Santa Clara Valley Petition Seeks Growth Controls

Seeking to shield the Santa Clara Valley from large-scale development, activists in Santa Paula and Fillmore have announced plans to place growth-control measures on the November ballot.

The campaigns were spurred in part by two recent actions. 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 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 growth limitation efforts are 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.

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 signatures--1,018 in Santa Paula, 520 in Fillmore--to put the initiatives before voters in November.

If the measures are 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.