Public Vote Considered on Wal-Mart : Simi Valley: Officials Monday also will discuss whether the city or the store would pay for the ballot measure.

Feeling pressure from a coalition of residents, the Simi Valley City Council will discuss Monday whether to let voters decide the fate of a proposed new discount store.

In recent months, elected leaders and local activists have debated the potential impact of a new 151,000-square-foot Wal-Mart:

Would it bring the city a flood of new sales tax dollars and new jobs?

Or would its low prices put Simi Valley’s small retail shops out of business?

And would the store’s presence sink the city’s plan to build an upscale regional mall next door?

The retail chain, which is considering a 32-acre site at the northeast corner of 1st Street and the Simi Valley Freeway, has asked the city to change a planning rule that requires the mall to be built before any adjacent shopping centers.

“I think it’s up to the public to make the decision,” Mayor Greg Stratton said.

At the meeting Monday night, council members are also slated to discuss who should pay the costs associated with such a ballot measure--the city or Wal-Mart.

City staff members estimate that the election would cost $1.50 for each of the city’s 56,000 registered voters, or $84,000. The cost per voter could be reduced to 30 cents if a countywide election measure were on the ballot, but that would still cost the city $16,800.

The mayor said Simi Valley voters should decide Wal-Mart’s fate because of promises that local officials made in 1986 to garner support for a hillside protection ordinance that was on the ballot.

That measure exempted the proposed regional mall site--north of the freeway between 1st Street and Erringer Road--from the tough building restrictions aimed at preserving the city’s scenic hillsides.

City officials promised that a regional mall would be built on this excluded acreage before any other stores went up nearby, Stratton said.

“It was clearly, in my case, part of the deal I struck with the public,” Stratton said.

But developers have been reluctant to build a regional mall in Simi Valley because of sluggish market conditions and the financial woes facing many department store chains that anchor regional malls.

In an application filed in February, Wal-Mart asked the city to change the planning rules so its store can be built first.

Late last year, when word of the proposed Wal-Mart first surfaced, an unusual coalition of labor leaders, environmentalists and conservative activists formed to oppose the plan.

Members of the group, called the Coalition for Jobs, the Environment and Business, plan to express their objections at Monday’s meeting.

Jean Ruecker, an environmentalist who co-chairs the coalition, said upscale department stores will be reluctant to anchor a mall right next to an aggressive discount store such as Wal-Mart.

“I think it cancels any chance of us getting a mall,” Ruecker said.

She said labor activists oppose the Wal-Mart because the chain’s employees are not affiliated with a union.

Steve Frank, a Simi Valley public affairs consultant who co-chairs the coalition, said he would not necessarily oppose a Wal-Mart elsewhere in the city. But he also believes that the 1st Street site selected by Wal-Mart would destroy the prospects for a mall.

Frank said Wal-Mart should submit more detailed plans for its store before the council considers a ballot measure. Even then, the retailer should launch a petition drive to get the question on the ballot, Frank said.

“Why should the city put anything on the ballot?” he asked. “If Wal-Mart wishes to have this change in our laws, then they should expend the energy to see if they have the support for that. They’re trying to get the City Council to do their dirty work.”

The Southern California real estate consultants who are working with Wal-Mart on the Simi Valley project declined to comment on it.

Kim McClure, a spokeswoman for the 1,914-store chain, said that for “competitive reasons,” Wal-Mart never discusses its plans for new stores until a deal has been completed.

Regarding general concerns about Wal-Mart’s impact on small retail shops in the same city, McClure said, “Our experience has gone both ways.”

She added, “We have several small-town business owners who support us coming to town because they know we will draw customers from within and outside the community and bring revenue dollars for the whole city.”

In Oxnard, where Wal-Mart is scheduled to start building its first Ventura County store in October, residents also raised concerns about potential harm to small merchants. Some residents near the Rose Avenue site also complained that the project would cause smog and traffic.

But the City Council unanimously approved the project, saying it would provide a major boost in sales tax revenue.