New High School to Get City Services : Oxnard: The council agrees to extend sewer and water lines at the district’s expense. Many fear residential development will follow.

Despite fears that rampant development will follow the construction of a high school campus on protected farmland, the Oxnard City Council voted Tuesday to provide public services to the new school on the city’s northwest side.

City crews will extend water pipes, sewer lines and other municipal services to the new campus as long as the Oxnard High School District pays for the work, the council decided on a 3-1 vote. Councilman Manuel Lopez abstained, citing a conflict of interest because he lives in the area.

Under the same payment agreement, the city will provide police and fire protection to the new high school when it is built on a 50-acre agricultural preserve near Gonzales and Patterson roads.

In response to charges that houses and stores would quickly swallow surrounding farmland, the council prohibited additional development in the greenbelt.

“I will view any attempt by the high school district to persuade the council to allow (additional) development on that land as a betrayal of trust,” Councilwoman Geraldine Furr said before casting her vote.

But Councilwoman Dorothy Maron, who voted no, remained convinced that school officials were working with developers to erect housing tracts and shopping centers in the greenbelt.

“We all know that developers are chomping at the bit,” she said. “We are galloping toward becoming Orange County north.”

Then, addressing school district officials in the audience, she said: “Most of you don’t live in the city of Oxnard and you are really doing our planning for us. I think you have to have a little shame in all of this too.”

Oxnard Union High School District Supt. William G. Studt said the district has no agreement with developers.

“It is our hope that we can put a shovel in the ground in late November or early December,” Studt said. “Our concern is to educate kids at a state-of-the-art high school that is out of the flight path of Oxnard Airport.”

The vote quiets, for now, a long-running feud over the relocation of Oxnard High School.

The district has wanted to move the school since 1990, when state officials declared its current location unsafe because of proximity to Oxnard Airport. Efforts to relocate the high school to a site at the northeast end of the city were stalled when voters in April defeated a $45-million bond measure, and proceedings have since been tied up in court.

The state Allocation Board tentatively agreed last week to provide $33 million toward the move, but held off on releasing the money until its staff can review development costs.

Council members last week postponed a decision on whether to extend public services so that city staff could determine whether moving Oxnard High to an alternative site would halt state financing for the project.

In a letter to the council, state officials responded that the district would in fact lose its funding.

“I am concerned about the subsequent development that might occur,” said Councilman Michael Plisky, who fears that the council now will have to fend off a steady parade of development pitches.

“But in the view of the recent information we received. . . . I believe I can and I will support the proposal,” Plisky said.

In a series of heated public meetings over the past few months, opponents of the relocation effort have argued that such encroachment would encourage future growth in an area shielded from development until at least 2000.

Some of the most strident opposition came from officials of the Oxnard Elementary School District, who said they also worried about future commercial and residential development in the greenbelt.

But on Tuesday, elementary school officials joined in support of the high school’s relocation.

“We believe this issue should be laid to rest,” said Supt. Norm Brekke of the elementary school district.