OJAI : Board Hopeful Asks for District Change

Mechanical engineer Phil White, an Ojai Valley resident, has asked the County Board of Supervisors to move his home back into the 3rd District so he can run against Supervisor Maggie Erickson Kildee this spring.

White, former director of the county’s Air Pollution Control District, said Monday that he thinks the board should make the minor adjustment to district boundaries because it extended the same courtesy to Oxnard Mayor Nao Takasugi in November.

Then, the board voted 4 to 0 to shift boundary lines two blocks to put Takasugi, a potential challenger to Supervisor John K. Flynn, back into Flynn’s 5th District. Supervisors had changed district boundaries Oct. 1, and those changes also left White’s house in Susan K. Lacey’s 1st district rather than Erickson Kildee’s.

In a letter on today’s board agenda, White asks supervisors to shift the boundaries between Erickson Kildee’s 3rd District and the Ventura-centered 1st District.

“I have held public office and I am a potential candidate, as was (Takasugi),” said White, a former director of the Channel Islands Beach Community Services District. “There should be no difference.”

White acknowledged, however, that he did not move to his current McAndrew Road house until November, after the boundary change had already put the dwelling in Lacey’s district.

White said that if he decides to run, he would prefer to take on Erickson Kildee because he thinks she has not been a strong leader.