Pivotal Councilman Says He Is Torn Over CSU Proposal : Politics: Educator Donald Villeneuve favors a state university in Ventura. But he wishes a site other than Taylor Ranch had been chosen.

Despite the countywide debate over building a Cal State campus at Taylor Ranch, officials say the ultimate veto power remains with the Ventura City Council.

And a key vote in any council showdown could come from a man who admits that he is “really torn” between two seemingly irreconcilable positions.

On the one hand, Ventura City Councilman Donald Villeneuve is a college professor who has devoted much of his life to higher education.

But he also is one of the elder statesmen of the slow-growth movement that has taken over Ventura city politics in the last three years.

Some of Villeneuve’s closest political allies forecast a scenario in which the soft-spoken instructor’s vote could decide whether the college is built.

No matter which way he votes, they say, he is almost certain to make some people unhappy.

Villeneuve, a Ventura College instructor of environmental science and anatomy, is not the only councilman who could decide the Taylor Ranch issue. Todd Collart, who was elected last year on a slow-growth platform, is another potential swing vote.

When the time comes to vote on whether the city should annex the Taylor Ranch site, a move state officials say is necessary for the university to be built, Villeneuve made it clear this week that his decision will be an anguished one.

“As a lifelong educator, I find myself really torn,” he said. “I’m really in favor of a university. I just wish they would choose another site.”

Villeneuve voted once before in favor of the university. He voted with the council majority last June to designate Taylor Ranch as a potential university site. He voted for the designation, he said this week, to move studies forward.

Villeneuve’s vote came despite his slow-growth campaign platform in 1987. At the time, the council voted 7 to 0 in favor of the university site. Any vote against Taylor Ranch would have been an empty gesture.

But the November election of Collart and two other slow-growth council members, Cathy Bean and Gary Tuttle, dramatically changed political realities in Ventura--including the possible future of Taylor Ranch.

Bean and Tuttle are committed publicly to oppose the Taylor Ranch site. That means that if they are joined by Villeneuve and Collart, there could be a new council majority opposed to the site.

Although he says he has not yet made up his mind, Villeneuve has frequently noted that a university will bring a larger population and demands for expensive roads and water to Ventura.

“Anyone who doubts the growth-inducing aspects of a university has got to live in a jug,” Villeneuve said this week.

Still, he does not oppose the university, he said. Rather, he is “cautious.”

He and his wife and two daughters are all graduates of public universities, Villeneuve said. And he has daily contact with junior college students who must decide whether to continue their educations away from home or drop the goal after two years of college.

He is trying to balance that set of facts against his environmental philosophies, Villeneuve said.

“It’s a real moral dilemma,” he said.

The city’s position on the Taylor Ranch question is crucial to the fate of the proposed campus because Cal State officials believe they need the city for necessary services.

“If the city made it clear that they would not annex the property and not provide services, certainly that would be enough” to kill the project, said Jack Smart, Cal State vice chancellor. “That’s why the criterion of public support is so important. Without it, it is impossible to develop a good campus.”

If the current political stances hold true after the results of an expanded environmental impact document are released, the new and yet untested council could divide 4 to 3 on the issue, some council members predict privately.

Mayor Richard Francis and Councilmen James Monahan and John McWherter have expressed support for the campus, while Bean and Tuttle are leading a write-in postcard campaign against it.

That leaves Villeneuve and Collart, a senior planner for Ventura County.

But Collart’s decision represents less of a personal predicament. Like Villeneuve, he wants to see a full environmental impact report before making a decision. But as a professional planner, he approaches the university proposal as he would any other project plan.

“If you take off the university label, it should be looked at just like any other large project,” Collart said. “It’s a use, and it has impacts and if they can be mitigated, it will probably get approved.”

CSU Chancellor W. Ann Reynolds told Ventura County last month that the state would not consider sites other than the Taylor Ranch, a bluff just west of the Ventura River and Ventura city limits. She said she would not proceed with plans for the university without community support.

Reynolds said the state will decide in the next few weeks whether to go forward with an environmental impact study that was ordered by a Ventura County Superior Court judge.

Among the major issues raised over the Taylor Ranch site have been expansion of city boundaries into undeveloped greenbelt territory, increased traffic, air pollution caused by traffic, and water availability.

Many--among them Collart and Villeneuve--believe water may be the key.

Cal State officials have ordered exploratory research on water availability and potential traffic problems to learn early what a full EIR would likely say. Although the preliminary studies won’t be concluded for another week, Smart said, his outlook is positive.

“We don’t see water as the deciding factor,” he said. “There is enough potential out there in one form or another.”

Neither Villeneuve nor Collart is convinced there is enough water.

Collart said he wants to see proof in the EIR that sufficient water supplies exist. Villeneuve said he believes the water issue may come with a price tag that city residents should not have to bear.

Importing state water, something Villeneuve believes may be necessary to accommodate growth caused by the university, would cost the city about $60 million.

Villeneuve said he believes the university will not be able to pay for city street improvements and freeway interchanges that its presence will require.

“The university has to go back to the state for money with hat in hand just like everybody else,” Villeneuve said. “I’d like to make sacrifices to benefit the county at large, but I just don’t think that the community can be asked to make those kinds of sacrifices.”

Collart takes the wait-and-see line on those issues as well. As a planner, he knows well how the city extracts fees from developers to pay for the problems their projects bring. He is waiting to see what the university proposes.

Should his vote favor the university, Collart said, he sees no clash with his campaign statements.

“I said in my campaign literature that I didn’t see a problem with a university center and that we needed an EIR for a larger university,” Collart said. “I’m not opposed to it.”

Francis, who ran with Villeneuve in 1987 as a slow-growth candidate, is an outspoken supporter of Taylor Ranch. He said he believes that ultimately Collart and Villeneuve will back the university site.

But Francis conceded that there are few certainties in politics. Villeneuve, the man in the middle, seemed proof of that this week as he discussed his conflicting feelings.

“I would like to see it work out,” he said. “But I guess I’ll vote against it if I have to because I am also responsible to 97,000 people who could have an intolerable financial burden.”