SIMI VALLEY : Review to Hold Up Firing Range Project

A proposal to build a firing range for the Simi Valley Police Department has been postponed so a neighborhood council can review the project.

The Simi Valley Planning Commission agreed Wednesday night to a request from City Manager Lin Koester to delay considering a proposal for a firing range at the city’s west end until the local neighborhood council can discuss it.

The proposed range, to be located about 1,800 feet north of Tierra Rejada Road and about 3,000 feet west of Llevarancho Road, has not been reviewed by Neighborhood Council 1 because of time constraints, Deputy City Manager Bob Heitzman said.

“We put this on a very short time frame because it’s basically a very small project, but we put a lot of work in the preliminaries,” Heitzman said.

Applicants decide if they want to submit their project for review to one of the city’s four neighborhood councils, but 95% to 98% of all proposed projects are heard by the councils, city Planning Manager Wolf Ascher said. Neighborhood councils make recommendations, but the Planning Commission has final approval unless a project is appealed to the City Council.

No area residents have said anything positive or negative about the proposed range, said James Cooksey, chairman of Neighborhood Council 1.

The neighborhood council is scheduled to hear the project on May 9, Ascher said. The project will then be considered by the Planning Commission at its June 6 meeting, he said.