SOAR Makes Final Push for Petitions

Its signature-gathering efforts dampened by this season’s El Nino rains, the group looking to place a series of growth-control initiatives before county voters this fall is in the midst of a final petitioning blitzkrieg over Memorial Day weekend.

Although the Save Our Open Space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR) movement has suffered some setbacks gathering signatures due to this spring’s unusually wet weather, group leader Richard Francis is confident it will collect enough to qualify all of its initiatives for the November ballot by next Monday’s deadline.

SOAR is attempting to pass measures preventing the cities of Oxnard, Camarillo, Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley and Moorpark from expanding beyond a set of designated borders without approval from voters. The group is also hoping to pass a countywide initiative preventing development of farmland and open space outside city boundaries unless voters sign off on it first.

“Any way you cut it, it’s been miraculous,” Francis said of the group’s success. “Doing this in all of these cities and the county, without paid signature gatherers, is just a huge undertaking. We’re going to make it in every one of these places.”

SOAR leaders are not taking anything for granted, however. Concerned with falling short of valid signatures, SOAR volunteers are going out in force this weekend, and will continue collecting signatures until the final day.

“We are making a good push this weekend,” said SOAR co-leader Steve Bennett. “Getting some dry weather has helped, but we need to keep gathering signatures until the end to make sure we make it.

“When it didn’t rain last weekend, I had my first comfortable night since we started this thing,” he added. “But if everyone lets down, we could end up committing the fatal flaw of coming up just a few [signatures] short.”

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SOAR opponents have decided not to contest the initiatives during the signature-gathering phase, opting to wait and see if they make the ballot.

“With any luck, this thing will die an early death,” said Kioren Moss of Citizens for Community Planning, which contends that the county’s current growth-control rules are more than enough to stop runaway development.

SOAR volunteers need to collect valid signatures from 10% of the registered voters in the cities, or roughly 3,400 in Camarillo, 1,600 in Moorpark, 6,000 in Simi Valley and 7,100 in Thousand Oaks. The Oxnard City Council has agreed to place the city’s SOAR measure on the ballot, so the group only needs to collect signatures there for the countywide initiative.

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To qualify the countywide initiative, meanwhile, SOAR needs 22,215 signatures, or 10% of county voters in the last gubernatorial election.

As of last week, SOAR leaders estimated they had collected more than the necessary number in all areas, with the possible exception of Camarillo. But they stressed they had to continue and actually step up their efforts to obtain the needed buffer to offset invalid signatures.

“They were much slower in getting started,” Bennett said of the Camarillo volunteers. “But they’re really rolling now.”

The group reports having collected about 3,000 signatures in Camarillo, 2,200 in Moorpark, 9,000 in Simi Valley and 9,000 in Thousand Oaks. And in the countywide initiative, considered the most critical by most SOAR advocates, the group has gathered more than 30,000 signatures.

Perhaps the greatest outpouring of support for SOAR has come from a city many previously considered one of the group’s most difficult battlegrounds: Simi Valley.

“When we say, ‘We don’t want to end up like the San Fernando Valley,’ that’s really important to people here,” said Diane Bentz, coordinator of the Simi Valley petition drive. “That’s where a lot of people here came from.”

On a recent afternoon outside the Vons at Erringer Road and Cochran Street in Simi Valley, Bentz and fellow volunteer Keith Conville had some problems getting signatures.

But theirs was a good problem: Many of the people exiting the supermarket said they had already signed the petition.

“I’ve watched L.A. grow and stuff more and more people in there like a can of sardines,” said Curtis Price, who has lived in Simi Valley all of his 34 years. “All the mountains I used to look at are people’s backyards now.”

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Conversely, one of the most difficult places for SOAR petitioners has been Thousand Oaks--a situation some petitioners in that city blame on residents’ frustration with signature gatherers in general, following last year’s failed drive to recall Councilwoman Elois Zeanah.

“We’re going to be close. It might be within 100 [signatures] one way or the other,” said Thousand Oaks Councilwoman Linda Parks, who is spearheading that city’s SOAR drive. “Some people think [signing] won’t do anything, that they signed a petition to stop Civic Arts Plaza and that happened anyway.”