Oxnard Council Urged to Halt Its Rail Funding : Transportation: Traffic manager says the city should not pay for Metrolink at the expense of its own buses and roadways. The recommendation contradicts a county commission plan.

Oxnard cannot afford to fund Metrolink at the expense of its own buses and roadways, a transit manager told the City Council in a report to be discussed today.

City traffic manager Samia Maximous suggests that the council oppose the Ventura County Transportation Commission’s plan to extend the railway another year--well beyond the six-month emergency period established after the Jan. 17 earthquake.

Even though the $540,000 a year budgeted to fund the Oxnard Metrolink service comes from state funds and would not affect Oxnard transportation needs this year, Maximous said she fears the use of transit funds would set a dangerous precedent for the future.

“We recommend that Metrolink not be funded beyond (June 30) and the future of rail in Ventura County be determined by . . . a transit ballot measure,” she wrote in a letter to the commission.

If approved by the City Council, the letter would ask the Transportation Commission to reverse its May 6 decision.

Earlier this month, the commission, which disburses state and federal transit money, narrowly approved a funding plan for the fiscal year beginning July 1 that classifies the Metrolink service to Camarillo and Oxnard as a “transit need” instead of a “transit emergency.”

The May 6 ruling would not affect Oxnard’s transportation budget until after June, 1995, because the commission arranged to borrow the Metrolink funds from another account for the coming year.

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The effect on Oxnard of the reclassification would mean the reappropriation of up to $540,000 in state money the city now uses for buses, road improvements and other services.

Camarillo, which would have to pay $200,000 or more for its Metrolink stop, will not oppose the reclassification, city Traffic Manager Tom Fox said. City shares are based on population.

The twice-a-day stops were established in the weeks after the Jan. 17 earthquake, when traditional commute routes to the Los Angeles area were disrupted.

The Ventura County Transportation Commission vote came after a daylong discussion that featured opposition from Maximous, Ventura City Manager John Baker and others. It passed, 4-3.

No one on the commission specifically represents Oxnard or Ventura.

Also, commissioners agreed to pay a consultant $20,000 to survey the county’s mass-transit needs and draft a half-cent sales-tax initiative that, if passed, would generate more than $500 million over the next 20 years.

Ventura County is the only Metrolink-serviced county without such a tax.

The blue-and-white trains drew 59 round-trip Oxnard commuters each day in April, the last month for which ridership numbers are available, a Metrolink spokesman said.

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According to state guidelines, the service should recover at least 20% of its operating cost at the fare box to remain viable.

Mary Travers of the Ventura County Transportation Commission said fare-box recovery is at 26% countywide. But in Oxnard the amount is below 20%, she said.

“We’d like to see a lot more riders out of that area, too,” Travers said. “Metrolink is planning a new marketing program in coming weeks that will include discounts on tickets” and other incentives to ride the trains, he said.

But Oxnard officials say they need their $440,000 to $540,000 share for other transit-related projects such as senior minivans and South Coast Area Transit buses.

“The benefits (of Metrolink) are regional,” Oxnard Mayor Manuel M. Lopez said Monday. “Mass transit is a statewide benefit for the good of everybody. To try and place the (Metrolink funding) more on one community than another . . . I don’t know how fair that is.”

Councilman Andres Herrera said he was undecided about whether to oppose the Metrolink extension.

“We have a lot of critical needs within our city, but it’s a matter of where you put the utmost priority,” Herrera said. “We have to demonstrate a greater need for Metrolink versus the other things we’ll use the money for.

“It’s going to be a tight call,” he said.

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For Supervisor John K. Flynn, who was instrumental in luring the commuter trains to Oxnard, the recommendation to challenge the Transportation Commission is premature.

“If the ridership were to go downhill, then (Metrolink) should be stopped,” he said. “But the (Oxnard) ridership is going up.”

Flynn said the Southern California Regional Rail Authority, which operates Metrolink, is in the midst of drawing up its 1994-95 budget. That spending plan could change the amount each Ventura County jurisdiction must pay.

“As soon as that budget is adopted, we’ll have a better handle on things,” Flynn said.