Increase in Proposed Buffer Zone Urged : Development: In the name of farmland preservation, elected officials are being pressed to add 1,200 acres to a planned greenbelt area between Oxnard and Ventura.

As president of the Oxnard Elementary School District board, Jean Harris could easily do the math.

Behind the wheel of her compact car, she sliced through 1,200 acres of lemon orchards and strawberry fields shielded by the city from development only until the year 2000.

Eight years, she figured. Not much time at all before developers can move in and try to build. In fact, one already has raised the prospect of erecting luxury houses on the farmland.

“Every inch of this land is being intensively farmed,” she said. “The fear is if you lose some of it, you’re going to end up losing it all.”

In the name of farmland preservation, Harris and others are pressuring elected officials to add the 1,200 additional acres to a proposed 2,461-acre greenbelt between Oxnard and Ventura. The greenbelt would prohibit development of the prime farmland for at least the next 30 years.

As proposed, the greenbelt would stretch north from Wooley Road in Oxnard to the Santa Clara River. It would be bordered by Victoria Avenue on the east and Harbor Boulevard on the west. Most of the land is unincorporated, but in line to be annexed by the city.

Harris and others want to add a patch of farmland roughly bounded by the river on the north, Victoria on the west, Teal Club Road on the south and Patterson Road on the east.

She and other members of the League of Women Voters of Ventura County on Wednesday took the request to the Local Agency Formation Commission, which guides development in the county’s unincorporated areas.

Commissioners said they would study the issue.

“This could be the test case as to whether Ventura County is really interested in preserving agricultural land and protecting orderly growth,” Harris said.

The League of Women Voters is not alone in its desire. The local chapter of the Sierra Club also wants the 1,200 acres included in a greenbelt agreement, questioning the Oxnard City Council’s split decision two years ago to put the land in line for potential development.

“The new City Council should look at that vote and the issue of whether that action was done legitimately,” said Scott Weiss, who sits on the executive committee of the local Sierra Club.

There was a time when Oxnard had no intention of looking west of Patterson Road for places to build.

City officials agreed in 1983 to establish Patterson as the ultimate urban boundary as a condition of winning approval to annex and develop about 400 acres for the River Ridge Golf Course and surrounding subdivisions.

But in a controversial move in the summer of 1990, in the middle of daily hearings to update Oxnard’s General Plan, the City Council voted 3 to 2 to designate the 1,200 acres as “agricultural planning reserve” and exclude the area from future greenbelt consideration.

The new designation, which LAFCO does not recognize, protects the farmland from development until the year 2000.

And in what some perceive as a conflict of interest, Councilman Manuel Lopez, who on Tuesday will become the city’s mayor, made the motion to redraw the boundary for development, according to 1990 minutes of the General Plan hearings.

In fact, according to the minutes, Lopez just a day before the decision disqualified himself from a discussion of a proposal to build a new high school in the northwest community, citing a potential conflict of interest because he owns property in the area.

Oxnard City Attorney Gary Gillig said Lopez’s action would have represented a conflict of interest only if he had been voting on a specific project, such as the high school proposal.

Lopez said the Fair Political Practices Commission investigated the matter and cleared him of any wrongdoing.

Although he doesn’t believe the land will “necessarily be developed,” Lopez said he pushed to remove the area from greenbelt consideration because he wanted Oxnard to retain jurisdiction and control over the property.

But at the time, a LAFCO official said any decision by the city to consider development west of Patterson Road would be judged a breach of the 1983 agreement.

The official argued that if the city could not honor the agreement that set Patterson as the boundary, LAFCO should not be expected to believe it would honor a new pledge not to build on the farmland west of Victoria.

Stan Eisner, LAFCO’s executive officer, said the commission and the county still consider Patterson to be the point beyond which no westward development will occur.

“Any action that tends to soften that position on the part of the city of Oxnard is entirely unilateral,” he said. “There are some apparent inconsistencies between the Oxnard General Plan and what the commission perceives as the long-term goal of preserving agricultural land and open space in the county.”

Oxnard’s 1990 decision means little by itself. The 1,200-acre area is unincorporated and any annexation or development proposals must be approved by LAFCO and the Ventura County Board of Supervisors.

But that authority has been weakened somewhat by the Oxnard Union High School District’s decision to build a school on 50 acres of the land in question. The school district, as is the case with all state agencies, is not bound by the local development restrictions.

District officials chose that site for a new high school primarily because of an offer by Somis-based Ag Land Services to, in effect, donate that land if the district supported accompanying development.

Supt. William G. Studt said the high school district is in the process of condemning the 50 acres for purchase and added that the district has an unwritten agreement with Ag Land to be reimbursed for the buy should development occur nearby.

“What Ag Land Services was saying to us was, ‘Don’t fight us. Don’t try to block development,’ ” said Studt, adding that regardless of the cost of the land, the site is still ideal for the new school. “Basically the rest is out of our hands.”

Ag Land Services has approached Oxnard about its desire to build luxury houses near the high school site, said Community Development Director Richard Maggio.

That request has been stalled, however, by an Oxnard City Council decision in September to extend public services to the new high school, but to prohibit additional development in the area.

But when the council last month considered a proposal to establish a 2,461-acre greenbelt in the northwest, it stopped short of including the 1,200 acres in any future agreement.

“The City Council decided it didn’t want to include it in a greenbelt because that would be considered long term,” Maggio said.

But critics fear that now that a high school is planned for the area, landowners could find farming more troublesome and less lucrative and eventually abandon the practice altogether.

“We want to protect whatever we can,” said Donna Nowland, spokeswoman for the League of Women Voters. “The league’s concern is that with services being pushed out to the high school, that opens the gate for potential development.”

But Oxnard officials say they want to preserve farmland. They point out they have joined Ventura to start planning a permanent greenbelt between those two cities, and one already exists between Oxnard and Camarillo.

A greenbelt agreement is a policy statement in which agencies pledge not to build on farmland.

The agreements have no legal authority but rely on local governments to enforce zoning regulations that limit the amount of development.

In the end, Harris sees the issue as one of farmland survival.

Ventura County loses 1,500 acres of farmland each year, agricultural experts say. The concern isn’t so much that the loss of 1,200 acres will drive a stake through the county’s agricultural heart, Harris said, but that the cumulative loss of farmland eventually will put an end to an industry that generates nearly $1 billion a year.

But while there is pressure to expand the greenbelt, at least one area landowner wants the proposed area to be shrunk.

Developer Kevin Bernzott, head of the Oxnard-based McGaelic Group, has officially asked that about 200 acres he represents south of West Fifth Street not be included in the preservation effort.

“We think there is a lot of potential there and we don’t want to be precluded from doing something other than farming on that property,” he said. “It’s always interesting from a landowner’s perspective to hear all these plans for our land coming from people who don’t have anything to do with it.”

Proposed Addition to Greenbelt

Environmentalists want to add 1,200 acres to proposed 2,461-acre greenbelt between Ventura and Oxnard. The greenbelt could not be developed for at least 30 years.