Oxnard looks for quick ballot entry for SOAR annex

City leaders in Oxnard may approve, as early as next month, ballot language asking voters to annex a major housing project into preserved agricultural land at the city border.

But the scramble to place the proposal commonly known as the Jones Ranch Project on ballots may not happen in time for November, according to a city planner in charge of the project; and as members of the Oxnard City Council consider a more costly special election, they also look for ways to pay for it.

“The easiest way to get voter approval is to tag onto a statewide election,” said Senior Planner Chris Williamson.

With a target date yet to be determined, officials are aiming for an election sometime in February or March 2010, Williamson said. He noted that placing a line item on a regular ballot can cost up to $50,000. A special election can cost the city three times as much.

“My suggestion, is it needs to be funded by the landowners,” says City Council member Dean Maulhardt.

The project calling for 2,500 low-income homes must first go to a vote because it proposes to build onto four parcels of farmland, itself preserved by voters more than a decade ago. That vote enacted Oxnard’s SOAR initiative in 1998 — Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources.

Officials want to redraw the city’s CURB line (the City Urban Restriction Boundary) to allow for the build-out, a first in Oxnard since SOAR was enacted. It would extend the boundary just east of Vineyard to Rose Avenue, adding about 500 acres, though most of it would still be used for farming, according to city reports, with about 165 acres, the whole of the Jones Ranch, devoted to the housing project.

Williamson said the project would go a long way toward fulfilling the city’s obligation to provide more than 4,100 state-mandated affordable housing units. It currently has about 289 constructed, with another 687 in the contract/planning stages.

“It would be an enormous help,” he said.

Known officially as the Del Norte Community Extension, pundits have rebranded Jones Ranch as “Jonestown.” And it’s a massacre, they say, that manipulates the electoral system and reneges on what’s been voted on before, with money — not preservation — as the motivating factor.

One ardent critic is activist Martin Jones, the former city treasurer candidate and early proponent of the SOAR campaign. Like each city in Ventura County that has enacted the initiative, SOAR was tailor-made for Oxnard, with its boundary lines carefully considered. Changing that, said Jones, sets a bad example and devalues the worth of land reserved for open space and farming.

“Some people are pretty upset about it,” he says. “To a lot of people, there is a lot of scorn. People have worked very hard on SOAR. The people who value it, the CURB line and the sphere of influence meant a great deal to people in keeping green space and quality of life.”

John Krist, CEO of the Ventura County Farm Bureau, believes local farm worker housing is an essential need; but the City of Oxnard, he says, already has undeveloped, non-ag properties it can build on first.

“As a general rule, stepping out and developing ag land should be a last resort,” Krist says. “Anytime you put an urban development on land adjacent to ag land, you create problems. It’s a difficult call.”

Making amendments to SOAR, which could start a pattern of slowly developing over farmland by way of the ballot box, is not something that should be left up to voters either, according to Krist. It’s one reason why the Farm Bureau doesn’t take an official position on the matter.

“Elections are not the best way to make [amendments]. It’s hard to tell what the voters will do,” Krist says. But, he adds, “I think the voters have been fairly reluctant to do that, generally.”

Jones expressed concern for residents of neighboring El Rio, who would feel the most impact from the Jones Ranch development, but who cannot vote on the proposal because they live in an unincorporated part of the city.

John Zaragoza, the county’s Fifth District supervisor, who represents El Rio, was contacted about this but did not return phone calls.

Jones also criticized the housing as anything but affordable, where 50 percent of homes built at Jones Ranch, under city plans, must be for low-income residents.

“There’s always a need for housing in this area, where the prices are so high,” he said. “But how it’s been presented to the public is as affordable, which is not true.”

According to Williamson, city planner, there’ve been no set prices established for any of the homes. The prices have changed, and could change further, in the current economic and housing crises.

“It could be down in the [$200,000s]. It’s all changed because the housing market’s radically changed,” he said. “Given the market today, it’s hard to say what that would be.”

Regardless of officials’ ongoing efforts to reduce substandard and overcrowded housing, Tim Flynn, a former Oxnard City Council member, decried the plan, saying the homes at Jones Ranch will never be affordable enough for Oxnard’s low-wage community

“Most of those people in those garages cannot afford (it),” he said.

Flynn’s suggestion echoes Krist from the Farm Bureau — if the most affordable housing is needed, the city should tap into unused land at its disposal, or find the best bidder before building over the city’s agriculture.

“It’s one thing to take unfertile land and transform it into housing,” Flynn said. “It’s completely another thing to take some of the most productive land in the world and put a smiley face on it. Why is it they didn’t go to all the other 200-300 farmers on the Oxnard periphery and get the lowest bidder?”

Detractors of the project have long suspected an inside deal between the city and ranch owners was struck. Oxnard Mayor Tom Holden denies this. He said ranch owners, looking to sell their property, approached the city first.

“We started looking at it — the land was available, the project was proposed to us — but we didn’t want to hopscotch around the entire city, put 20 acres here and 20 acres there,” Holden said.

The mayor refers to a guideline that allows the city to build on a maximum of 20 acres of each SOAR-protected parcel. As an alternative to Jones Ranch, it would be an expensive one, says Holden, creating a scattered “island” effect with infrastructures needing construction for each and every separate housing community.

Holden also shot back at critics of the project who have claimed the proposed housing isn’t affordable.

“Some of the same people opposed … are the ones critical to overcrowding,” he said. “I don’t have any qualms as my responsibility as mayor to provide a balanced mix of housing. Without housing within reach, you can either leave the area or make do with what you have, which is one or two families in a home in areas not designed for that many people.

“We have to change this perception of building housing for these people like it’s a negative impact,” he continued.

In the end, the city is still bound to its state quota of affordable housing units, which, if not met, could make Oxnard ineligible for certain funding from Sacramento, according to Williamson. He said the city can pursue other options, should the ballot measure fail at the polls.

He noted that the city may then need to take advantage of developing on its 20-acre limits of SOAR property.

“If we don’t do it here (Jones Ranch), then we’ll get a series of small projects that qualify for the exemption,” he said.    Renderings, technical details and other information on the Jones Ranch project is at the City of Oxnard’s Web site, developmentservices.cityofoxnard.org/Uploads/Planning/JonesRanch070708.pdf.

paul@vcreporter.com