Keys Residents to Be Charged for Dredging : Ventura: Homeowners will be assessed $1,680 per year. But the City Council promises to seek state and federal funding.

The Ventura City Council voted late Tuesday to charge irate Ventura Keys homeowners $1,680 per year to dredge their back-yard waterways, but softened the blow by promising to look for outside funding.

That concession was part of a package proposed at the last minute by Councilman Gary Tuttle.

Tuttle’s resolutions said the council will seek state and federal money for the dredging and work with county flood-control officials to stem the flow of debris into the Keys waterways.

The council will also appoint a city liaison for the Keys, and have scientists regularly test the waterways for human fecal bacteria.

Tuttle warned the council that unless his resolutions passed, he would vote against the measure. In light of Councilman Jim Monahan’s longstanding opposition to the assessment plan, Tuttle’s no vote could have killed it. A 6-1 majority is required to override protests from more than 50% of property owners in a proposed assessment district.

But the council approved Tuttle’s resolutions just before midnight and re-established the Porto Bello Maintenance District to maintain the Keys waterways.

The district will charge the 299 Keys waterfront homeowners 75% of the $2.7 million needed to dredge the waterways to their original depth of 15 feet, collecting the remaining 25% from taxpayers citywide.

The vote ended two nights of noisy, vitriolic public hearings, but did not stop the protests.

Keys leaders expressed anger Wednesday that the council ignored their objections.

“Everybody’s a little mad. . . . Since 1983, nobody’s done diddly” to dredge the Keys, said Bradley Barnes, president of the Ventura Keys Assn.

Barnes said that last year, “finally, the homeowners came to the city and said, ‘Look, we know we should pay something for it,’ and they were talking $400 per home. If they’d worked on this thing originally and maybe put in a figure that was palatable back in 1983, we wouldn’t be sitting here.”

While some residents are studying ways for the Keys to secede from Ventura, others are contemplating suing the city to block the district.

Terry Bird, an attorney for about 90 of the 299 waterfront homeowners, said Wednesday that he will file suit against the city within two weeks, seeking a court injunction to stop the district plan.

That action would join three others, including a $15-million suit that Bird filed in Ventura County Superior Court in May contending that the city should reimburse the homeowners for property devaluation caused by the silt.

For the past year Keys homeowners have met with Tuttle and other city officials, trying to hammer out a plan to pay for dredging the 32 acres of Keys waterways.

Several times, they have asked the Ventura County Flood Control District to pay for removal of the silt that flows into the Keys through the Arundell Barranca, a natural channel that is part of city and county drainage systems.

But city Project Manager Barbara Fosbrink said the flood control district refused. Its officials agreed with the city’s view that Keys residents must pay for the dredging because developer John Klugh was allowed to build the Keys in a drainage delta in 1964 on the condition that he assess the new homeowners for the cost of regular dredging.

The city has argued that the Keys residents benefit directly from dredging because it increases the value of their waterfront lots.

“We don’t think there is a special benefit which the Keys residents get from dredging,” Bird said. “We think there’s a general benefit, the way you and I get the benefit when our streets are cleaned.”

Bird also argued that more silt flows into the Keys waterways than the 7,200 cubic yards per year anticipated in 1964 when they were built.

He acknowledged that suing the city might further delay the plan to dredge the Keys of 115,000 cubic yards of silt.

But Bird added, “What’s happened here is that the city has given us no choice. They have created this problem by proposing and passing an unjust and unreasonable assessment district.”

Tuttle said he proposed the resolutions in answer to complaints from Keys residents.

“The spirit of the resolutions were, ‘Hey, we’ve heard you. We’re not turning our backs on you,’ ” Tuttle said.

But he said some Keys residents would fight any assessment, no matter how small.

The lawsuits will give the Keys homeowners a bargaining tool to force the city to lower the 75% share that they must pay, Tuttle predicted.

“I expected a lawsuit,” he said. “I think it’s probably in their best interest to file--they have nothing to negotiate without a lawsuit. The city can say, ‘No, 75-25, tough luck.’ ”