Restaurant Owner Fights Pollution Fees

The latest environmental fight in the Ojai Valley is over the question of whether a proposed spaghetti restaurant might add to local air pollution.

County officials, who estimate that the restaurant could generate 600 automobile trips a day, say the owner should pay $27,965 in air pollution fees for the privilege of building the restaurant in Oak View.

But John Cuccia of Ojai, owner of Vince’s Spaghetti House Inc., argues that the restaurant will generate much less traffic.

Cuccia, who calls the recommended smog fee “ridiculous,” is the first developer to run up against tightened air quality regulations for Ojai Valley that took effect Jan. 1.

The proposed 7,984-square-foot diner would lack large grills and broilers, architect LeRoy Andrews said. Nearly all the 7.68 pounds of smog-causing nitrogen oxides the restaurant would generate each day, according to county Air Pollution Control District’s calculations, would come from customers’ cars.

The County Board of Supervisors adopted a five-pound-per-day limit last October on smog emissions from new development in the Ojai Valley. At the same time, the supervisors set a 25-pound-per-day threshold for projects built in the rest of the county.

Under the new rules, any projects over the limit must contribute money to programs designed to reduce traffic in general, such as ride-sharing programs or mass transit.

Developers throughout the county are watching battles such as Cuccia’s to see how the dust settles in determining who has to pay for clean air.

“These fees are really going to cut down on construction,” Andrews said. “Any community without growth will stagnate.”

But more than that, the architect said he feels the new fees must be fairly applied. In the Oak View case, Andrews and Cuccia have contested air pollution officials all the way.

Their restaurant’s environmental review was set for a public hearing in April when a county review committee discovered that the impact study failed to cite the new air quality standards.

Andrews objected, saying the smog limits should not apply because the project’s application was submitted last year. But a county legal opinion said the new limits do apply because the project’s environmental review did not begin until after Jan. 1.

In the revised study, released June 20, the Air Pollution Control District came up with Cuccia’s fee based on an independent traffic consultant’s estimate that the restaurant would generate 600 daily vehicle trips.

The Environmental Report Review Committee is scheduled to continue the public hearing on that recommendation and others in the impact study Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. in Room 344 of the Hall of Administration in Ventura.

But on Friday, Andrews and Cuccia submitted a new traffic study, the third they have commissioned for the project, which indicates the restaurant would generate less than 200 vehicle trips per day.

County public works and air pollution officials said Monday that they are hurrying to evaluate the new traffic figures to see if a smog-impact fee is even needed.

“We’re still determining if it’s a valid study,” said Richard Guske of the Public Works Department. ‘We probably won’t have a report until Wednesday.”

Andrews said the first traffic studies did not take into account that the restaurant would be open only in the evenings. Its hours of operation are expected to be weekdays and Saturdays between 4 and 9 p.m. and from noon to 9 p.m. on Sundays.

“Hopefully, this will be enough to let us go ahead,” Andrews said.