSS

Oak Park