Voters in Oxnard may decide on whether 2,500 moderate- and low-income homes are built on 165 acres of strawberry fields north of the city.

At a City Council meeting tonight, council members will discuss a plan to place the Jones Ranch project on the ballot in November.

The move to place the decision before voters comes out of necessity, Oxnard Senior Planner Chris Williamson said.

Because the homes and associated retail development are planned for land protected by the limits of Oxnard’s voter-approved Save Open-space and Agricultural Resources initiative, voters would have to give their OK for redrawing the urban limit line, Williamson said.

The proposal would also allow voters to amend the SOAR initiative and renew it for another 10 years. The current protections would expire in 2020.

“This is the start of the discussion about whether to amend SOAR and redraw the city’s boundaries,” Williamson said.

Another possibility is to “swap” the open space on the north side of the city where the Jones Ranch development is proposed, for land within the Oxnard urban limit on the south side of town near Ormond Beach. That would move the Jones Ranch property into the urban limit and take the Ormond beach area out of it. That area already has some protection because the Nature Conservancy owns several hundred acres there and could ensure it remains undeveloped.

Earlier plans for the Jones Ranch development included incremental development at about 20 acres a year, because SOAR does have provisions for the construction of affordable housing. Under the current plan, the homes at Jones Ranch would consist of about 10 percent rental units for very low-income households, 10 percent low-income units that would be mostly rentals, and 80 percent moderate-income units, mostly for sale.

But building those homes in an incremental way isn’t economically feasible, planners said. It also doesn’t make sense from a planning point of view because it wouldn’t allow for the building of the infrastructure for a community of that size, Williams said.

The proposed development — a relatively dense collection of homes planned on agricultural land in what is now open space — has drawn criticism from several local environmentalists.

Putting homes on prime agricultural land outside of the urban limit is just the kind of development SOAR was meant to stop, said Charles Godwin, a member of the Saviers Road Design Group.

“This is being heavily pushed by the city and Mayor (Tom) Holden,” Godwin said. “You have to ask yourself why.”

City leaders, particularly the mayor, have said Jones Ranch would help create much-needed affordable housing and ensure that Oxnard meets state mandates for the construction of homes for low- and moderate-income families. But Godwin said there was another reason.

According to Godwin, it’s all about money.

“Ag land goes for $75,000 to $100,000 an acre,” he said. “Developable land goes for about $500,000 a acre. “So its value goes from about $15 million to $80 million roughly. That’s the motivating factor.”