Under SOAR, Farmland May Sprout Schools

Tucked away inside Ventura County’s historic growth-control initiatives is a provision that could ironically make it easier for one type of builder to bulldoze farmland.

The framers of the Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources initiatives included a little-noticed exemption that allows school districts and other government agencies to build on protected farmland without voters’ approval.

With the price of farmland expected to fall now that it has become more difficult to build housing tracts on agricultural property, government agencies could find it cheaper to build on farmland than anywhere else.

Strapped for cash and space, four school systems in Oxnard, El Rio and Ventura are considering doing just that. Two more districts in Santa Paula may build on SOAR land if housing developments lead the way. And the city of Camarillo is planning to erect a water tank on protected land.

While hardly qualifying as a major assault on SOAR and its goal of preserving open space and agriculture, the provision illustrates that locking up land is not as easy as it sounds.

“If a school needs to go [in farmland], we’ll put it there,” said Eric Ortega, an assistant superintendent in the Oxnard Union High School District. “We have to think about education.”

“The paradox is SOAR doesn’t provide the protection most people in the electorate thought it would,” said Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau. “The fact of the matter is that the SOAR initiatives--or any freeze [on use] of agricultural land--could depress the value of that land, making it more enticing to locate schools there.”

The uncertain consequences of building schools on farmland go beyond the loss of open space, potentially ushering in a new set of political battles over such things as pesticide spraying. The only thing certain is that SOAR has altered the political landscape.

“I see Ventura County at a bend in the road right now,” said George Shaw, a consultant with the state education department’s School Facilities Planning Division. “I just don’t know what’s around the bend.”

Agriculture a Local $1.2-Billion Industry

The push and pull between urban development and farm interests is nothing new in Ventura County.

Agriculture is one of Ventura County’s top industries, a $1.2-billion enterprise that employs 20,000. But over the past 15 years, development has consumed an average of 500 to 1,500 acres of farmland and grazing acreage annually.

Seeking to stem the development tide, Ventura County voters overwhelmingly embraced some of the most ambitious growth-control measures in the nation in November.

The county’s SOAR law prevents politicians from re-designating farmland outside cities to more intensive land uses through 2020 without first getting voters’ approval. Similar measures were adopted in Camarillo, Oxnard, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks, each barring the cities from urbanizing beyond specified boundaries without approval from voters. Moorpark approved its own measure in January; Ventura did likewise in 1995.

Creating the exemption for government agencies and schools was both a pragmatic and political strategy. Because state law exempts schools from local planning ordinances, school districts almost certainly would have prevailed in any lawsuit against SOAR. Nevertheless, SOAR founders penned their own exemption, hoping to appease local parent-teacher groups.

The pressure to build schools in SOAR territory comes from two directions.

Firstly, enrollment in Ventura County schools grew from 111,328 to 130,954 over the past decade. Estimates of future growth differ, but experts preparing for the “baby boom echo” anticipate at least 1% a year in new enrollment to accommodate the children of baby boomers. That growth rate is equivalent to two elementary schools annually for the next decade.

Secondly, school districts are still playing catch-up to satisfy state efforts to reduce class sizes, which has whittled classes to 20 pupils in primary grades.

“These children are already here,” said Sandra Herrera, an assistant superintendent with the Oxnard Elementary School District. “They aren’t waiting.”

SOAR as a Boon to Region’s Educators

As school officials cope with enrollment pressures, SOAR could become a boon to educators. By requiring voter approval for most development outside city boundaries, SOAR is expected to ratchet up the value of developable plots inside city boundaries. In turn, economists predict SOAR will depress the value of agricultural land beyond the boundaries.

“If SOAR really increases land prices within the boundaries and decreases land prices outside, in purely economic terms, it could make building schools on farmland more attractive to school districts,” Ventura-based urban planning author William Fulton said. “And it may make selling out to school districts--or any state or federal agency--more attractive to landowners.”

SOAR leader Steve Bennett, a former Ventura city councilman, is not convinced. He believes the measures’ effects on school building will be a wash.

“There are so many factors that go into school building,” said Bennett, who teaches history and economics at Nordhoff High School in Ojai. “I don’t think a marginal difference in land value is more than a small factor. The counterweight is that the same people who voted to protect land with SOAR also vote for the school board members.”

In other words, school trustees too eager to gobble up protected land could face the wrath of all those voters who endorsed SOAR.

“My advice to school districts looking for sites and considering farmland? Look elsewhere,” said Richard Francis, a former Ventura mayor and SOAR co-founder.

“Good planning dictates putting schools where the houses are. Houses are not in the farmland.”

On this point, SOAR’s opponents and proponents agree.

“We’re not happy about building schools in farmland. To the extent possible, we’d like to have development occur somewhere other than prime agricultural land,” said Rob Roy, president and general counsel of the Ventura County Agricultural Assn. “But I think it’s inevitable that a lot of ag land is going to be paved over to meet government demands, such as schools and . . . government housing.”

The first test case of school building on SOAR land will very likely be the Oxnard Elementary School District’s new Juan Laguna Soria School.

Faced with rolling back its efforts to reduce class sizes without new campuses, the district hopes to open Soria by the summer of 2001. The preferred site is a sod field outside Oxnard’s SOAR boundary in the Lemonwood neighborhood, which is near strawberry fields. Some environmentalists and a neighboring landowner oppose the site, saying children could be exposed to pesticides.

Even before SOAR, the 15,386-student district was scouring the Oxnard Plain to find a home for the Soria school--with three others to follow shortly. Choices were scant, time short and farmland the principal choice, the school board president said.

“We’re faced with an increasing enrollment and we’re actively pursuing the acquisition of land,” President Francisco J. Dominguez said. “We’ve looked all over for someplace safe and affordable to build, including agricultural land. If [SOAR] is now beneficial for us by reducing the cost of that land, then the rest of the community of Oxnard benefits, because we can do other projects as well.”

Oxnard resident Victoria Gomez, who has lived for five years in an apartment building across from the Soria site, said she would love to see a school there.

“I think we need a new school for the children here,” said Gomez, a 38-year-old disabled farm worker and mother of three. “It would be close to home, closer for our children.”

Farmland Offers Some Advantages

Bracing to build about 30 schools over the next two decades, many school officials argue they have little choice but to consider farmland. It tends to be wide open, cheaper than land zoned for housing and large enough to meet state guidelines for campus size, ranging from 10 acres for elementary schools to 40-acre high school sites.

That would have been true with or without SOAR, said Ortega of the Oxnard Union High School District, which is considering building a school on farmland. Ventura County districts--including Oxnard’s--have long planted schools in fields that once sprouted fruits and vegetables.

“There are all sorts of sites for schools that would come lower on the list” than farmland, Ortega said. “The sites of World War II munitions factories come lower, toxic sites, those situated at the end of an airport landing.

“In comparison, farmland is typically pretty safe, or can be made safe pretty easily. I would urge school districts and the public to think in terms of the overall site that is best for kids. There’s no crop more valuable than our children,” he said.

Thousand Oaks Mayor Linda Parks, a SOAR advocate, believes SOAR’s chilling effect on development overall will reduce the number of homes--and schools--the county needs in the long run. Writing the exemptions for government agencies was essential to keeping SOAR immune from legal challenges, she said.

Post-SOAR schools built on cropland “certainly won’t have the impact we’ve seen with commercial developments and housing tracts eating up farmland,” Parks said. “Any schools built would be rare blips that have nothing to do with SOAR.”

SOAR Impact on Land Values Unknown

In truth, three months into Ventura County’s farmland preservation effort, no one knows the effects of SOAR on government expansion plans and land values. The county assessor and several real estate brokers and appraisers who work with agricultural clients say there is not enough data to determine whether the economists’ predictions that land values will fall are right.

“Who benefits from SOAR? Anyone who is exempt from SOAR could potentially benefit,” said Mark Schneipp, director of UC Santa Barbara’s Economic Forecast Project. “Any exemptions from SOAR should be watched very carefully.”

Most of the county’s school planners acknowledge they haven’t given the economics of SOAR much thought, saying the measures don’t affect the job of teaching kids.

And it’s still unclear where public sentiment will settle on the school-building issue. Community support of a particular site often weighs heavily on the minds of elected school board members.

“I wish school districts luck,” said longtime rancher Carolyn Leavens, who was active in the anti-SOAR Coalition for Community Planning. “They’re going to get into trouble no matter what they do. . . . School districts may be allowed to build on farmland, but they’ll trip on public opinion.”

Certainly, county voters overwhelmingly supported SOAR, except in Santa Paula. But they have also backed school repair and construction in recent years, approving multimillion-dollar bond measures in Thousand Oaks, Oxnard, El Rio, Pleasant Valley, Ojai, Port Hueneme, Ventura and Fillmore.

Some environmentalists, however, object that schools in farmland only serve as a gateway to more sprawl. According to the theory, as long as a school, sewer lines and water are out there, why not build more homes? And they question the safety of schools near fields, particularly those injected with methyl bromide, which is used on strawberries.

Teachers at Rio Mesa High School, for instance, have complained of flu-like symptoms and the need to rush children indoors when pesticides are used nearby.

“No one can tell you it’s safe to send your kids [to schools in farmland] because no one has done air monitoring there,” said Lori Schiraga, director of environmental projects for the Environmental Defense Center, a law firm with offices in Ventura and Santa Barbara.

With about 5,000 acres of vacant land still available within city limits countywide--not all of it in large enough plots for traditional one-story schools--both environmentalists and school officials agree they need to work together long term to find acceptable school sites.

“This might not make me popular with my peers, but I think we don’t think creatively in this business,” said Salvador Godoy, school facilities director for the Rio School District, which is considering farmland for a school site.

“We tend to think schools have to be on open 10-acre parcels without thinking of the overall impact on land development,” he said. “We need to start looking at other ways--in-fill schools, multistory schools--so we don’t sprawl all over the place.”

Staff writer Fred Alvarez contributed to this report.

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School District Survey

As they eye enrollment growth, facilities planners in six of Ventura County’s school districts are considering land now protected by the city and county SOAR initiatives as possible sites for future schools.

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Number of schools needed to Considering School district be built in the next 20 years* SOAR land Conejo Unified 1 No Fillmore Unified At least 1 No Hueneme 0 No Moorpark Unified At least 1 No Oak Park Unified At least 2 No Ocean View Up to 3 No Ojai Unified 0 No Oxnard Elementary At least 4 Yes Oxnard High At least 3 Yes Pleasant Valley 2 No Rio 5 Yes Santa Paula Elementary At least 2 **Yes Santa Paula High Up to 2 **Yes Simi Valley Unified 0 No Ventura Unified 4 Yes

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Source: School districts’ long-range projections

* Many of the districts’ projections are based on development proposals now being considered by city councils or the courts. Projections could change, depending on the fate of those projects and other factors.

** Although Santa Paula residents rejected a city SOAR measure, land outside the city is still blanketed by the similar county initiative. Some of the land being considered for school building is covered by the county law.