Tax Increase for the Keys Questioned : Ordinance: A vote to pay for canal dredging seemed routine until one homeowner began a campaign against it.

The Ventura City Council is scheduled to vote today on an ordinance that would allow the city to establish special tax assessment districts.

The proposal would provide residents of the Ventura Keys, a marina community, with a mechanism to pay part of the cost of dredging silt that has accumulated along their waterfront properties for eight years.

All seven council members and some Keys homeowners said they support the ordinance, but they have run into opposition led by Ray Russum, a Keys homeowner who says the measure would open the door to higher taxes citywide.

City officials and other Keys homeowners who have been cooperating with the city said last week that Russum’s crusade could jeopardize the ordinance and their effort to clean up the long-neglected waterways.

“It’s all coming unglued,” said Vice Mayor Donald Villeneuve. “Russum has triggered a wave of panic.”

In response, Russum said he is just looking out for taxpayers.

For the past few months, the city staff has been quietly working with a group of Keys homeowners on an agreement to divide the cost of dredging the shoreline of the posh neighborhood. An ad-hoc committee of city officials and homeowners was formed for that purpose.

Both sides agreed they should shoulder part of the dredging costs--the city, because street runoff is partly responsible for polluting the silt, and the homeowners, because they reap the benefits of city-owned waterways.

The committee is waiting for an engineering report to determine how much the cleanup will cost and how badly the silt is contaminated by the city’s runoff.

With the numbers in hand, city officials said they hope to negotiate a friendly agreement with the Ventura Keys Homeowners Assn.

“We are working together on a real positive note, saying, ‘Let’s see what the problem is, what the costs are, and let’s find a good solution for everybody,’ ” said Assistant City Manager Lorraine Brecky, a member of the committee.

When the Keys were developed in the 1960s, an assessment district was established requiring the 300 waterfront homeowners to pay an average of $40 each per year. The city’s annual contribution was $5,000.

Under that agreement, fees were set according to the market cost of the home, but in 1978 Proposition 13 made that practice illegal, and the district was dissolved, Brecky said.

Since then, the canals have been dredged only once, in 1982, at a cost of $560,000. Because the problem then was caused mostly by winter flooding, federal and state funds covered the cost.

Meanwhile, assessment districts in which all homeowners pay the same fee have been routinely established in Ventura for such improvements as downtown parking lots and street lighting for new developments, city officials said. But no ordinance sets up such districts.

The proposed ordinance would serve as a blueprint for future maintenance districts including the Keys, Brecky said.

Under the ordinance, a district’s formation would begin with a City Council resolution establishing boundaries. That would be followed by an engineering study describing the work to be done and estimating the cost, a public hearing on whether to establish the district, and finally an order from the council to form the district and levy an assessment.

The district would not be formed if more than half the residents sign a petition opposing it--unless five of the seven council members voted to override the protest.

No one spoke against the ordinance at the April 23 council meeting, where it received unanimous preliminary approval. City officials considered this week’s vote a routine item and placed it in the consent calendar of the council agenda, assuming that once again no one would care to comment.

But that was before Russum entered the picture.

A retired advertising salesman who said he campaigned hard in 1978 for passage of Proposition 13--the landmark property-tax-slashing measure--Russum has initiated another anti-tax campaign.

In the past two weeks, Russum has sent out press releases and distributed flyers to fellow Keys homeowners, accusing the council of trying to “kill homeowner protection against outrageous property taxes by passing an enabling ordinance.”

Moreover, Russum said, the Keys’ maintenance district is the first step toward establishing “Special Tax Assessment Districts” all over the state.

His campaign has prompted dozens of residents to call council members requesting an explanation.

And after meeting with Russum, the Greater Ventura Chamber of Commerce sent a letter to the council requesting that it postpone the vote until the chamber has more time to sort out the “conflicting interpretations” of the ordinance.

At least one council member is clearly upset. “I’ve been receiving phone calls all week,” Villeneuve said.