Plans for Tent Jail on Navy Site Are Dropped : Facilities: The Port Hueneme property is earmarked for affordable housing. The Sheriff’s Department may seek another location to house recreational drug users.

The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department has scrapped plans to build a “tent city” jail for recreational drug users at the Naval Construction Battalion Center in Port Hueneme because the Navy wants to use the location for affordable housing, officials said Monday.

Sheriff’s Department officials said they will seek another site for the facility--if the project receives federal financing. The county is asking the Justice Department for $7.2 million to help support a facility for as many as 320 minor drug offenders, who would be housed in four large tents.

Last spring, Sheriff John V. Gillespie proposed building the encampment as part of a new drug-enforcement policy he developed with Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury.

The new policy calls for stepping up efforts to curb minor drug offenses and reduce the demand for drugs. According to Sheriff’s Department officials, jailing prominent citizens--such as teachers, bankers and lawyers--caught using or possessing small amounts of drugs would deter others from using them.

Despite the loss of the Navy site, the project did not suffer a setback, Gillespie said. Department officials said the Honor Farm near Ojai and the proposed jail facility between Ventura and Santa Paula could be used, pending approval of federal funding.

“We would certainly like to go ahead with it,” Commander Bob Brooks said. “It is a strong priority of the whole law enforcement community. . . . But with all the federal budget problems, we are waiting.”

Nevertheless, Gillespie said he still believes the tent city concept is an “excellent one.”

The program is expected to cost $13.6 million in its first year, with the county providing a portion of the funding. Much of the program’s budget--about $9 million--would pay for personnel. Under the plan, 71 new county positions would be added.

The program would concentrate on counseling and rehabilitation. But the inmates would be taken daily to public areas such as beaches and parks to perform maintenance work.

Gillespie had asked Navy officials last spring if the county could place the facility at the battalion center, where they could use the land for free. But the request raised a chorus of protests from residents in the area. A group of Port Hueneme and Oxnard homeowners gathered more than 700 signatures of residents who vowed to fight the plan.

Meanwhile, base officials said Monday that the secretary of the Navy recently encouraged base officials to seek outside investors to help build affordable housing on the bases.

As a result, Port Hueneme officials targeted the site as a possible location for housing projects.

“We think it would be unwise to tie up this acreage at the present time when it could otherwise be considered by a successful proposer for construction of badly needed affordable housing for our junior enlisted personnel,” Navy Capt. R.J. Pearson III said in a statement.

“Because we don’t anticipate that we will have successfully resolved all of our housing options for at least the next year or two, the Sheriff’s Department has withdrawn its proposal.”

Brooks said the Sheriff’s Department was disappointed to learn of the Navy’s objections.

“We felt that it was a situation where the county and the Navy could have come out winners,” Brooks said.