Suits Block $300,000 in Funds to Revive Areas of Moorpark : Redevelopment: The city will send new settlement offers to the county and college district. At issue is the loss of tax revenue.

In some of the older neighborhoods around downtown Moorpark, ramshackle houses sit along streets where dirt paths serve as sidewalks.

Commercial areas in the city’s center are dotted with vacant lots and empty stores.

Meanwhile, almost $300,000 that was earmarked to rehabilitate the area sits idle in Ventura County trust accounts, pending the resolution of four lawsuits challenging Moorpark’s redevelopment plans, officials say.

The $300,000 is part of up to $300 million that the city wants to pour into improving its older neighborhoods under a 45-year redevelopment project.

Redevelopment will “give the older portion of town a complete face lift,” Deputy City Manager Richard Hare said. “It’ll make a tremendous difference to the city.”

But Moorpark’s rehabilitation efforts have been stymied for the past 2 1/2 years by the county and other agencies that stand to lose property taxes to the city’s redevelopment agency.

Although suits against the city by the Moorpark Unified School District and the Moorpark Mosquito Abatement District are close to being settled, the redevelopment agency cannot begin operating until the city resolves suits filed by Ventura County and the Ventura County Community College District.

City officials said they plan to send new settlement proposals to both agencies soon. The cases are scheduled to be heard jointly in Ventura County Superior Court on Aug. 3.

The biggest dispute is between the city and Ventura County, which must divide $151 million. The city has been negotiating with the Moorpark Unified School District over how to divide $106.4 million, with the Community College District over $18.5 million and with the Mosquito Abatement District over $4.8 million.

Ventura County has filed lawsuits over four cities’ redevelopment plans since the early 1980s.

In addition to Moorpark, the county has a pending lawsuit against Santa Paula’s redevelopment proposal. Earlier county lawsuits against redevelopment proposals by Thousand Oaks and Oxnard were settled out of court.

Former Moorpark City Councilman Clint Harper, who helped engineer the city’s redevelopment plan, said the county takes an unnecessarily hard line against cities’ redevelopment efforts.

“As a general rule, the county of Ventura is very anti-redevelopment,” Harper said. “They should get out of the way and let redevelopment agencies and cities do their job.”

But county officials say they don’t oppose the city’s efforts.

“Our issue is money,” said Richard Wittenberg, the county’s chief administrative officer.

Under the state’s redevelopment laws, cities may declare that a certain area needs redevelopment and set a base year for recording the area’s assessed property value.

Then for the duration of the redevelopment project--45 years in Moorpark’s case--any increase in tax revenues resulting from higher property values in the designated area goes to the redevelopment agency.

The redevelopment agency then funnels the money into projects ranging from construction of affordable housing to street repair.

But Ventura County officials said they lose about $22 million a year because of the redevelopment projects in seven cities. Moorpark’s and Santa Paula’s redevelopment agencies are not operating because of the legal challenges, and Camarillo does not operate one.

In Moorpark alone, the county stands to lose up to $151 million over 45 years, its share of the estimated future property taxes in the redevelopment area, said Hare, the deputy city manager.

Both county and city officials agree that they should split the $151 million, but the question is how.

Wittenberg said the county needs its share of future property taxes in Moorpark to pay for library, flood control and Fire Department services.

If the county doesn’t benefit from future increases in property values, it can’t be expected to foot the ever-increasing bill for basic services, he said.

Furthermore, county officials said, they object to the size of the area that Moorpark has set for rehabilitation, which covers 1,217 acres or 15% of the city’s total acreage. From downtown, the area stretches north into the hills and south to the Arroyo Simi flood channel.

“The area as a whole is not a predominantly urbanized area” and so couldn’t be considered to suffer from urban blight, said Assistant County Counsel Dan Murphy, who is representing the county in the case.

But Harper said the designated area encompasses the city’s older neighborhoods, which are in dire need of rehabilitation.

“Moorpark is almost a textbook example of the type of problems redevelopment was meant to address,” Harper said.

The area was economically depressed even before the current recession. Many businesses and stores are vacant, and hundreds of homes need maintenance and repair, according to a report on the city’s redevelopment project.

In addition to building affordable housing and repairing streets and sewers, other proposed uses for Moorpark’s redevelopment money include offering low-interest home improvement loans, giving financial incentives to businesses moving to the city and putting in new sidewalks and street lights.