SOAR Initiative

The proposed Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR) initiative would not restrict or take property rights, as opponents claim.

SOAR would make a simple majority of the voters the authoritative body to approve rezoning agricultural and open-space land. SOAR opponents would have us believe that county residents do not know what is best for them. It apparently does not matter that the residents collectively have vastly more knowledge and experience than the handful of “experts” who currently control the rezoning process.

SOAR would provide a clear opportunity for our county staff and Board of Supervisors to explain just why they believe a zoning change would benefit the residents.

Ventura County’s General Plan allows for many thousands of new houses and millions of square feet of new retail stores and offices to be built over the next 20 years. This development will take place on land already zoned for residential and commercial use. SOAR would allow voters to ensure that the General Plan is upheld and that agriculture and open space lands don’t also become designated for housing tracts and retail stores without sufficient reason.

Once agricultural land or open space is developed, it is changed forever. A thoughtful delay to an irreversible process can have little long-term effect, but bad results from thoughtless or avaricious actions will last forever.

If doomsayers are correct and the county begins to suffer the hypothesized ills that SOAR might bring about, where are we? With SOAR we will always have the opportunity to intelligently improve areas that need attention. Without SOAR we and our successors will probably have only regrets.

BURTON L. ELLIOTT

Thousand Oaks