Residents to Carry Their Complaints to Parks Board : Camarillo: The closure of Freedom Pool prompted the protest, but the City Council turned down a request that it take over the services.

Turned away by the Camarillo City Council, a group of residents who have lobbied for the city to consider taking over local park and recreation services will take their concerns to the Pleasant Valley Recreation and Park District Board this week.

Attorney Kadi Kiisk and a few other residents concerned about recent cutbacks in park and recreation programs said they will attend the park district board meeting at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the district office on Burnley Avenue.

“I’m going to do what City Hall told me to do and tell them I’m dissatisfied with their services,” Kiisk said.

Like most of the other residents who protested to the council about the city’s recreation programs, Kiisk is a lap swimmer who became concerned when the park district decided not to open Freedom Pool this year.

An outdoor pool at Camarillo Airport, Freedom Pool is usually open during the summer, but it has remained drained and covered this season.

Alarmed that the district may also eventually decide to close the indoor Pleasant Valley Pool because it is costly to run, Kiisk and other protesters began circulating petitions three weeks ago asking the city to consider taking over the park district.

Last week, the group presented the council with petitions signed by 1,800 residents.

But council members rebuffed the protesters, saying it would be inappropriate for them to explore taking over the duties of another elected board.

Instead, city officials advised the group to take their concerns directly to the park district board.

Mayor Charlotte Craven acknowledged, however, that Kiisk’s ability to collect 1,800 signatures in three weeks demonstrates “a great deal of unhappiness and frustration with many things at the recreation and park district.”

District General Manager Eldred Lokker downplayed the number of signatures Kiisk obtained, saying that people tend to sign petitions without reading them.

But district board member John Dell’Amico said he’s concerned that residents are dissatisfied with Pleasant Valley’s parks and recreation programs.

“I’m going to ask that the people that signed this petition help us to find some solutions” to the park district’s funding problems, he said.

Formed in 1962, two years before Camarillo was incorporated, the Pleasant Valley park district manages nearly 20 parks and numerous recreation programs for the city and surrounding rural communities.

Last year, the state and county together took about $480,000 in property taxes that had previously gone to the Pleasant Valley district, amounting to a cut of about 11% in the district’s $4-million budget.

The district responded by laying off 12 employees, closing Freedom Pool (one of its two pools) and eliminating recreational programs such as softball tournaments, dances for teen-agers and an Easter egg hunt.

Although Pleasant Valley officials have previously said they expected to lose an additional $230,000 in tax funds this year, it now appears the district will be spared further cuts under the new state budget, Lokker said.

Considering that the city of Camarillo has been spared any significant state funding cuts, Kiisk said she reasoned that the city may be in a better financial position than the district to run local parks and recreation programs in the future.

She and other protesters asked the council to study the possibility of running park and recreation services as a city department or as a special city-controlled district, like the Camarillo Sanitary District.

But city officials warned that the city may not have any more money than the park district for running parks and recreation programs.

And City Manager J. William Little told the protesters to question park officials’ claims that they have no money.

“They have had about a 10% loss of revenues,” Little said at the council meeting. “It’s not anywhere approaching what I would consider, as an administrator, a crisis situation.”