SOAR Analysis Needed

Ventura County’s economy is a living, growing, evolving creature. Keeping it healthy requires flexibility as well as hard work. Above all, it requires informed decision-making.

At a seminar last week, a leading analyst of local economic trends declared the county’s outlook to be the brightest it has been since 1990. Jobs are up; unemployment is down; the real estate market is booming.

“All the indicators point to Ventura County enjoying sustained growth, just not as explosive,” said Mark Schniepp, director of the UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project, which includes analysis of Ventura County.

What would be the effect if the various Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources ballot initiatives pass in November, imposing the strictest set of growth control measures ever proposed in Southern California?

That is one of the major questions to be answered in the weeks remaining before election day. Unfortunately, the Ventura County government has not offered a public analysis of likely fiscal impacts. In San Diego County, where a similar measure will go before voters in November, the county produced an extensive study.

Advocates of the SOAR measures say economic growth would continue just fine, it would simply occur within already-defined city limits; only inefficient urban sprawl would end.

Opponents of SOAR--including nearly all of the county’s farm groups, business organizations and chambers of commerce--say the mere possibility of the measures passing already is inflating home prices and has touched off a preemptive rush to rezone farmland for development, just in case.

In a four-Sunday series beginning today, Times staff writer Miguel Bustillo examines the genesis of SOAR, the arguments for and against it and its likely effects, to the extent that they can be predicted.

Although the issue has great emotional appeal--who wouldn’t like Ventura County’s greenbelts and open spaces to remain unchanged forever?--the impacts are many and complex. If ever there was an issue that demanded to be decided with facts, this is it.

The Board of Supervisors, which includes some members who have endorsed SOAR and others who vigorously oppose it, should order the county auditor to prepare an analysis of the likely fiscal impacts.