Some Say Ojai Should Merge Into New City : Annexation: Officials find support from residents of nearby communities for a plan to absorb neighboring areas. They also hear counterproposals.

A proposal by an Ojai city councilman that the city look into annexation of surrounding county areas has touched off a chorus of counterproposals that Ojai should instead disincorporate and become part of a new and larger Ojai Valley city.

As a controversy grew this week over how Ojai Valley communities might best protect their interests in the face of increasing growth, Ojai officials moved cautiously toward a decision on whether to actually conduct a formal annexation study.

A report on how much Ojai will have to pay to proceed with an annexation study will be submitted to the City Council by early November, City Manager Andrew Belknap said.

The report will include cost estimates of hiring consultants to conduct a public opinion survey aimed at determining whether Ojai Valley residents would support annexation by the city, Belknap said.

“I’ll try to do enough research on this to give them an idea of what would be involved,” he said.

The proposal to consider possible annexation was made last week by City Councilman James Loebl. Belknap said the Ojai City Council will not take a position until his report has been submitted.

Loebl said this week that he hopes an annexation study can be done as soon as possible, perhaps within the next year.

“I think we should move reasonably quickly,” he said. “You’ve got to move at a speed that on one hand does not appear threatening and on the other is not so glacial it does not appear to be moving at all.”

In making the annexation proposal, Loebl said the idea was partly in response to a new county policy charging cities for the booking of prisoners in Ventura County Jail. He estimated that the new policy would cost Ojai up to $50,000 a year.

City officials said another factor in considering an annexation study is Ojai’s view that it can control growth in the surrounding Ojai Valley better than the county, which now permits more growth in such areas as Meiners Oaks and Oak View than Ojai allows inside its city limits.

Loebl, who once opposed expansion of Ojai boundaries, said he views county growth in the Ojai Valley as “the biggest land boom in the history of the valley.”

A larger city would have more bargaining power with the county on such issues as booking fees, he said. He added that he believes more people live outside the city of Ojai than outside any other city in the county.

“Obviously, before Proposition 13, it was difficult to sell annexation because of the difference in tax rates,” he said. “I believe the areas outside the city in the valley are approaching problems in a more unified manner than they used to. Does this mean they are identical? No, not at all. But they are getting closer.”

Loebl stressed that he is only proposing that those areas that are interested in joining the city should be considered for annexation.

“My feeling is that it doesn’t make any difference if it is called the city of Ojai or the city of Ojai Valley,” he said. Unless the residents called for incorporation of an entirely new city, Loebl said he didn’t see any need to form a new one.

Loebl first unveiled his annexation proposal in a local newspaper column last month in which he berated the county for allowing three times the amount of growth in the Ojai Valley during the past 10 years as the city of Ojai would have allowed.

The estimated population of the entire Ojai Valley, according to county figures, is 27,529. Ojai’s post-census population count this year was 7,501.

While Loebl’s annexation talk has brought expressions of concern from some community leaders in the nearby towns of Oak View and Meiners Oaks that Ojai may be out to gobble up surrounding communities, there has also been considerable support for the idea.

Reacting to the proposal, some Ojai Valley residents said they approve of the concept of politically unifying the entire area, but think it might be better for Ojai to disincorporate and become part of a new and larger city.

Gerhard (Gary) W. Orthuber of Meiners Oaks, an attorney who serves on the Ventura River Valley Municipal Advisory Council that reviews planning issues in the Ojai Valley, said a unification process for the valley could cause less resentment from non-city residents than annexation. “A request to annex Meiners Oaks would have serious problems,” Orthuber said. “Some people have felt a good lynching was appropriate for those who suggested that in the past.

“The people in the unincorporated areas are getting closer to realizing they have to do something, they can’t depend on County Hall,” he said. “They are urban areas now. All the problems of cities exist out here.”

But, he said, when county supervisors, at the request of then-Supervisor Ken MacDonald, who represented Ojai Valley, released a valley unification study in 1980, the city objected. Ojai leaders did not want to see Ojai absorbed by a larger city.

“They were afraid they’d be gobbled up,” Orthuber said.

MacDonald, who represented Ojai on the Board of Supervisors in the early 1960s and again in the late 1970s after a stint in the state Legislature, worked hard at advocating a valleywide city before he retired from office. He said his main opposition came from the city of Ojai.

“I still think it’s the logical way to go,” MacDonald said.

Slow-growth advocate David Hirschberg, an Ojai resident since 1939 and a longtime city planning commissioner, said he thinks that a strong argument can be made for either annexation or a valleywide city.

“Perhaps for just plain survival’s sake, we might have to go that route,” Hirschberg said. “We are all breathing the same air. The other side of the coin is . . . Ojai and the other communities might lose their small-town feeling.”

Residents in the unincorporated area of the county east of Ojai usually consider themselves Ojai residents although some live several miles outside the city limits. Lerie Bjornstedt, owner-broker of Ojai Realty in downtown Ojai, lives on McNell Road near the Los Padres National Forest.

“I’d have no problem with it,” Bjornstedt said of a valleywide city. “What affects the city affects the valley, and what the county does affects the city.”

Gene Daffern of Mira Monte, former director of the Ventura County Taxpayers Assn., said he asked city officials several years ago to look at unification or annexation of Mira Monte and Meiners Oaks.

“The unincorporated area doesn’t have enough votes to put a supervisor in office nor can we put anyone in Ojai City Hall, yet we are both under their jurisdiction in one form or another,” Daffern said.

“It seems the entire community would be better served if it were incorporated to receive services such as street sweeping we haven’t enjoyed since Prop. 13,” Daffern said. “I think the benefits would offset any increased costs.”

In addition to the rival proposals that Ojai either annex the surrounding areas or dissolve itself to become part of a new city called Ojai Valley, some area residents also expressed support for the idea of creating two cities in the valley.

“It’s a real interesting turn of events,” said Mary Ann Krause, who just moved out of Oak View after more than a decade of serving on citizen advisory committees dealing with valley planning issues and incorporation. She co-chaired a committee that released a report last week that concludes that a separate city in addition to Ojai might be feasible.

If Oak View, Meiners Oaks, Mira Monte and Casitas Springs incorporated on their own to form a separate city, the study found that it might squeak by financially despite a $275,000 deficit in revenues. The estimated population of such a second city would be 15,000. Its annual revenue was projected at $2.77 million with annual expenses at $3 million. “Although we didn’t evaluate it in this study, it would probably be more cost-effective to annex to the city of Ojai,” Krause said. “It might mean some leveling of service areas in the city.”