Ventura County Perspective : SECOND OPINION : 60,280 Housing Starts Don’t Equate to ‘No Growth’ : Far from ‘closing the gates,’ SOAR allows us to manage development to sustain a way of life.

Here we go again. More sour grapes from a sore loser who doesn’t want to accept who won the elections over Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources (“SOAR Closes the Gate to Development,” Ventura County Perspective, Aug. 29.)

The voters who passed SOAR by more than a 2-1 margin knew that there’s plenty of room to grow throughout Ventura County in areas that do not require voter approval. If Jon Haines doesn’t know that, as president-elect of the Simi Valley-Moorpark Assn. of Realtors, he must have his head in the sand.

In fact, checks with planning departments countywide reveal 60,280 expected new housing starts by 2020, none of which would be subject to SOAR. How Haines can call that “putting up the no-growth gates around Ventura County” I will never understand. Those 60,280 housing starts represent a growth rate of 17% to 48%, depending on the jurisdiction.

Let’s look at Moorpark. Haines and his anti-SOAR cronies aren’t satisfied with a 48% growth rate, worth 4,280 housing starts that are not subject to SOAR between December 1998 and 2020. No, he wanted to allow Messenger Investment Co.’s Hidden Creek too, to give Moorpark 3,221 more houses--so we’d have a staggering 86% growth rate by 2020. Moorpark voters knew that 48% was plenty to guarantee room for our children and grandchildren and many others. But they also knew that 86% was too much too soon, so they voted for SOAR and against Hidden Creek.

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Haines would also have us believe that Messenger got all the necessary approvals and that Moorpark voters are taking away Messenger’s “vested right to build.” Not true again. Messenger never had, and still does not have, a valid or vested right to build any development in Hidden Creek. Haines seems to believe that developers should be allowed to go through the motions of the public process and get automatic yes votes no matter what they propose to do and no matter where or how they propose to do it. Well, guess what? California law allows city council members, county supervisors and--yes--even the public to vote no if they believe a project is inappropriate.

Haines also criticizes Richard Francis, SOAR’s attorney, for trying to make sure a Ventura church group that wants to build on farmland has clearly defined its project before it goes on the ballot. Haines says the church’s plans were “already approved by the appropriate city agencies.” Not so. The plans were not even submitted to the city, let alone scrutinized in the normal city process. If such scrutiny had occurred, the project would have been well-defined and there would be no need to challenge it now. Neither would the church need to gather any signatures, because the city would have placed it on the ballot.

There’s not room in this column to refute every nugget of misinformation put forth by Haines. But you get the idea. “Closing the gate to development?” “Handcuffing our cities?” No, SOAR did not, has not and cannot do such things.

Haines gives only lip service to promoting managed, sustained growth while he argues against SOAR, the very thing that gives us the best chance to have that managed growth. Do you think he has a vested interest in uncontrolled building? Of course not. He’s only in the real estate business.