Slow; Do Not Merge : Ojai: Study says the city should curtail plans to annex the valley’s other communities, at least until the state resolves its budget problems.

Until the state resolves its budget problems, the communities of the Ojai Valley should curtail plans to merge into a single city and focus instead on less-costly ways of creating a unified area, according to a study scheduled to be made public this week.

The report, commissioned by the city of Ojai, is the culmination of a decade of discussion about whether Ojai should team with several neighboring communities in order to give the Ojai Valley more power in local land use decisions and a unified voice in county issues.

But the 11-month, $15,000 study is expected to derail such talk in favor of more gradual steps until a state budget is approved this summer and local areas have a better idea about how much funding they will receive, officials said.

“What we’re saying is that because the state’s economy is still dragging, we need to proceed prudently,” said Bob Braitman, a consultant hired by Ojai to give advice on annexation procedures. “It’s just too hard to have a large-scale annexation plan without knowing what your revenues are going to be.”

The study’s fiscal analysis, which ruled out raising taxes, estimated that out of a projected annual budget of $6.3 million, a valley-wide city would have an operating surplus of only $28,000 per year, Braitman said.

So while the study stresses the benefits of creating a single city, it advises Ojai Valley communities to move cautiously on the issue and recommends establishing an area-wide planning commission before Ojai annexes neighboring communities to form a single city.

The study also recommends:

* Extending the city of Ojai’s laws regulating land-use decisions to include most of the Ojai Valley.

* Merging the valley into a single planning area to help foster a single community identity.

* Amending the city’s sphere of influence, which regulates Ojai’s potential city limits, to include most of the Ojai Valley.

* Appointing a committee to draft a city charter that will enable Ojai to expand its current five-member City Council in the event of annexation.

On Wednesday, the Ojai Valley Local Government Options Committee, a 28-member group of Ojai Valley residents studying the annexation proposals, will hold a public hearing to review the report and make recommendations to the council.

Mansfield Sprague, the group’s chairman, said the committee has little choice but to be cautious. “While our main objective is to have a valley-wide city, the only real option at this point is to wait,” Sprague said.

Currently, Ojai is the 10-mile-long valley’s only incorporated area, although its 7,613 residents represent only one-fourth of the combined population of the Ojai Valley communities of Mira Monte, Oak View, Casitas Springs, Meiners Oaks and the east valley.

During the past decade, the valley’s population grew at a much slower rate than that of the rest of the county.

Partly responsible is a strict growth management ordinance adopted by the city in 1979 in response to deteriorating air quality. The ordinance has limited Ojai’s growth to under 1% per year.

A similar ordinance adopted by the Board of Supervisors has held growth in the rest of the Ojai Valley to about 3% annually.

City representatives said concerns about losing leverage with county decision-makers helped spur the unification effort.

“As the Ojai Valley’s population has diminished, its electoral strength has also gone down,” said Ojai City Manager Andy Belknap, pointing out that each of the five county supervisors represents more than 150,000 people.

“The county Planning Commission and Board (of Supervisors) have done very well in dealing with the issues up here but they can’t tailor things to Ojai,” Belknap said.

But Ojai City Councilman James D. Loebl, one of the leading proponents of annexation, said the area’s disillusionment with county government has helped fuel enthusiasm for annexation.

“Our overriding motivation for doing this is that as a valley, we think we can do a much better job than the county,” Loebl said. He added that the proposal to create a landfill at Weldon Canyon--located in the Ojai Valley but outside the study area--is an issue in which the valley should have had greater authority.

To minimize the city’s financial constraints, Loebl suggests that Ojai annex small sections of unincorporated areas piecemeal, thereby avoiding the risk of financially overextending the city.

But committee members say even a small annexation--which would require the approval of that community’s voters--would be a hard sell.

“This report is going to make some people in unincorporated areas happy,” said Pat Baggerly, who represents Meiners Oaks on the citizens committee.

“The problem is that the city has a very clear vision of what it wants to be, while the county is kind of all over the place and doesn’t necessarily want more regulations. It won’t be easy to convince them that this is good for them.”