State Panel OKs Reduced Santa Paula Growth Plan

A state planning agency Wednesday approved a greatly reduced version of Santa Paula’s plan to expand its borders, while delaying a vote on a 50% increase in Moorpark’s size to accommodate the largest housing project in recent county history.

The agency’s moves came just weeks before area voters will determine how much Ventura County cities will be allowed to grow in the future, when ballots are cast on the contentious Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources measures.

The Local Agency Formation Commission, an independent panel of regional officials that control changes to city boundaries, will resume discussions Nov. 4 on whether Moorpark can expand to make way for the 3,221-home Hidden Creek Ranch project.

Moorpark residents will get to vote on the SOAR initiative in a special Jan. 12 election along with a referendum that gives them the opportunity to overturn the already approved housing project.

The 4,300-acre Hidden Creek Ranch, which would be developed by Messenger Investment Co. of Irvine, would increase Moorpark’s size more than 50% and its population by one-third to nearly 40,000.

The commission delayed its final decision on Moorpark’s expansion after receiving a last-minute procedural argument from SOAR leader Richard Francis, a lawyer who maintained that two documents crucial to allowing the expansion are invalid pending the election’s outcome. Commission lawyer Noel Klebum agreed with Francis’ contention.

“Were the commission to act today to approve the annexation, it would in effect be acting on evidence that does not exist,” he told the panel.

But Santa Paula now must wait a year before again asking the commission to allow it to expand into 5,413-acre Adams Canyon, which officials of the economically depressed city covet as a site for upscale housing.

The commission removed the isolated canyon from the proposal--the largest of four areas into which Santa Paula had sought to expand--because of potential problems over providing water service and fire access, adding traffic and such natural hazards as earthquake faults, landslides and floods.

Councilwoman Robin Sullivan said she was “disappointed, shocked and amazed” over the panel’s unanimous decision to remove all but 2,324 acres from the plan--a cut of 70%. The move may have dealt both the expansion and the city’s economic development efforts a fatal blow, she said.

“We just wrote off six years of work--they threw it down the drain,” she said. “They said, ‘We don’t want you to grow, we don’t want you to prosper, we don’t want you to have any economic development. Just sit in the valley and be good little kids.’ ”

Santa Paula, a city of 27,000, had hoped to build as many as 2,250 expensive homes in Adams Canyon. Moreover, removing Adams Canyon from the plan calls into doubt the viability of building commercial and industrial properties in the remaining areas, because developers said they need homes to house employees in the already built-out city, officials said.

The commission’s decision frustrated the plan’s proponents because two other potential expansion areas had previously been eliminated in an effort to answer earlier commission concerns. Consequently, what was once an ambitious proposal to triple the city’s size by adding 9,570 acres and 3,600 homes has been drastically curtailed.

Now, just 450 homes slated for Fagan Canyon remain from the original plan and officials said no developer has so far shown interest in building there.

Sullivan suggested larger forces were at work than just worries over the city’s ability to develop Adams Canyon.

“This just came out of left field--it has to be political,” she said. “If it is true that we’re being made the scapegoat for the [anti-development] view being felt in the rest of the county, I feel very bad about that, because these people aren’t even aware of where Santa Paula is, much less the [economic] straits we’re in.”

Santa Paula faces an even greater challenge, however, in the Nov. 3 election, where the passages of growth restrictions could severely limit city expansion plans.

Councilwoman Laura Flores Espinosa, who advocates a much smaller expansion of the city and helped get one of two local growth-control measures on the November ballot, described the commission action as a “wake-up call.”

“This council person warned them they should have gone in with their best shot--something LAFCO would have approved,” she said. “I would assume the city will need to go back and redesign their application and go back to LAFCO.”

Espinosa said she believes Santa Paula would have had a better chance had it eliminated Adams Canyon and instead kept a 541-acre area to the east of the city in its proposal.

But Kathy Long, chairwoman of LAFCO, said the panel would have also rejected that part of the plan because it includes about 300 acres of prime agricultural land.

It was Long, the county supervisor whose district includes Santa Paula, who made the motion to eliminate Adams Canyon from the proposal. But Long took exception to the contention she and the rest of the commission were jumping on the SOAR bandwagon.

“I was frankly concerned my commission was going to deny [the expansion] entirely,” she said. “The commission clearly has to set aside and do its best to ignore the political actions around the SOAR elections.

“Frankly, this commission has been expressing frustration over the last few meetings with our mandate to preserve open space and agricultural lands,” she added. “We’re given a mandate and then not given the tools, such as money and staff, to carry out that mandate.”

Supporters of Moorpark’s Hidden Creek on Wednesday accused the SOAR group of trying to postpone the project’s final approval. SOAR supporters countered that project backers were trying to unduly hurry the process.

“What is this rush for?” asked Roseann Mikos , Moorpark’s SOAR leader and a City Council candidate. “They’re trying to do everything they can before the election in January.”

Francis had maintained the city’s 1998 Specific Plan and a General Plan amendment for Hidden Creek are not valid because both are contingent on the project’s development agreement.

That agreement, in turn, is not yet effective because it depends on the outcome of the referendum, he said.

Klebum, the commission’s lawyer, suggested the panel needed two other documents to make the city’s annexation application complete: the 1992 General Plan update and 1992 environmental impact report. The developer said it plans to submit those documents later this week.

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Santa Paula Expansion Plan

The state agency on Wednesday approved a greatly reduced version of the city’s expansion plans. The agency excluded Adams Canyon, shrinking the new boundary lines from 9,570 acres to 2,324. The original plan called for construction of up to 3,800 new homes, but now would only accomodate 450.

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Area: 1. Fagan Canyon

Acres: 2,173

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Area: 2. East Area 2

Acres: 26

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Area: 3. West Area 2

Acres: 125

Source: Rinicon Consultants Inc.