City Acts to Make Schools a Factor in Development Decisions

VENTURA —  With the pace of growth remaining a touchy political issue, Ventura officials have agreed to draft a new policy that could restrict residential development in areas with overcrowded schools.

The City Council on Monday night unanimously agreed to add language to the city’s Comprehensive Plan saying that the adverse impacts of more housing should be taken into account when school enrollment exceeds 95% of capacity.

The proposed move does not ban building more subdivisions even if bulging enrollment threatens educational quality. But it will provide another tool to slow growth.

“We now have assurances that schools will be part of the formal planning process,” said John Walker, a Ventura Unified School District board member who lobbied for the amendment. “The amendment clearly gives them the right to reject our request [to slow growth], but it would be difficult in a public setting to do so. . . . Things that affect our children, the City Council is going to be very sensitive about.”

Discussions over using school capacity as a barometer for allowable development have resurfaced periodically over the last year.

The council’s action came on the same night a group of east Ventura residents made an unsuccessful last-ditch effort to stop construction of a 22-acre subdivision on a lemon orchard, citing its impact on traffic and schools.

Although pleased with the new policy linking growth with schools, one council member noted that the majority of the seven-member governing panel is up for reelection this fall.

“This is not something the council majority really relished doing, and we had to push them into a political corner,” said Councilman Gary Tuttle, a slow-growth proponent. “I think it was very political, but I don’t care. It was the right thing to do for whatever reasons.”

Council members had been divided over supporting the development restriction, with some members arguing that no new homes would be built until 1999 anyway. In addition, there was a fear among some officials that such a policy could give the school board too much power over development.

But in the end, what Councilman Steve Bennett described as a common-sense linkage between growth and school capacity prevailed. Failure to act would send a message that the council’s relationship with developers is more important than the city’s ties to schools, he said.

“I don’t want to be dictating remedies to the school board,” he said. “But I’ve come this close to the water and I want to drink.”

The proposed language calls for the council to evaluate the impact of residential development on classroom capacity if the district has taken “normal and reasonable” efforts to alleviate overcrowding.

Those efforts are defined as including the installation of portable classrooms on school campuses, but not the controversial options of year-round education or changing schools’ enrollment boundaries.

The Planning Commission is tentatively scheduled to hold a hearing on the proposed amendment to the Comprehensive Plan on Aug. 19. The council is expected to formally adopt the measure at its Sept. 15 hearing.