Citizens Plan Could Kill Beach Tax, RV Resort : Port Hueneme: Homeowners criticize a recommendation to lease the site of the proposed park to area residents for $400,000 a year.

The Port Hueneme City Council is considering a proposal from a citizens group that could lead to repeal of the city’s so-called view tax and abandonment of a proposed oceanfront recreational vehicle resort.

Leaders of Citizens to Protect Port Hueneme’s Future recommended Wednesday that the council lease the proposed 10-acre RV site to 1,250 beach-area homeowners for $400,000 a year, thus eliminating the need for the view tax and the for-profit municipal RV resort.

“This is a concept we haven’t really looked at and we should,” Councilman Dorill B. Wright said. “It’s quite appropriate that we look at all the opportunities we have open to us.”

The heads of several beach-area homeowners associations considered the lease idea just short of preposterous.

“Whoever made that suggestion, they better call up the guy in the white coat and butterfly net and corral him,” said Bob Moesh, president of Anacapa View Beach Homes Assn. “They want us to lease for $400,000 a piece of public land that everyone uses. I never heard anything dumber in my life.”

“To me, it’s just another special assessment like the view tax,” said Laura Snell, coordinator of Concerned Hueneme Citizens, a coalition whose members are challenging that tax assessment in court. “If we’re willing to pay for the lease, the city is willing to back off the RV resort. Do we want to give in to this kind of extortion?”

The view tax and the RV resort are two of the most controversial issues in Port Hueneme in the past two decades. They are also closely entwined, because City Manager Richard Velthoen conceived of both as a means to pay maintenance costs for Hueneme Beach Park.

Last July, the City Council imposed special assessments of $66 to $184 a year on beach-area homes, based on their views and access to the ocean. The assessments were designed to pay for $150,000 of the $400,000 beach-upkeep costs.

The $2.3-million, city-owned RV resort would eventually net $400,000 annually to cover the entire cleanup tab, according to a city consultant, and then the existing beach assessments would be repealed.

However, critics contend that the consultant grossly inflated the projected revenue of the 143-site RV resort, which nearby homeowners fear will lower their property values.

“It’s absolutely unrealistic,” Moesh said. “Anyone with a financial background who read their report would know you absolutely would never achieve that kind of money.”

The Port Hueneme Planning Commission is slated to hear the RV proposal April 1. The council would vote on the RV resort April 22 and then send it for consideration to the state Lands Commission and California Coastal Commission, either of which can veto the plan.

The citizens group that proposed the compromise is made up primarily of residents outside the beach area.

As proposed, the beach community’s lease on the undeveloped resort site near Hueneme Pier would be paid through a $320 annual levy per residence, most likely collected by homeowners associations.

Wright said the deal would free up for other redevelopment use the $2 million that the city has set aside to build the RV resort. It also would bring an end to the lawsuit over the view tax and the criticism from state legislators that the Port Hueneme council violated the intent of a state assessment district law when it adopted the view tax.

But, even if they lease the land, the property owners are virtually certain not to get exclusive use of the beachfront acreage because that would violate edicts of the Lands Commission, which has jurisdiction over the site, Wright said.

The City Council instructed Velthoen to study the feasibility of the proposal and to report back by March 18.

But there remains considerable doubt about whether the new levies would be supported by area homeowners, because the levies are 200% to 500% higher than the beach district assessments. About 50% of area residents signed individual protests against those earlier assessments. And the value of many beach properties would not be affected by the RV resort, which is tucked away at the east end of the city beach park.

“The beach assessments were a pocketbook issue that hit everybody, and the RV park is not,” said Dorothy Blake, a beach community activist. “There’s certainly not going to be unanimity on this lease proposal.”