Group Keeps University Effort Alive : Cal State: Civic and business leaders launch a campaign to assure officials of county enthusiasm for a campus.

Fearing that state budget cuts could end the chance for Ventura County to get a public university, a group of civic and business leaders has launched a campaign to keep the proposed Cal State campus high on the agenda of state university officials.

The Ventura County Economic Development Assn. is organizing the lobbying effort to assure Cal State officials of the county’s enthusiasm for becoming the home of a four-year public university, association spokesman Stan Whisenhunt said.

Whisenhunt said the fledgling campaign was inspired by a meeting two weeks ago of business people, government officials and other community leaders who support the proposed campus.

At the meeting, members of a community advisory committee for the Ventura campus of Cal State Northridge warned that a proposal to convert the Ft. Ord military base to a state university could push Ventura County far down on the list of future campus sites, Whisenhunt said.

The federal government is expected to contribute about $100 million toward conversion of the Monterey County base, said David Leveille, director of institutional relations for the university system.

The university is negotiating to purchase 260 acres of farmland between Camarillo and Oxnard for the future campus. But the largest land owner has so far refused to sell.

Leveille has said the university expects to begin condemnation proceedings on the land within the next two months, but the court hearings could take up to five years and the university will need another five years to plan and build the school.

Regardless of these delays, the Ft. Ord proposal does not threaten the longstanding plan to build a public university in Ventura County, Leveille said.

“It is not an either-or situation,” Leveille told Camarillo business leaders at a breakfast meeting this week.

But public officials and business leaders said they are concerned that, because of the budget crisis, the state may have only enough money to build one new university.

The Ventura campus’ advisory committee prepared draft resolutions supporting the Cal State campus that were given to public officials and business leaders at the meeting two weeks ago.

Ojai City Councilwoman Nina Shelley said she gave the draft to city staff to prepare for presentation to the full council.

“It’s more or less to let the decision makers know that Ventura County does not want to be forgotten and that Ventura County has not given up,” Shelley said of the resolution.

Ventura Councilman Tom Buford introduced a similar resolution that will be considered by the full council next week.

But Buford’s proposed resolution goes further than affirming support for a public university in Ventura County.

The proclamation also urges Cal State officials to declare the Ventura satellite campus of Cal State Northridge an independent campus with funding separate from its mother school.

Ventura Councilman Tom Buford has introduced a resolution that will be considered by the full council next week, affirming the city’s support for a university in the county and asking that the existing Ventura campus be given independent status.

Buford and other officials in the county pointed out that the campus in Ventura will be the seed for any future Cal State university.

The Ventura satellite campus has an enrollment of 540 students with the equivalent of a full course load, compared to the 25,000 that would eventually be expected at the planned campus near Camarillo.

Joyce Kennedy, director of the Ventura campus, said that the satellite school would be less threatened by state budget cuts if it is independent from Northridge.

One mission of the new group formed by the economic development association is to find companies to sponsor certain education programs at the Ventura campus, such as engineering.