Effects of SOAR Initiatives

I am a native Ventura County resident and I am writing in regards to the Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources initiative that will appear on the Nov. 3 ballot [and] will seek to lock in land-use designations for 30 years.

If SOAR is approved by voters it could have undesirable consequences in the near future. The measure being proposed to voters is poorly written, and it does not stipulate how it will impact the local agricultural industry; neither does it stipulate how it will impact small landowners, who will be most at risk if this measure becomes law.

A perfect example is Bernadine Suitum and her husband, who purchased a lot in Lake Tahoe in 1972 with the hopes of someday building a retirement home there.

Seventeen years later, the Tahoe Regional Planning Authority informed her that she was prohibited from building on her land. It has taken Mrs. Suitum, now 84 and a widow, nearly a decade of hearings and appeals on purely procedural issues just to have the U.S. Supreme Court finally hear her case--a decade she should have spent enjoying her golden years while her husband was still alive, sitting on their front porch together.

When Ventura County voters go to the polls in November, they must ask themselves if they want to be victims of over-regulation like Bernadine Suitum if they choose to approve SOAR, or if they should be wise and oppose it and rally behind Rep. Elton Gallegly’s legislation, the Private Property Rights Implementation Act, which will soon be up for debate in the U.S. Senate.

All Americans deserve to have their constitutional rights protected, and property rights should be treated no differently. It is important that Ventura County gives SOAR an overwhelming no vote in November.

We cannot allow environmentalists to have the upper hand over a landowner’s right to private property, like they did with Bernadine Suitum, who has been taken by the system and left penniless.

MICHAEL J. LUNA, Oxnard

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I continue to read Times articles representing the proposed SOAR initiative as both a ban on the development of farmland and a growth-control measure. In fact, SOAR is neither.

Rather, the initiative would merely require a public vote on any proposed rezoning of land currently zoned for agricultural or open-space uses. Under SOAR, rezoning and development of farmland or open space could still occur if a majority of voters agreed to allow it.

SOAR’s purpose is to take the decisions regarding conversion of these lands out of the hands of elected officials and place them squarely in the hands of the public. This requirement may have the effect of limiting development of farmland (assuming that county voters want to limit such development). However, its immediate intent is to give the citizens of Ventura County greater control over their own future, whether that means preserving farmland or allowing it to develop.

Please stop misrepresenting what SOAR purports to do. The inaccurate depiction of one of the most controversial initiatives ever to be considered in Ventura County is a disservice to the community.

JOE POWER, Ventura