Site for New Veterans Home Angers Tribe

Ventura city officials will lobby a state task force to place a veterans home in east Ventura--a move that delighted local veterans but angered members of the Chumash tribe of Native Americans.

At Monday night’s City Council meeting, World War II veteran Semu Huate, who said he was a Chumash elder, made an impassioned plea to keep the veterans home off a site he said was a tribal burial ground.

“I say that you should not disturb anymore the bones of my people,” Huate said. He warned that a decision to build on the land at Telephone Road near Saticoy Avenue would activate a curse that would cause three City Council members to die within a year.

Another Chumash, Richard Angulo of Thousand Oaks, said Tuesday that he would object to any building within 100 yards of a burial ground.

After questions from concerned council members unaware of the Chumash remains, Director of Community Services Everett Millais acknowledged that an environmental impact report had shown “substantial Indian remains” in the center of the property.

Millais said the veterans home is planned for only a 22-acre portion of the 62-acre site owned by Wittenberg-Livingston Inc. The company plans to develop housing on the rest of the site but leave the burial ground area as open space, Millais said.

Thus reassured, the council unanimously endorsed the east Ventura location over a rival site on Olivas Park Drive, which is designated for agricultural use. Councilman Gary Tuttle was absent.

Councilman Stephen Bennett said putting the 400-bed facility on land designated for farming would probably spark community opposition.

“You’d have a political firestorm on your hands trying to move into the greenbelt,” Bennett said.

Advocates of the Olivas Park site said presenting the state task force with two viable sites would double the city’s chances of getting one approved. But council members and city staff said the best way to win state approval would be to present a united front.

Winning approval of a site--any local site--is most important to area veterans.

“We have at least 65,000 veterans in Ventura County,” said Roy Chambers, a World War II veteran and commander of the Oxnard Post 11425 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “I know that some of those people who are homeless and are ill need someplace to turn to.”

Mayor Tom Buford will press the city’s case before the Governor’s Task Force on the Southern California Veterans Homes at the group’s meeting in Anaheim on Oct. 27. By the end of the year, the task force will recommend three sites to the governor from among the approximately half-dozen in contention.

Wittenberg-Livingston has agreed to donate the 22 acres in return for the city agreeing to negotiate development rights on the rest of the site.