Countywide : Board Rejects Funds for Camarillo Center

The County Board of Supervisors has rejected a proposal by Supervisor John K. Flynn to earmark $600,000 for construction of a community center and administration building at a proposed housing complex for mentally ill homeless people near Camarillo.

Flynn argued that the county’s $600,000 would be the final piece of a complicated local, state and federal funding package that needs to be approved soon. Construction bids for the Lewis Road project must be requested by August or about $3.9 million in federal aid will be lost, county administrators said.

“When we have people . . . who live in the river bottom, that has to be our highest priority,” Flynn said.

But Supervisors Maggie Erickson and Madge L. Schaefer said the project should be considered along with many competing ones when the board holds its budget hearings in about a month.

“We have to be very careful about making a decision without putting all the blocks out on the table,” Erickson said. She and Schaefer voted to delay commitment to the project, while Flynn and Supervisor Susan K. Lacey favored it. Supervisor Jim Dougherty was absent.

The $600,000 would pay for two-thirds of the cost of a community center that is needed to house a staff of mental health workers on-site with the patients, said Randy Feltman, director of county Mental Health Services. The other third would come from federal programs.