No Surprise on SOAR

It’s no surprise that residents of Fillmore and Santa Paula are rallying to join the six Ventura County cities that have passed SOAR growth-control measures. Elected officials in both cities have recently demonstrated that they do not share the public’s zeal for preserving farmland and open space.

Campaigns have begun in both cities to place Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources initiatives on the November ballot. If passed, 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.

Similar measures were adopted in 1995 by the city of Ventura and in 1998 by Camarillo, Moorpark, Oxnard, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks, along with a countywide measure covering unincorporated areas. The SOAR measures won the support of up to two-thirds of the voters and were defeated only in Santa Paula, where competing measures with different boundaries both failed. Their advocates have now teamed up.

The driving force of SOAR measures is public suspicion that elected officials lack the will to say no when well-financed developers come around seeking to replace orchards, cropland or scenic canyons with housing developments or shopping centers. Such development may (or may not) bring economic benefits to the target city, but to many voters that consideration is less important than the goal of maintaining the area’s rural and relatively uncrowded atmosphere.

Fillmore officials all but invited a SOAR campaign when they voted in February to drop out of a county lawsuit against Newhall Land & Farming Co. over its proposal to build a sprawling community of 70,000 people just across the Los Angeles County line. The city negotiated a payment of just $300,000 for its promise not to oppose the massive development. That raised questions about how vigorously Fillmore would object if Newhall should attempt to build on the 15,000 acres of farmland it owns on the Ventura County side of the line. Fillmore and Ventura County are working to create a greenbelt to protect farmland east of the city--in the direction of Newhall Ranch--but even that would not give authority over development decisions directly to the voters.

And in Santa Paula, the City Council majority pushed hard to win approval from the state commission that regulates city boundaries for a controversial plan to more than triple the size of the city’s sphere of influence--the area it expects to eventually grow into. Advocates argue that building upscale homes in Adams and Fagan canyons is the only way to improve the balance sheet of the county’s least prosperous city; opponents say providing roads, water, fire protection and other services to the rugged canyons would cost far more than the city will ever recoup.

Ventura County is at the forefront of a nationwide rebellion against urban sprawl. We believe land use decisions are far too complex to be made with an oversimplified yes or no at the ballot box. But when elected officials make bad calls like these two examples, it’s not surprising that voters would think they could do a better job themselves.