OXNARD : City Agrees to Join Countywide Council
The Oxnard City Council ended its holdout Tuesday and agreed to join the Ventura Council of Governments, a countywide panel created to study and establish policy on regional air quality, land development and transportation issues.
Until the council’s unanimous vote, Oxnard was the only Ventura County city that hadn’t joined the group.
“I have been strongly opposed to this because it’s another unnecessary layer of government,” Councilman Michael Plisky said Tuesday. “The only reason I’m willing to support it now is that I think it’s important to get involved so we don’t end up with no say at all.”
City officials argued that because Oxnard is the largest city in the county, its vote should carry more weight than that of smaller cities. They also feared that the regional body would diminish the decision-making power of individual cities.
The governing board of the organization is made up of the county Board of Supervisors and one elected official from each of the county’s 10 cities.
The Ventura Council of Governments, which meets monthly, was formed to ward off attempts by the state Legislature to establish strong regional planning agencies that would dictate how cities and counties should manage the state’s explosive growth.
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