Developers and SOAR

At times in my career I have represented many land developers. At other times, I have been a home builder. Where, then, do I start responding to Robert A. Jones’ column, “Ecotopia Comes South,” (Nov. 8)?

Perhaps to say that if I or my clients “raped and pillaged,” we certainly don’t remember doing so. Was it good for us? Raped what? We did provide the homes from which the drawbridge people now wish to keep out others, and while we built their homes we constantly heard that they wanted those homes on larger lots to eat up yet more land.

I fail to understand what is “cancer-like” about annexing land to cities where growing population can best be served by concentrated public services. Are you really so naive as to not understand that the people who want to stop the conversions of open space are the very same people who oppose higher density zoning of land earmarked for development?

Preservation of farmland is an admirable, priority goal, but even The Times Ventura County editorial board acknowledged the hypocrisy of Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources proponents and the inadequacy of their purported solution.

UCLA forecasts that Southern California must house another 9 million or so by year 2025. If the drawbridge mentality sweeps the Southland, where do they go? We can only have inner city higher densities. And where do you find the support for that?

As to SOAR leader Steve Bennett’s comments about the “growing economy” of the city of Ventura since it pulled up the drawbridge in 1995, check out the statistics on that city’s sales tax revenue non-growth compared to other cities in Ventura County, including the strong slow-growth-sentiment cities of Camarillo and Thousand Oaks.

I look forward to reading more from Mr. Jones as the issues generated by SOAR are clearly just emerging. I hope his next analysis will be a bit more analytical and significantly less speculative.

JOSEPH M. BOWMAN, Westlake Village