Murdock’s Assessment Proposal Endorsed : Lake Sherwood: The Public Works Agency backs a plan to make area homeowners pay $2.6 million for what some say the billionaire developer had promised as a gift.

The Ventura County Public Works Agency has endorsed a plan by billionaire developer David H. Murdock to charge Lake Sherwood homeowners, including those with houses outside his posh new country club project, about $2.6 million to buy the lake from him.

The Murdock proposal, scheduled to be considered by the Board of Supervisors today, calls for the creation of a special district to levy about $4,000 in taxes against each owner of 121 existing homes and 47 vacant lots along the lake.

The same proposal was criticized in June by the county grand jury, which said that only Murdock would benefit from it.

Angry lake-area homeowners said Monday that Murdock’s proposal would force them to buy a lake the developer promised years ago to restore in exchange for their backing of his 650-home gated community.

“In return for our support in 1985, he said he would restore the lake and provide water, sewers and gas services. We feel this is a betrayal of that basic understanding,” said Robert Liberman, president of the Lake Sherwood Community Assn.

“Murdock was going to cover his costs through the sale of golf club memberships and the price of his homes,” Liberman said. “We never thought this would happen.”

Newsletters distributed by the association over the weekend encourage homeowners to appear in force at today’s hearing, he said.

The supervisors’ reaction to Murdock’s proposal may well echo that of lake-area homeowners, because the county was embroiled last spring in its own dispute with Murdock over whether he had agreed to give the lake to the community as a condition of the supervisors’ 1987 approval of his country club.

County lawyers concluded in May that while Murdock pledged to “dedicate” the lake to the community, dedication was too vague a term to legally lock the developer into giving Lake Sherwood away.

Yet the supervisors will have the final word today when they consider the Public Works Agency’s recommendation, which strongly supports Murdock’s position.

Art Goulet, director of public works, said he endorses the Murdock plan, because the $4,000 levies will pressure existing homeowners into assuming their fair share of costs to maintain the lake and other community services.

Unless all residents who benefit from Lake Sherwood pay to maintain it, legal disputes are sure to arise, Goulet said.

A fair distribution of expenses will be assured if all residents--existing ones and 650 new homeowners at the country club--join a community service district Murdock has formed for his new project.

Indeed, the developer has agreed to reimburse the $4,000 lake assessments if existing home and lot owners agree to join the service district.

“We think that this is a means of pushing people to what we perceive to be a more equitable cost-sharing arrangement for the future,” Goulet said. “We’re trying to create equity between the future owners and the existing homeowners. . . . I don’t think it’s fair for existing homeowners to say that somebody else should pay for something that is of great benefit to them.”

Existing homeowners say they already pay $550 a year to Murdock to use and maintain the lake under a court order. They said they see Goulet’s position as coercion.

“We see this as a thinly disguised effort to coerce existing homeowners to annex to the community service district,” Liberman said.

The biggest problem with membership in a community service district is that neither Murdock nor Goulet has yet provided an estimate of how much current homeowners would have to pay each year for services, Liberman said.

Current homeowners, many of whom are retired and live on fixed incomes, would be members of a community group dominated by rich newcomers, Liberman said, since Murdock is selling his homes for as much as $10 million.

The rich community members could add costly new security, park, road and management services that all area residents would have to pay for, raising fees to a level that would force longtime residents out of their homes, he said.

“Many of the people out here live on retirement incomes, and they’re scared out of their wits,” Liberman said. “They came out here to live out their lives, and they don’t have the wherewithal to deal with these fees.”

The Public Works Agency, in its recommendation to the supervisors, estimates that it would cost the average existing homeowner about $360 a year to help maintain the lake. But Goulet acknowledged in an interview that he does not know how much that figure might climb as community services increase.

Supervisor Madge L. Schaefer, in whose 4th District Lake Sherwood is located, said she agrees that Murdock’s proposal should not be approved by the supervisors until Goulet can provide lot-by-lot estimates of the level of homeowner fees.

“Where the hell are the assessments?” Schaefer said Monday. “I’m aggravated.”

Other supervisors had said previously that they cannot support a plan that would force existing homeowners to share in the purchase of the lake.

The Murdock proposal to sell the lake revives a controversy that led to a county grand jury investigation last spring into whether the developer was reneging on promises he made to the Lake Sherwood community.

The grand jury, in a June report, faulted county officials for an alleged lack of communication that has allowed Murdock to sell Lake Sherwood, rather than give it to the community.

The grand jury said that Murdock first mentioned selling the lake in early 1988. But it was not until May, 1990--long after construction had begun at the country club--that county officials sought to clarify the developer’s legal position.

The grand jury was particularly caustic in questioning why some county officials would support Murdock’s current proposal for a special tax district to assess existing residents for Lake Sherwood.

The panel said it saw no public benefit from such a district and that its creation would give Murdock “a method to induce, or perhaps even extort, the existing Lake Sherwood residents” into joining the community service district that will be controlled by buyers of his new homes.