LAFCO Should Say No

If the two-thirds of Ventura County voters who endorsed the SOAR growth-control measure thought their Local Agency Formation Commission would be an ally in the battle against urban sprawl, it looks like they thought wrong.

LAFCO, the panel of local officials empowered by the state to say yes or no to cities’ requests to annex rural territory for development, last month gutted most of the special requirements it created years ago to strengthen the minimum standards the state required before expansion can occur.

That means a kinder, gentler LAFCO will be waiting Wednesday when two of the most controversial sprawl proposals in recent Ventura County history come before it seeking approval.

One is a proposal to more than triple the size of Santa Paula by adding 7,737 acres to the city’s sphere of influence, most of it in Adams Canyon. Officials of this economically depressed city have long dreamed of building upscale houses in that isolated canyon northwest of town to attract wealthy residents who would improve the city’s tax base and give its businesses a boost.

But in October 1998 LAFCO said no, approving only a small portion of the city’s expansion plan and deleting Adams Canyon. The commission was unsatisfied with the city’s answers to serious concerns about water availability, difficulty of access or evacuation, and potential hazards from fires, floods and landslides.

Now the guidelines that prompted LAFCO to ask those legitimate questions have been deleted, and Santa Paula is trying again.

We sympathize with Santa Paula’s need to improve its range of housing options but we share the concerns voiced by LAFCO in 1998. Allowing homes to be built in this rugged canyon would be an invitation to disaster--with the bills to be shared by Santa Paula residents who could never afford to live there. LAFCO should stand by its decision and again say no to development in Adams Canyon.

The other sprawl controversy on Wednesday’s LAFCO agenda is the site for Juan Soria School, which the Oxnard School District seeks to build on 14 acres of cropland in a greenbelt outside Oxnard’s sphere of influence.

SOAR, the Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources initiative passed by wide margins in 1998, included an exemption that allows school districts to build in farming areas where most other types of development would require a public vote. We concede Oxnard’s need to build more schools, and fast. But we believe that there are better sites closer to where the students are and farther from the potential drift of farm chemicals.

We urge LAFCO to say no to this attempt to bust a greenbelt and extend urban Oxnard further into some of the world’s most fertile farmland.