Group Gains Little Ground in Fight Over Development : Agriculture: Members of STOP plan an initiative drive to preserve farmlands. They face an uphill battle in persuading the Oxnard City Council.

OXNARD —  It has an irresistible acronym and supporters who have vowed to lie down in front of a bulldozer to halt growth, but STOP, or Save The Oxnard Plain, gets no respect from the City Council.

The grass-roots, slow-growth group, founded in May by a 29-year-old Silver Strand Beach surfer-turned-environmentalist, is planning an initiative drive to preserve the Oxnard Plain’s dwindling farmland.

With its trademark green stop signs, STOP has become a fixture at Oxnard City Council and planning meetings. Members have sponsored rallies in the streets of Oxnard, and their gatherings attract increasing crowds of residents.

“When I was young, Oxnard was still a small town with a lot of agricultural land,” said STOP founder George Johnson Jr. “As I got older, I saw one development after another, another Vons next to another Ralphs.

“Maybe we can prevent Ventura County from becoming L.A. County and Orange County--just another sprawling stucco nightmare.”

Despite their enthusiasm and rhetoric, however, STOP members acknowledge that reforming decades-old growth policies in Oxnard will be difficult, if not impossible.

Oxnard leaders, who have a steadfast pro-development record, have not exactly been receptive to the new group, Johnson said. He hopes the Oxnard City Council starts listening to his message.

If they don’t, he is prepared to take it to the people.

“The City Council has been pro-development, but the people have never said they were for it,” Johnson said. “I think when they see there is an organization of people who oppose growth, maybe they’ll take part.”

The slow-growth initiative that STOP has in mind would be similar to two Ventura measures placed on the fall ballot by the group Save Our Agricultural Resources (SOAR), Johnson said.

One measure would require voters to approve zoning changes on farmland within Ventura and its sphere of influence--a decision usually reserved for the City Council. The other measure, devised in case the first does not hold up against legal challenges, would require voter approval before property designated as farmland in Ventura’s chief planning document can be rezoned.

Oxnard’s business leaders are closely watching STOP. Don Facciano of the Oxnard Chamber of Commerce, which has long advocated development, said that Oxnard would be best served by adhering to the growth blueprint it has already drafted: the 2020 General Plan.

“I think responsible development can take place within our General Plan guidelines,” said Facciano, the chamber’s executive director. “We have an approved General Plan, and I think we should move forward with that General Plan.”

Councilman Andres Herrera said STOP seems to be blaming the current City Council members for decisions made long before they were elected. He said that he and his fellow council members have been careful to protect farmland.

“I don’t know what they’re talking about, but whatever growth is going on now was approved long ago,” Herrera said. “We’re just carefully making the transition and carefully following the course set forth in the General Plan.”

Councilman Dean Maulhardt, a former farmer, said some agriculture needs to be preserved but that a slow-growth initiative would probably tread on the rights of property owners.

“If you put it in an initiative, it would become too rigid to allow the proper growth in the city,” Maulhardt said. “I would be a little concerned--a lot concerned--that landowners’ rights would be violated.”

Maulhardt and Herrera added that part of a council member’s job is to make decisions on growth, and that if Oxnard residents were upset with the city’s direction, they could always vote different people into office.

Johnson says the group may urge Oxnard residents to do just that in the 1996 City Council elections.

City leaders have seemingly allowed anything to be built in Oxnard and have let the city expand outward along the Ventura Freeway instead of rebuilding fading downtown Oxnard--a policy of urban sprawl that has failed everywhere else, he said.

“Maybe we should stop and think before we cement everything,” said Johnson, who works as an air quality expert for a Santa Barbara company. “Right now, we’re not planning to become a pleasant city.”

STOP is particularly concerned that designated “greenbelt” farmland areas in and around Oxnard will be rezoned and paved over to make way for development.

It is vehemently opposed to Channel Islands Estates, a proposal to build 716 homes in the east Oxnard greenbelt, and is against development of any kind in the Ormond Beach wetlands, home to a handful of endangered species.

STOP was formed at a time when an increasing number of Oxnard residents had begun questioning the effects of the city’s development policies on their neighborhoods.

Oxnard resident Mike Espinoza makes a living as a contractor, pouring concrete for curbs, patios and sidewalks. The city’s growth policies clearly benefit his business, he said. But the traffic jams and crowded conditions that result from development Oxnard-style have become too much for him to bear.

“The quality of life here in Oxnard has gotten so bad,” he said. “My business would go down if we passed an initiative, but I would rather suffer that than more of what we’re going through now as residents. I can always find another way to make money.”

Although STOP has found support in many Oxnard neighborhoods, members say they have also encountered the political apathy that has long plagued the city.

Nevertheless, the group is optimistic that it has a chance to curtail growth in Oxnard. It is even weighing an ambitious plan to change its name to Save The Open Places and launch a countywide slow-growth campaign.

“I really believe it’s going to be an uphill battle,” said Johnson’s mother, Ruth, who said during an Oxnard planning meeting in April that she would lie down on a piece of farmland and disrupt construction crews if a condominium project was approved.

“I think of Ojai and how protective they are. You can’t put anything up there without people fighting tooth-and-nail. Until we get that attitude here, the developers are always going to win. We need to start fighting now.”