Preservationists Push for County Farmland Initiative

VENTURA —  With elections in Thousand Oaks and Ventura safely behind them, environmental activists are intensifying fund-raising efforts for a countywide initiative to preserve farmland.

“We’re now in push mode,” said Ventura City Councilman Steve Bennett, who successfully spearheaded a similar initiative in Ventura in 1995. “We’re picking up the pace.”

Until the Nov. 4 election, Bennett worked for environmentalist candidates for the Ventura council and a second principal initiative supporter--Thousand Oaks Councilwoman Linda Parks--was heavily involved in defeating the recall of Councilwoman Elois Zeanah.

“We’ve cleared the decks,” Bennett said.

Modeled after Ventura’s Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources [SOAR] initiative, the countywide measure would take control of farmland development away from elected officials and put it in the hands of voters.

Under the Ventura law--and a pioneering 1991 ordinance in Napa County--owners of designated farmlands cannot develop the property unless a majority of voters approve the project.

In Ventura, thousands of acres of farmland and open space are protected until 2030.

In response to the new initiative--and others eventually planned for every local city--members of a task force that includes farmers, local officials and building industry representatives say they are working toward a better option: gaining countywide consensus for tough, new rules that protect cropland while respecting the rights of property owners.

Meeting since April, the task force hopes to lay out a series of reforms in January that would make it more difficult for cities to annex so-called greenbelt lands.

The Ventura County Farm Bureau, which opposed the SOAR initiative, has also vowed to fight the new measures.

“We oppose the use of initiatives for land-use decisions,” said Rex Laird, executive director of the Farm Bureau.

Farmers are taking the threat of new initiatives seriously, Laird said. But he added that an anti-SOAR campaign will wait until initiative backers show they can mount a countywide campaign.

“Right now, it’s all supposition,” Laird said.

So far, organizers of the new initiative have raised $34,000, Bennett said. They need to raise $150,000 before they can start gathering the required 40,000 signatures to put the countywide initiative on the ballot next fall.

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Organizers hope to collect the money in pledges by the end of January, then gather the signatures by the end of June, the deadline for placing initiatives on the November ballot.

In Ventura, farmers and pro-growth business leaders outspent SOAR supporters 6 to 1 in 1995, raising $165,000 to $27,000 by the election.

At the county level, organizers predict that opponents will raise $1 million to $2 million to fight the measure.

“We recognize that we will be fighting guerrilla warfare against an institutional army,” said attorney and former Ventura mayor Richard Francis, who helped write the Ventura initiative. “But even a guerrilla force has to have resources.”

Organizers have held three pledge parties and several fund-raisers this year, Bennett said. Two more are planned for next weekend in Ventura and Thousand Oaks.

Organizers will launch a mail blitz this week, sending brochures to more than 15,000 frequent voters in Oxnard, Ojai, Moorpark and Camarillo.

That will be only the first wave of solicitation, with another 15,000 brochures going out between Thanksgiving and Christmas to the same four cities and Simi Valley.

By late January, mailers will be sent to all frequent voters in the county.

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Along with the countywide initiative, organizers hope to pass city ordinances as well.

“We need a similar initiative in every city in the county, save Port Hueneme,” Francis said. Port Hueneme is bounded on three sides by Oxnard and on the fourth by the Pacific.

“We’re down to needing seven,” he said. “We’ve got three reasonably well along.”