Fillmore, Santa Paula Target of SOAR Drives

Seeking to shield the Santa Clara Valley from large-scale development, activists in Santa Paula and Fillmore announced Monday that they will push to place SOAR growth-control measures on the November ballot.

The campaigns were spurred in part by two actions that could add tens of thousands of homes to the valley and its environs.

In Santa Paula, a land-use commission gave the city the green light to proceed with plans to more than triple its size. And in Fillmore, city leaders settled a lawsuit against Newhall Land & Farming Co. over its bid to build a sprawling community just across the Los Angeles County line. Newhall also owns 15,000 acres of farmland in the county.

The efforts are also part of a larger anti-sprawl movement that has swept across Ventura County in recent years--a campaign now seeking to check development in one of the region’s last predominantly agricultural valleys.

“I think this is a continuation of what has been accomplished so far,” said Steve Bennett, co-architect of the Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources measures known as SOAR. “And it’s probably the most critical piece, because it is the area that is most threatened now.”

Groups in both cities plan next month to start collecting signatures to qualify the measures for the ballot. They have until May 23 to turn in enough valid signatures--1,018 in Santa Paula, 520 in Fillmore--to put the initiatives before voters in November.

If approved, conversion of farmland and open space for development outside of designated borders--to be specified in the initiatives--would be subject to a public vote.

Such restrictions already have been enacted in six of the county’s 10 cities, plus the unincorporated areas outside city boundaries. Add Santa Paula and Fillmore, planning experts say, and it would make Ventura County one of the toughest places in the nation for developers to break ground.

“It’s just the SOAR people trying to finish the job,” said William Fulton, a Ventura-based urban planning expert. “If they lock down Fillmore and Santa Paula, [Ventura County] would probably be one of the strictest places in the whole country.”

SOAR opponents concede that many people are fed up with the land-use decisions being made by local governments but warn that such restrictions shouldn’t be the automatic response.

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The real answer is to plan for smart, managed growth within cities to avoid urban sprawl but ensure that cities will be able to afford basic services such as fire and police protection.

“A lot of people think that passing SOAR initiatives is going to be a panacea for their problems,” said Rob Roy, general counsel for the Ventura County Agricultural Assn. The trade association has long challenged the validity of the SOAR measures.

“But if they step back a minute,” Roy said, “they’ll realize that in order to survive, there’s going to have to be a certain amount of limited growth within those cities.”

Santa Paula has been down this road before.

In 1998, when cities across the county were adopting SOAR laws, Santa Paula voters rejected a pair of competing slow-growth measures.

But leaders of those two efforts--which both sought to curb growth, but prescribed different boundaries in need of SOAR protection--have joined forces to promote this measure.

“Unfortunately the two were competing, and there was some confusion among the voters,” said former Santa Paula Councilman John Melton, who led one of the campaigns. “Now there’s just one measure, and people will be able to decide whether they want to have a say in these issues.”

The issues are particularly timely at the moment.

The Local Agency Formation Commission in February gave Santa Paula approval to proceed with plans to more than triple its size by pursuing development of high-end housing in Adams and Fagan canyons northwest of the city and small patches of land for commercial use east and west of town.

LAFCO’s approval did not automatically bring those areas, which total 7,737 acres, within the city limits, but instead defined the boundaries the city is expected to grow into over the next two decades. The city would have to apply to LAFCO to annex the land if it wanted to build there.

Supporters of the plan say such development is necessary to boost the city’s lagging economy. But opponents have been up in arms about the venture, so much so that they launched the SOAR campaign.

If approved, the growth-control law would put future development of Adams Canyon to a vote of the people while development in Fagan Canyon would be subject to regular municipal controls, said Councilwoman Laura Flores Espinosa, a leader in the current SOAR effort.

Espinosa said the pro-SOAR group excluded Fagan Canyon from the SOAR limits because they wanted to ensure that there was room for moderate growth in Santa Paula. But she said she believes that residents want a louder voice concerning when and where development takes place.

“The dramatic expansion plans of the Santa Paula City Council are really the best evidence that the countywide SOAR cannot by itself stop urban sprawl,” Espinosa said. “I think people are ready to support this measure, now that they’ve seen SOAR working well in other areas of the county.”

In Fillmore, SOAR backers believe local residents are ready to lend the same kind of support.

There, residents were galvanized to pitch the measure after city officials agreed to withdraw from a county lawsuit aimed at halting the giant Newhall Ranch project in exchange for $300,000 from the developer to offset traffic impacts.

Fillmore officials said they agreed to the financial settlement because they believed it would resolve the city’s primary concerns about traffic resulting from the proposed development.

But residents stormed City Hall in protest before deciding to launch their own SOAR campaign.

“While we felt a lot of anger toward the City Council, in the long analysis we had to take some of the blame for what happened due to our general apathy,” said Paul Harding, who belongs to a newly formed group of Little League parents and other citizens backing the initiative.

“We’ve all seen beautiful scenic areas and rich agricultural lands being lost to asphalt, cement and red tile roofs,” he said. “We felt the SOAR measure would be the perfect prescription for causing the community at large to become involved in the decision-making process.”

The slow-growth issue comes up at a time when Ventura County and the city of Fillmore are pushing to create a large new greenbelt of protected farmland stretching 13 miles from the city limits to the Los Angeles County line.

Supervisor Kathy Long, whose district includes the fertile Santa Clara Valley, said that while she still intends to pursue the greenbelt plan, she doesn’t fault residents for wanting other assurances that sprawl won’t set in.

“I think there are already some protections, but as we saw with the LAFCO decision, there aren’t guarantees,” she said. “They want firmer guarantees by direct voter oversight, and that’s the democratic process.”