Growth Battle Heats Up

Former Simi Valley Mayor Greg Stratton announced Friday that he is organizing a coalition of local leaders to fight a November ballot measure seeking to rein in the city’s growth boundaries.

Stratton said he objects to Measure B because it is driven by out-of-town lawyers and politicians who want to take control away from local residents and turn it over to Ventura County. The initiative is proposed by the slow-growth group Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources.

“Why are these people meddling in the local affairs of Simi Valley?” Stratton said. “We’re asking local citizens to stand up to this land grab by outsiders.”

The ballot measure, if approved by voters, would stop expansion beyond current city limits, clipping Alamos and Brea canyons from future growth plans. It would also jeopardize Unocal’s plans for The Canyons, a major business park and 1,600-home development proposed northwest of the city.

Kimberly Lucero, a spokeswoman for the Unocal project, said the developer is not affiliated with Stratton’s effort but it supports his goal. Mayor Bill Davis also is supporting the opposition campaign.

Stratton’s “local control” argument marked a shift for opponents of the slow-growth measure, who previously objected largely on economic grounds. The Canyons had been cast by City Council members as the city’s primary source of new jobs over the next 20 years.

Diane Bentz of Simi Valley, one of the leaders of this year’s Simi Valley SOAR effort, called Stratton’s argument bogus. SOAR is a countywide group advised by Oxnard attorney Richard Francis and supported by county Supervisor Steve Bennett and Thousand Oaks Councilwoman Linda Parks, but the Simi Valley SOAR proposal is being driven by a core group of about 30 city residents, Bentz said.

“We are not outside groups,” she said. “If anyone is an outside group, it’s developers.”

Kevin Conville, another Simi Valley resident and another leader of the measure’s supporters, said Stratton’s argument was meant to distract voters from issues of population growth and traffic by stirring feelings of city pride.

SOAR announced its plans for Measure B in March, drawing immediate fire from Davis and other council members, who felt SOAR leaders were double-crossing them. In 1998, SOAR asked Davis to support the city’s first slow-growth initiative and stipulated that it would contain some areas in which growth would be allowed--the very areas SOAR backers are now pushing to cut.

Davis and other council members backed SOAR’s 1998 plan, which was passed by 70% of the city’s voters.

“We dealt on good faith with those people,” Stratton said of SOAR leaders. “Now we’re finding out they had their fingers crossed and had some other plan all along.”

SOAR leaders say they never promised city leaders they wouldn’t come back with a stricter proposal.