Couldn’t the special North Park election be moved?

We now have a special election to be held right after the holiday season to decide the fate of the troubled North Park project. Couldn’t this have been moved out to mid-February or later when all the holidays are well passed? It’s now only a matter for North Park to try and market the project well and sell it to unsuspecting citizens over the next six months.

Why has North Park gone on for so long without approval while other projects have been approved in the city?

This project has been flawed from its inception in several major areas and seems to keep wasting time changing its look without fixing those flaws. The traffic created is still a major problem of the project; that is not acceptable. The tax money to the city is still a shortfall, which is not acceptable.

The project still offers little to Moorpark but increased congestion and 20 years of construction for the residents to live through. It should be completely build out in 2025. Mayor Hunter acknowledged and expressed concern for these major flaws at the end of the last city council meeting.

North Park has always been given multiple opportunities and copious amounts of time to address the city council and resolve these problems. It has become very tiresome for everyone to listen to North Park drone on at the council meetings and at the end the outcome is always the same.

Although North Park would like to convey that all is well with the project, the reality is these problems have existed from the beginning and still exist.

The developer’s statements about how this project will improve traffic and provide open space for Moorpark, while adding 1,680 homes, are just another example of selling the project to whoever will listen. Whether you currently sit on Los Angeles Avenue, Tierra Rejada, or the 118/ 23 highways, the addition of 1,680 homes will not make the traffic improve in Moorpark.

The reality is that this project is so big that by itself, it will increase the population of Moorpark by 15 percent. Moving 27 million cubic yards of soil over 3,500 acres of hills and canyons of existing open space, then covering it with concrete and stucco, does not provide Moorpark with open space and less traffic. It does, however, add 20 years of construction issues and traffic congestion on top of what it already created from the project. We will pay that bill in dollars and quality of life in Ventura County where we have chosen to live.

The closer these items and project are looked at, the clearer it becomes that this project will benefit the developer immensely and the city and citizens of Moorpark will be the losers. The developers are from San Diego, so they don’t have to live with their product, only spend the money they make from it. These are problems that will have to be dealt with by the people who live in Moorpark.

This huge project, which will take 20 years to complete, has to be examined closely by the voters in Moorpark. If a project does not support itself or it creates major problems that would not exist if it weren’t built, then it should be recognized as undesirable and dealt with appropriately.

Compromises that favor the out-of-town developer at city or citizen expense are not acceptable. Kerry Wilson Moorpark