Ventura Redraws Supervisorial Districts

The Ventura County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to redraw the boundaries of its five supervisorial districts to provide more balanced representation of the county’s growing population.

The board voted 3 to 0 on a plan, known to be supported by the two absent members, that will reduce the size of Supervisor James Dougherty’s 4th District in the county’s fast-growing eastern end. The district includes the cities of Moorpark and Simi Valley. The new boundaries will take effect in 30 days.

The new plan also adds Port Hueneme and portions of north Thousand Oaks to Supervisor Edwin A. Jones’ 2nd District, an area that now includes most of the Conejo Valley.

Under the new boundaries, the city of Oxnard no longer will be split into two districts but will be entirely in the 5th District. Camarillo, which currently is divided between the 2nd and 3rd districts, will now be entirely in the 3rd, represented by Supervisor Maggie Erickson.

Erickson will also pick up a section of Newbury Park north of the Ventura Freeway, and the Lynn Ranch and Wildwood Mesa areas of Thousand Oaks.

Added to 5th District

North Oxnard and portions of the Oxnard Plain will be added to the 5th District, represented by Supervisor John Flynn. Flynn and Jones were absent from Tuesday’s meeting, but both had supported the new boundaries at an earlier meeting.

The biggest geographic switch came for the 1st District, represented by Susan K. Lacey, which picked up unincorporated areas of the Ojai Valley, which had previously belonged to the 3rd District, and also got some territory from the 5th District.

There was no opposition to the new boundaries by officials of the county’s 10 cities. Unlike many redistrictings, such as the recent redrawing of Los Angeles City Council lines, the Ventura County realignment generated almost no controversy. Only one person, a private citizen objecting to his Port Hueneme home being shifted to the 2nd District, testified against the redistricting in two days of hearings.

Process Began Earlier

Consideration of new boundaries began earlier this fall when county officials discovered that population in the county’s 4th District had reached 137,150, while the population in the 1st District, the county’s smallest, had grown to only 110,600. There are approximately 605,000 residents in Ventura County.

Counties and other political jurisdictions are required by the state to adjust district boundaries every 10 years, following the U.S. Census, but are allowed to do so more often. The county last revised boundaries in 1981.

Ventura County planners predict that, with the passage of growth-control ordinances in all cities in the county except Oxnard, the next boundary change will not likely occur until after the 1990 Census.