Group Decides Not to Sue Cities Over SOAR

The Ventura County Agricultural Assn. has backed down from its threat to sue cities that implement voter-approved SOAR measures, with the trade group now saying it wants to work with elected officials to enact the new growth-control policies as smoothly and fairly as possible.

In letters hand-delivered last month to Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Moorpark, Camarillo and Oxnard, the association’s general counsel, Rob Roy, said passage of the Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources measures violated state laws governing annexation and boundary issues.

And he threatened to sue any city that carried out provisions of those measures, which prevent development from taking place outside designated borders without a vote of the people. Roy asked City Council members in those cities to strike down the initiatives.

Roy said Tuesday that his board of directors--in a spirit of goodwill and cooperation--has decided not to pursue legal action, opting instead to work with officials assigned to put the tough new land-use restrictions into action.

“Proceeding with litigation probably would have resulted in the alienation of a lot of people locally,” said Roy, who acts as spokesman for the trade association of more than 100 farmers and farm-related businesses.

“That is not to say that the board feels any less certain about the legal reasons for attacking these measures,” he said. “But we want to be perceived as a group, as an industry, that is willing to do something positive and work within the system.”

That was considered good news by leaders of the SOAR campaign, especially those who helped craft the measures and lobbied for their passage.

With so much still to be sorted out about how to implement the land-use controls, SOAR supporters said the last thing they needed was to contend with a drawn-out legal battle.

“I don’t think they ever had a case,” said Ventura attorney Richard Francis, who helped draft the measures and would have been pressed into action to defend them. “But I welcome the overture. This is good news for the public; it’s good news for the SOAR organization, and it’s good news for me personally.”

Voters last fall overwhelmingly approved a countywide SOAR initiative that prevents farmland and open space outside cities from being rezoned for development without voter approval. At the same time, voters in Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Camarillo and Oxnard adopted complementary measures blocking development immediately outside their borders.

Finally, Moorpark residents last month joined the slow-growth brigade, going to the polls in a special election to decide that the same kind of land-use policies should be put into place.

The agricultural association did not target the countywide SOAR measure, saying that the boundary and annexation concerns applied only to the city initiatives.

Roy contends that those city-based measures, in effect, allow voters to create and modify city boundaries--decisions that should fall solely within the jurisdiction of the Local Agency Formation Commission, a state-authorized organization that governs annexation and boundary issues.

But SOAR proponents argued that growth-control measures in no way preempt the commission’s legal authority, saying the initiatives were carefully crafted to ensure that they did not conflict with state laws.

“I can find no legal support for such a drastic action as your group asks,” Thousand Oaks City Atty. Mark Sellers wrote last week in response to the association’s letter. “This initiative was overwhelmingly approved by the voters and cannot simply be invalidated by City Council action.”

Having withdrawn his lawsuit threat, Roy said he now looks forward to working with city leaders to make the SOAR measures a reality.

He said he is especially interested in helping officials follow recommendations made by the Agricultural Policy Working Group, a coalition of farmers, environmentalists and business leaders who studied farmland preservation issues for more than a year.

Those recommendations were included in a companion advisory measure, also approved by voters when they adopted the countywide SOAR measure in November.

Last week, Supervisors John Flynn and Frank Schillo were chosen by their colleagues to oversee the effort to sort through the county and city initiatives and figure out a way to shape them into working policies.

“Everyone says now that SOAR has passed, it’s all over, but the devil is in the details of these things. And there are going to be a lot of details,” said Schillo, who plans to meet Friday with Flynn to start the process.

“But both John and I agree that we want the public to be involved in this process,” he said. “I think the idea here is that it will be a better, more orderly process by achieving consensus and we need input from all viewpoints to accomplish that.”