Supervisors Agree to Put Dump on the Ballot : Landfill: Board will let voters make decision on Weldon Canyon site. Ojai and Ventura officials file legal challenge.

Bound by law, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors reluctantly agreed Tuesday to give voters a say on the Weldon Canyon landfill, prompting Ojai and Ventura city officials to file suit against the measure.

The board placed the landfill initiative on November’s ballot, setting up a potentially divisive campaign that could pit east county communities against their west county neighbors.

Determined to stop the proposed landfill, Ojai and Ventura say they have already found more than a dozen ways that the measure violates state law. Chief among the legal flaws, they argue, is that the initiative vests rights in a single business.

“It’s a very cynical use of the initiative process when a private company has used the ballot initiative to convey special privileges to itself,” Ojai City Atty. Monte Widders said.

Effectively, the initiative would grant certain zoning and land-use powers specifically to Taconic Resources, the San Diego County partnership that drew up the ballot initiative.

The county board was unwilling to grant those rights to Waste Management Inc. last year, and the national firm withdrew its proposal. Taconic picked up the project this spring, launching a petition drive and garnering an estimated 25,400 signatures supporting the measure.

Many supporters came from the east county communities, who are concerned that their western neighbors will soon begin dumping their trash in the Simi Valley Landfill. “There are 25,400 people represented in this boardroom,” said Steven Frank, a conservative political consultant from Simi Valley. “These are the people who would like the right to vote for a landfill in Weldon Canyon.

“Not just a few naysayers, the ‘No-jai’ crowd, have a chance to be heard,” Frank added, to hisses and boos from the boardroom packed with Ojai residents.

The landfill opponents filed up to the podium Tuesday morning to denounce the project and the “carpetbagger” firm pushing it.

“It’s still corporate greed, profits and lies that drive the deceit behind the methods employed by Taconic Resources,” said Michael Shapiro of the Coalition to Stop the Weldon Canyon Dump. His group filed a companion suit Tuesday, ensuring that a legal challenge continues if the cities later back down.

Chuck Cohen, a Thousand Oaks lawyer hired last week to represent Taconic, urged supervisors to ignore the rhetoric and the emotion of the morning’s debate.

“What you have before you is, very simply, a petition that has followed the rules of the election code . . . ,” he said. “This is not a forum for the ultimate decision.”

In the end, the board had little choice but to add the measure to the ballot.

“We find ourselves, the Board of Supervisors, faced with a legal responsibility” to certify the measure for the ballot, said Supervisor Maggie Kildee, a foe of the Weldon Canyon plan. “We, at the same time, find ourselves with a responsibility for local land-use planning, which this initiative will take away from us.”

Despite Tuesday’s vote, the board is expected to join Ojai and Ventura in the lawsuit questioning the measure’s legal validity. Three of five county supervisors oppose the initiative, and County Counsel James McBride has already pointed out potential legal problems in the measure.

Widders, Ojai’s city attorney, said he hoped a judge could hear arguments on a temporary restraining order within two weeks.

Cohen said he believed the ballot initiative would survive a legal challenge.

Beyond the legal issue lies a deeper dispute over how to dispose of trash in the western half of the county. The Bailard Landfill--which now takes much of the trash from Ventura, Ojai, Oxnard and Camarillo--is set to close in 1997.

Without a replacement in sight, east county communities fear the trash will be shipped to Simi Valley, filling up that site more quickly and creating truck traffic on local streets.

In response to these concerns, western cities have begun looking for other solutions to the trash problems. Ojai, Ventura and the county government are now considering a joint powers agreement, which would develop a 15-year plan for dealing with the region’s trash, officials said.