Monahan Backed Park He Helped Build : Ventura: The councilman voted in 1985 to allow the RV resort, which was flooded Wednesday. He did not report $40,000 he received to install hydrants.

Ventura City Councilman James Monahan, who strongly backed construction of the motor home park where 10 to 15 vehicles washed into the ocean Wednesday, received about $40,000 to help build the river-side park he now supports reopening.

Monahan, who voted for the project in 1985 and later installed the park’s fire hydrant system, did not disclose the income on statements that public officials must file.

State law generally requires that council members report each year sources of income greater than $250. Monahan said the money was paid to his construction company and not directly to him, so no disclosure was necessary.

“Yes, it definitely could look bad,” he said of his involvement in the park’s construction, which also included installation of two flagpoles.

Monahan said he had no legal conflict of interest when voting for the RV project.

The four-term councilman said he has done several small jobs for park owner Arnold Hubbard over the years. But he said he did not remember whether he worked for Hubbard in the year before his 1985 park vote, a relationship that would have required him to abstain.

Monahan’s admission that he was a subcontractor for the RV park came as a controversy built Thursday over whether the battered resort should be permanently closed.

Owner Hubbard said he intends to reopen the business, which is located at the mouth of the Ventura River, as soon as possible. But critics said the park is dangerous and never should be reopened.

“There’s no way it should be rebuilt because this park is in a river bottom,” said Paul Tebbel, spokesman for the Friends of the Ventura River environmental group. “This happened once and it’s going to happen again.”

Two members of the Ventura City Council, which approved construction of the Ventura Beach RV Resort despite staff warnings seven years ago, said they will ask lawyers whether the city can block the park’s reopening.

“It’s a lesson we shouldn’t forget,” Councilman Gary Tuttle said. “I think we’re real lucky there wasn’t a greater catastrophe out there.”

None of the 110 park residents was killed or injured during the Wednesday morning flash flood, authorities said, though one man was found drowned nearby.

Councilwoman Cathy Bean said she is outraged by the destruction and damage of dozens of motor homes where many families lived permanently.

“You know, that property used to be a flower farm, and that’s fine,” she said. “But you don’t put people in a river bottom. It’s sad what we do out of stupidity and greed.”

Other city officials said it may be difficult to deny Hubbard use of his 20-acre parcel, which he said he developed at a cost of $4 million.

And Monahan, echoing Hubbard’s comments, said the flooding was caused by the County Flood Control District’s failure to clear brush and debris from the riverbed.

“I’m sure everybody involved in this will get involved in finger-pointing,” Hubbard said. “I know we’re not responsible for maintaining the riverbed. Somebody else is.”

Nor is Hubbard or his insurance company responsible for repairing or replacing about 60 motor homes and campers that were damaged or destroyed by the flood, the owner said.

County flood control officials said their district has no responsibility to clear brush and debris from the Ventura River. The material usually is disgorged naturally through heavy rains but has built up during the six-year drought, they said.

The river is one of the few remaining natural, unlined rivers in Southern California and is protected from such cleanup by state and federal wildlife agencies, said Alex Sheydayi, who runs the district.

The river has not caused flooding in Ventura during equally severe storms over the past 30 years, Sheydayi said, because a high levee was built to separate the river from the city.

Since 1979, four storms, including Wednesday’s, have been declared 50-year storms, he said. “But in none of those periods was there any flooding, and there wasn’t this time either, except at the RV park,” Sheydayi said.

Unlike the Santa Ynez River in Santa Barbara County, where the flood control district recently cleared 4 1/2 miles of riverbed, the Ventura River poses little danger, he said.

Nonetheless, County Public Works Director Arthur Goulet said the flood control district might revamp its computerized early-warning system so that Hubbard’s RV park will have more than the 30-minute notice it received Wednesday.

The gauge that triggered Wednesday’s warning of rising river waters is at Foster Park six miles upstream, Goulet said. Maybe another gauge farther upstream should be used, he said.

The city of Ventura also should consider requiring evacuation of the RV park when water reaches a specific level, Goulet said. Now, evacuation is not mandatory, and park operators said they waited 30 to 40 minutes after notification before they began evacuation.

“We called them Wednesday morning at 8:30 and told them of this potential,” Sheydayi said. “And we were told by park management that they would go look at the river . . . . A lot of time was lost.”

Even with a better warning system, a flash flood might still leave little time for RV park residents to flee, Goulet said.

“It was an extraordinary event,” Goulet said. “This river crested a whole heck of a lot quicker than we have experienced before because of the intensity of the rainfall and its short duration. The water was just suddenly way up.”

Sheydayi said up to five inches of rain fell over a five-hour period early Wednesday and the downpour covered nearly all of the Ventura River’s watershed in the mountains above Ojai.

The result was a muddy torrent rushing at 59,000 cubic feet per second, he said. A 50-year storm, which has a 2% chance of occurring each year, registers 58,000 cubic feet on the Ventura River, Sheydayi said.

By comparison, the flow Wednesday on the Santa Clara River did not even reach the 10-year storm level, he said.

Meanwhile, Ventura city representatives were trying to decide what to do about Hubbard’s park.

Everett Millais, community development director, said he will meet with city lawyers to see if Ventura may impose more restrictions on the park or even close it.

“I think all options will be looked at,” he said.

Millais said he has been informed that the California Coastal Commission, which approved development of the RV park in 1984, also may be considering restrictions on its use.

Millais and Councilman Todd Collart stressed, however, that since government agencies knew the park was subject to flooding when it was approved, the city might not be able to place any new conditions on it.

“It is appropriate for the city to evaluate the situation,” Collart said. “But we may not have a lot of legal latitude to keep it from reopening . . . . When somebody gets a permit they’ve got a right, and it’s not just a matter of snapping our fingers and removing them of that right.”

Assistant City Atty. Mike Dougherty said he does not know if the city could close the park. “I think it’s too early to address that question,” he said.

But Bean and Tuttle said they wonder whether the city may be liable for future damage--or injuries--if they allow the park to be reoccupied.

In a 1987 agreement, owner Hubbard assumed all responsibility for flooding at the park and agreed not to hold the city liable for damage, officials said. But city officials said they were not sure whether the contract would fully insulate Ventura from lawsuits.

“In dry times, people tend to put things in a flood zone, thinking a flood will never happen,” Tuttle said, “but we need to take another look at this.”

Longtime critics of the RV project, including environmentalist Tebbel, said the problems with the park have been known since the first city hearings about it in 1983. At the time, the City Council refused to allow an RV park on Hubbard’s property, leaving it zoned only for use as a wildlife sanctuary or farming.

But after Hubbard gained Coastal Commission approval in 1984, the City Council approved the project on a 6-1 vote based on a consultant’s report that flooding problems could be reduced to negligible levels by design changes and with clear evacuation plans.

Hubbard said his emergency plan consisted of contracting with the county to be alerted in case of flood and to “alert the people and tell them to move out.”

Monahan, who championed the project in both 1983 and 1985, said Wednesday that he remains convinced that it was good for Ventura and would not have flooded if the river channel had been properly maintained.

He also said while he had worked for Hubbard and accepted campaign contributions from him for several years, the two have never been close associates or friends.

Monahan said he got the RV park fire hydrant contract through a low bid to the project’s general contractor and actually lost money on it because of unanticipated excavation problems.

“(The contract) had nothing to do with the decision on the park,” Monahan said. “I had no idea when they were developing the concept of the park that I would have any part of it.”

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