Simi Valley just got a little bigger.

On Wednesday, the Ventura County Local Agency Formation Commission unanimously approved the city’s request to annex the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and six adjacent residential parcels totaling 161 acres.

Mayor Paul Miller was pleased with the outcome.

“We appreciate the vote and now that that’s happened, we’re looking at, probably by the end of January, officially welcoming the Reagan Library into the city,” he said, noting that it will take about two months to redraw and submit the boundary map.

City Manager Mike Sedell said the three years of work it took to bring the annexation to fruition were worth it and that the long-awaited decision reaffirms the city’s service to the area and connection to the library.

“The council did it because it was good government. We were providing the services up there already,” Sedell said. “It only made sense to bring it into the city.”

While the commission okayed most of the city’s original application, the commission did decide to keep a 68-acre vacant piece of property—which is not currently receiving city services—within the Tierra Rejada greenbelt.

Though the decision goes against LAFCO’s usual policy of orderly boundaries, the commission felt in this case that the land would be better protected from development if it remained in the county’s open space buffer.

Miller believes the city would have done as good a job if not better of protecting the land but said it really made no difference to the council if LAFCO included the parcel or not.

—Carissa Marsh