Oxnard Braces for a Year of Challenges : Government: City faces decisions on relieving traffic congestion, building low-cost housing and adding police officers.

Faced with balancing its budget amid pressure to fix traffic-clogged roads, build low-cost housing and hire more police officers, Oxnard must confront difficult challenges in 1995, city officials said.

Developers are pushing plans to build everything from 5,000 residences around the wetlands of Ormond Beach to a massive entertainment complex in the Wagon Wheel area that backers hope will rival anything in Southern California.

Meanwhile, Oxnard’s leaders will try to relieve the congestion caused by the residences and retail complexes they have already allowed--such as Shopping at the Rose and the Oxnard Factory Outlet--while hoping to attract more businesses along the Ventura Freeway.

“There are a lot of things going on,” Mayor Manuel Lopez said. “We should try to focus on having a more livable climate and a more attractive place to do business.”

The improvements needed to repair Oxnard’s dilapidated streets, sidewalks, bridges and highway interchanges are expected to cost $57 million over the next 10 years, city officials have said.

“That’s a major project and I think we have to really work on it, because some intersections are just too crowded,” Councilman Tom Holden said.

At the same time, advocates for the poor are pressing the City Council to build housing that low-income families can afford, citing overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions plaguing parts of the city.

Council members, in turn, are looking to assist developers who offer to build low-cost housing--including a 716-unit project that would be built on farmland the city had banned from development until 2020. Residents and landowners in east Oxnard have vowed to start a letter-writing campaign to protest the project--Channel Islands Estates--as it moves through the planning process in the coming year. The builder, Affordable Homebuilders Inc. of Ventura, argues that the development would provide 159 low-cost houses.

Exacerbating the affordable-housing problem, city leaders must look for a new solution to the plight of the 1,100 poor residents of the Oxnard Mobilehome Lodge, one of the county’s worst slums.

The City Council said last week it could not deliver on years of promises to move the trailer park residents to a housing project that had been intended for them. Council members said the residents--mostly farm workers--are too poor to buy houses, even with steep subsidies.

But the council pledged to improve living conditions for park residents by building new mobile homes for them or finding them another place to live. The new attempt to deal with the decade-old problem will begin in the coming year.

“It’s utterly impossible for someone making $20,000 a year to buy a house,” Councilman Bedford Pinkard said. “But they are still entitled to decent housing.”

Amid Oxnard’s pro-growth rush, council members are considering abolishing the city’s Planning Commission, arguing that it is slowing progress.

Council members Tom Holden and Andres Herrera have said the five-member commission, made up of appointed city residents, is not working the way it should and that its purpose needs to be redefined if not scrapped altogether.

Lopez, however, argues that the board should remain, saying it serves an important function by involving residents in government.

The decision on the Planning Commission will greatly affect the way development is scrutinized in Oxnard. Under the proposal, a hearing officer would replace the commission, but critics of the plan say that person would have unchecked power.

The City Council’s streamlining proposals--a series of budget slashes, department shuffles and layoffs that have occurred in recent years--apparently have put council members in a position to easily balance the city’s budget.

Oxnard is expected to spend $61.4 million in the 1995-96 budget year, up from $60.2 million this year. But since the city will take in about $61.3 million, balancing the budget will not be a problem, officials have said.

That estimate, however, does not include the funding needed to fix city roads and intersections, money to match federal funding for new police officers, or money it would take to move the residents of the Oxnard Mobilehome Lodge, among other things.

Since 1990, Oxnard has pared its work force from 1,100 to 913, and the city will continue to rearrange city departments and privatize municipal duties to save money, city leaders said. But they added that few if any jobs will be cut in 1995.

In fact, council members say they will be looking to add officers to the understaffed Police Department.

“We’re in a mode where we feel that we’re a very low per-capita Police Department and we need more police officers,” Lopez said. “We’re going to do everything we can to add more officers.”

Pinkard also said Oxnard leaders need to create more activities for young people to deter them from crime.

“There are not enough recreational opportunities for young people in Oxnard,” said Pinkard, a former Oxnard recreation official. “After those policemen have left, the parks . . . will still be there.”

One of Ventura County’s wealthiest men, Martin V. (Bud) Smith, wants to turn the Wagon Wheel--his fading motel, restaurant and bowling alley--into a complex that could include housing, a high-rise office building and theaters for both live performances and film.

But details of the plan--prompted by a project to upgrade the Ventura Freeway-Oxnard Boulevard interchange--have yet to be presented to the City Council.

Oxnard’s recent rash of freeway development has brought much-needed sales tax money into the city, Lopez said, and the council will continue to work on other projects. Among them is Shopping at the Rose Too, a 16-acre retail complex planned by the developer of Shopping at the Rose.

And Pinkard and Lopez said the city is working with the owner of The Esplanade mall to add another large store and possibly a second story to the aging shopping center.

“I have seen some plans, and it looks very positive,” Pinkard said. “Expanding The Esplanade would be a plus-plus.”