Ojai OKs Study of Valleywide City : Government: Council members unanimously decide to examine the feasibility of incorporating outlying areas.

After hearing support for the idea from residents throughout the Ojai Valley, the Ojai City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to study the feasibility of establishing a valleywide city.

“The timing for this is right,” said Ojai Mayor Nina V. Shelley. “It boils down to the advantages versus the disadvantages for each of us. We can only find out by further study.” The council vote came after residents of the city of Ojai and surrounding unincorporated areas expressed support for a more locally based government to make land-use decisions and resolve other Ojai Valley matters.

“The issue is responsiveness of government, not services,” said Stan Greene, an Ojai resident who is president of the environmental group Citizens to Preserve the Ojai. He said most residents of the valley are governed by the County Board of Supervisors and that the area does not have enough residents to give it clout in supervisorial races.

Mansfield Sprague, who lives in an unincorporated area east of Ojai, agreed. “I’d like to be in the city so I could vote for my representatives,” said Sprague, who suggested that county officials are too far removed from Ojai Valley issues.

That theme was echoed by Jim Coultas, a citrus rancher who owns 150 acres east of Ojai. “The power structure in this county is shifting to the south county. I don’t want land-use decisions here to be decided by people from Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks. I have more in common with folks in Mira Monte and Oak View.”

Probably the most significant statement of support for the study came from Lanie Springer, honorary mayor of Oak View, the largest of the unincorporated communities that might become part of a valleywide city.

“Oak View would like to be involved,” Springer said.

Three of the 11 speakers at Tuesday night’s meeting opposed the study. “I’m perfectly satisfied with the services the county is giving me,” said Raymond Johns of Oak View. He added that he might favor establishing a brand-new city but that he wanted no part of an expanded Ojai.

“You people have too many hang-ups,” Johns said, alluding to the city’s strict architectural standards and sign restrictions.

City Manager Andrew S. Belknap will seek consultants’ proposals on how to conduct the study, which will examine the economic feasibility of a valleywide city, how it might be governed, possible boundaries and the environmental consequences of expansion. He estimated the cost of the study would be about $5,000.

In addition, the council said it will appoint a commission including city leaders and representatives of the unincorporated community to guide the study.

The study will be the fourth since 1981 to examine ways to provide municipal services--especially land-use planning--in unincorporated parts of the Ojai Valley. But unlike previous studies, which were initiated by county officials, this one has the support of the Ojai City Council.

The shift in the city’s position comes after a decade of rapid growth in the unincorporated area and tight growth controls in the city. More than three-quarters of the valley’s 33,000 residents live in the unincorporated communities of Casitas Springs, Oak View, Mira Monte and Meiners Oaks. All four communities are linked to Ojai by California 33, a two-lane road that is the valley’s main artery.

As Belknap said in a report to the council, “two very different governments serve what is a rather unified community in most other . . . respects.”

In the unincorporated area governed by Ventura County, 1,015 building permits have been issued since 1984, compared with 130 in the city. Traffic on Ojai Avenue in Ojai has increased by 68% since 1968, according to Belknap’s report, even though the city’s population has increased only 28%.

“Growth in the surrounding unincorporated areas is surely responsible for some of this disproportionate increase,” the report says.