SOAR’s Measure Qualifies for Vote

Slow-growth activists in Simi Valley have gathered enough signatures to place on the November ballot a plan to block expansion into canyon areas north of the city, officials said Thursday.

City Council members are expected to decide next month whether to place a competing measure on the ballot. That measure would maintain the current boundaries.

The measure by the slow-growth group Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources would rein in an initial set of growth boundaries adopted by voters in 1998. City officials said SOAR had collected more than the 6,185 signatures--10% of registered voters--needed to put the plan to a vote.

The measure calls for cutting Alamos and Brea canyons and Marr and Runkle ranches from expansion plans while limiting growth to the existing city limits. Should developers eventually want to expand into those areas, the council could not grant approval without voters’ consent.

That could jeopardize developer Unocal’s plans for The Canyons, a major business park and 1,600-home project northwest of the city. Local leaders have viewed The Canyons as the primary source of job creation in the next two decades.

“It was much easier to collect these signatures than we’d imagined,” said Kevin Conville, an activist heading the effort.

Mayor Bill Davis and other officials are furious about SOAR’s latest plan. They backed SOAR’s 1998 effort after supporters agreed to include the canyon areas in the acceptable growth boundaries.

“That’s the way they told us it would be and now they’re coming back and changing their mind,” Councilwoman Barbra Williamson said. “People are afraid of this turning into the San Fernando Valley. But just saying ‘No building at all’ is not smart planning.”

A majority of the council has said it supports placing a competing proposal on the November ballot--one with the same or nearly identical SOAR boundaries as those approved four years ago.

“I do think we need to give the citizens a choice to maintain what they have or go with the other one,” Councilman Paul Miller said. “If we just have the one issue on the ballot, it may not tell the whole story.”