Stadium or Landfill?

Re: “Ventura Car Dealers Press Demands for Stadium,” one wonders how a city that refused to house a state university and its related jobs and income would now gamble public funds on a speculative minor league baseball stadium. Once the city faces up to fiscal reality, the economically battered auto dealers will probably have no publicly funded stadium.

Instead of a baseball stadium, Ventura city planners are recommending that a huge regional garbage-handling facility be built next to the Auto Center, in order to compensate for the pending closure of the Bailard Landfill. To make a bad location even worse, city planners have proposed that no roadway improvements be constructed for the private garbage-handling facility.

So, rather than have potential customers drive through the area on their way to the ballpark, the auto dealers will have hundreds of garbage trucks each day clogging the already horrific Victoria / 101 interchange and the even more indescribable Johnson Drive / 101 southbound on-ramp.

The ballpark is a bad idea in the right location; the garbage-handling facility is a good idea in the wrong location. The solution: Get entirely private funding for the stadium and move the proposed garbage-handling facility to Saticoy or Ventura Avenue.

GLEN M. REISER

Oxnard