Improvement Plan Focuses on Roads, Water, New Pools

The Ventura City Council has approved a six-year, $104-million program to improve roads, build a swimming pool complex, identify new sources of freshwater and build barbecue areas in city parks.

About 100 residents, including dozens of schoolchildren, attended a Monday public hearing to voice support for the swimming pool complex.

As debates on other items pushed the council meeting past 10 p.m., Mayor Richard Francis conducted an impromptu, informal vote on the swimming pool issue so that the children in the audience would not have to stay up too late.

Amid loud applause, all seven council members said they supported the concept in principle, four of them without reservations.

Minutes later, the children and their smiling guardians paraded triumphantly out of the auditorium, leaving a dozen or so council watchers to witness the final debate.

But little discussion followed. After City Manager John Baker made his recommendations--and a few speakers lobbied for their pet projects--the council quickly proceeded to approve the city staff’s program without changes.

The plan calls for more than one-third of the capital improvement funds--$37.5 million through 1996--to be spent on road improvements and traffic mitigation programs. About $6.7 million is earmarked for widening the Santa Paula Freeway overpass at Kimball Road, and another $3 million on nine traffic improvement and signal projects.

Water projects account for $17.3 million, much of which will go to studies and projects to help Ventura deal with its water shortage as it enters the fourth year of a severe drought.

About $600,000 will be spent on a feasibility study for construction of a pipeline to bring state-owned water from Northern California; $150,000 to study new freshwater sources and $2.5 million to be spent on a new well in Saticoy. The city is completing construction of one well in that area at a cost of $3.5 million.

Sewer improvements account for $4.5 million in expenditures, including $550,000 for odor-control covers, $600,000 for sewer line replacements and $100,000 on a study to expand the use of treated sewage water for irrigation.

The Parks and Recreation Department would receive about $10 million. Most of the funds would be used for construction of the swimming pool complex, including a 25-meter indoor pool and a 50-meter outdoor pool. The city has yet to identify a site for the project.

Council members Cathy Bean and Todd Collart expressed reservations about building the swimming pools during the water crisis, but three speakers at the hearing said the pools would have to be filled only once every five to 10 years as long as they are continually cleaned and maintained.

More money would be spent on improvements to playgrounds, parks and parking lots, including $450,000 for barbecue areas at three city parks--Arroyo Verde, Camino Rio and Grant.

Another $2.8 million would be spent on renovations at the city’s two public golf courses.

Capital Improvement Program Coordinator Barbara Fosbrink said the program in part shows “the council’s high priority of expanding the inner city greenbelt and preserving open space.”

The plan also reflects the need to create a climate that facilitates the growth of local businesses, which provide the bulk of the city’s revenues, Fosbrink said.

“You can’t start bankrupting your ability to do business,” she said. “We have to balance our natural resources with our financial resources.”