A Timely Signal on SOAR

In politics, as in love or comedy, timing is everything.

Last week’s endorsement by Ventura County Supervisors John K. Flynn and Frank Schillo of the controversial Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR) initiative caught many off guard.

No one was more surprised than Flynn’s fellow members of the Agriculture Policy Working Group, who have labored for nine months to find ways to ensure the continued health of the county’s farm industry.

Supervisor Kathy Long, who first proposed the working group and co-chaired it with Flynn, scolded her two peers for not waiting until the group had offered recommendations before backing SOAR.

“When you begin a committee . . . I would hope that you would at least listen to what they have to say,” she fumed.

But whatever the working group might have to say, there’s no denying what it has heard.

At all seven of its town-hall meetings, in the 1,000 responses to its informal survey and in more scientifically valid data it analyzed from Hansen Trust and Los Angeles Times polls, the group heard that a sizable number of Ventura County residents are fed up with the decades-long debate.

They are ready for action to contain urban sprawl. They are suspicious of elected officials’ ability to turn down rezoning requests from well-funded, well-connected developers. And many of them are drawn to a radical step such as SOAR rather than continuing to rely on government regulation.

“I think the issues are pretty well understood,” Flynn said after the initial uproar died down. “I hope my action will serve as a catalyst to move the working group along faster.”

The SOAR strategy, based on the city of Ventura’s 1995 greenbelt protection law, would establish urban limit lines around each city beyond which any proposed development would need voter approval. Land designated for agriculture or open space under existing general plans could not be rezoned without a majority vote. At least half of the county’s 10 cities now have committees pushing local versions of the countywide initiative for the November ballot.

It’s not a complete or perfect answer to Ventura County’s often-expressed desire to contain urban sprawl and keep rural areas rural. It could limit cities’ ability to keep up with changing needs and opportunities, to maintain a healthy tax base and to provide affordable housing even for the children of people who already live here.

Nonetheless, a major selling point is the promise that SOAR would slow the pace of development while the quixotic search for consensus continues.

The ’95 SOAR campaign in the city of Ventura was hard-fought, expensive and polarizing. All public officials will need to choose a side before November and those who must seek votes countywide are well aware that city dwellers, who are more inclined to favor the SOAR approach, vastly outnumber the farmers.

Flynn and Schillo may have been the first Ventura County officials to hoist sails to catch this prevailing wind but they won’t be the last. By attaching conditions to their support--each, in his own way, called for some mechanism to raise money to ease the impact on some farmers--Flynn and Schillo are attempting to do the same thing the working group set out to do: Steer the public’s support of SOAR in as palatable direction as possible.

It’s still eight months until election day. Eight months for the Ag Policy Working Group to offer alternatives or opposition, if its members have indeed grown any closer to consensus than they were when they started out. If the farm industry, the construction industry or anyone else has a better approach than SOAR to offer, the time to step forward is now.

Because in politics, as in farming or development, timing is everything.