No on Measure S; Yes on T

You wouldn’t decide at halftime of the Super Bowl that football games should last only three quarters and be played with a round, fluffy, pink ball. So it would defy common sense and fair play for the people of Moorpark to vote now to halt a project that has been in the works for nine years.

On Tuesday, Moorpark voters will face a special-election ballot with two questions on it:

* Measure S, a Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR) initiative similar to those passed in November by Camarillo, Oxnard, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks and voted down in Santa Paula.

* Measure T, a referendum on the development agreement that would allow Messenger Investment Co. to build its 3,221-unit Hidden Creek Ranch, the largest housing development in recent Ventura County history.

After the lively and costly campaign last fall, most Moorpark voters probably have their minds made up about Measure S. The Times opposed SOAR in November, arguing that the initiatives oversimplify a complicated issue. Voters felt otherwise and gave a countywide SOAR measure 63% support.

SOAR is all about changing the rules to take the authority for approving most new development away from elected officials and give it to the electorate. Because voters said yes, the new rules will rightly govern future development proposals. But to apply those rules to a project in which nine years and millions of dollars have already been invested violates the basic sense of fair play.

Its champions argue that SOAR will not eliminate all future projects, only bad future projects. Knowing that their plans must win the support of a majority of voters (rather than just three City Council members), developers will need to try harder to come up with better designs that benefit the entire community--current and future residents alike.

In many ways, Hidden Creek Ranch has done this. In negotiations with Moorpark, the developers have dropped some planned units, clustered others to leave large areas of contiguous land undeveloped and committed their future home buyers to pay for their impact on the city. The development agreement would give Moorpark 2,100 acres of public open space and hand the city and school district about $100 million, including money for libraries, sports facilities, $22.5 million the city could spend however it saw fit and $12.8 million toward achieving the No. 1 goal on the city’s wish list: a California 118 bypass to get truck traffic (estimated at 4,000 trips a day) out of the center of town.

In this case, even the old rules have not been flawlessly followed. The City Council may have met the letter of the law but it offended common sense when it refused to overlook a petition technicality and place the SOAR measure on the November ballot, as several other city councils and the Board of Supervisors did. The city then dragged its feet in verifying signatures on replacement petitions until the November ballot deadline had been missed. Instead the City Council offered a laughably watered-down version, nicknamed “sham SOAR” by opponents. It passed.

During a petition drive to place Measure T on the ballot, a Messenger affiliate hired agitators to interfere with the signature gathering. At a forum hosted by the developer last week, company President William Messenger Jr. apologized for those excesses and stressed that his firm intends to be a good neighbor.

That would be a wise strategy, both for the Messenger Co. and for all future developers who hope to do business in post-SOAR Ventura County.

Companies that truly listen to the people whose lives will be affected by their projects, that offer appealing and compatible projects, that find ways to make their projects beneficial for the entire community, and that prove they can be trusted to keep their word will find it much easier to do business than those that don’t. The people of Ventura County have a right to expect no less from those who would earn millions changing our landscape forever.

But the responsibility goes two ways. Rules passed in 1998 and 1999 should not be applied to a project that has been working its way through the city’s pipeline since 1990.

The Times stands by its endorsement of a No vote on SOAR, Measure S, and endorses a Yes vote on Measure T.