A tale of three counties

What are the odds that San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties would be simultaneously rewriting their grading ordinances? Coincidence? Hardly. A move is afoot to wrest as much control of land away from landowners as possible, mainly farmers and ranchers, since they own most of the undeveloped land. The insult to injury is that urbanites gobbled up the best farm land for their own urban lifestyle, and now they are trying to impede the ability of farmers and ranchers to head for the hills. In view of the fact that property taxes are the major source of revenue for local discretionary spending, all of these policy regimens spell disaster for local government, in that they will serve to impede intensification of land use, including the conversion of rangeland to row crops. In essence, they will prohibit, by regulatory fiat, the ability to invest and make improvements of any kind on the rural lands of the tri-county area. This will serve to flatline future revenue growth for the economy as a whole. Ventura County is so bold as to actually create overlay maps of most all the rural lands in the county, and label the lands wildlife corridors and wildlife habitat...more