School Board Urged to Delay New Bond Issue : Education: Possible base closures would affect Pleasant Valley district, which seeks $55 million to build three campuses.

Until a federal base closing panel makes its final decision on two Ventura County bases, the Pleasant Valley school board should resist asking voters to approve a $55-million bond issue, a leader in the county’s base closure task force warned Thursday.

As the board debated the bond election, Cal Carrera, co-chairman of the BRAC ’95 Task Force, said that if either Point Mugu or Port Hueneme naval bases is added to the closing list, the Camarillo area school district could lose hundreds of students and the economy could be decimated.

“If this were up to me, I’d stall,” Carrera said. “We will have a better idea by July whether we are in trouble.”

Citing a lack of money, a growing student population and ever-aging facilities, the school district debated late into the evening whether to try for a third time in four years to raise the money needed for building three new elementary schools and repairing older schools, some of which are 30 years old.

The two earlier bond measures failed by narrow margins, but some board members hoped that a third election would bring success.

Associate Supt. Howard Hamilton said the district has no alternative but to seek an election.

“We’re hoping the residents will understand how badly we need this,” Hamilton said. “If this doesn’t work, I don’t know what we’re going to do. We don’t have any money, and we obviously can’t go to the state.”

If approved, homeowners in the district would be assessed about $2 per $100,000 of assessed property value each month. For instance, the owner of a home valued at $300,000 would pay about $72 a year over 25 years to help retire the district’s bonded indebtedness.

“The need is obvious,” said school board President Dolores (Val) Rains. “The question is whether this is the time. We want to make sure that if we do this, it will be successful.”

Rains said one of the reasons she supports sponsoring a bond election now was the decision by military officials this week not to recommend shutting down the Point Mugu or Port Hueneme naval bases.

Neither base appeared on a list of facilities the Pentagon wants to close. But Carrera warned that the independent Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission will spend the next four months deciding which bases to shut down. They could conceivably add one of the Ventura bases to list, Carrera said.

A decision to appeal to the voters for funding would come with a steep price tag itself. District staff members said Ventura County elections officials will assess a $55,000 fee to conduct the election, while an additional $20,000 to $50,000--solicited from individuals and homeowners--will be needed to run the campaign, according to staff estimates.

In December, the school board balked on authorizing a bond election to be held this month, saying the continuing recession and the unknown fate of the county’s two Navy bases made it unwise to approach the voters with a bond measure.

However, informal surveys conducted late last year recorded a favorable community attitude toward a bond election, Hamilton said.

“We were so close the last two times that it nearly broke my heart,” Hamilton said earlier this week. “I think with the economy improving and the bases staying put, the voters will get behind us.”

In June 1991, 59.9% of the district’s voters approved of a $75-million bond election. Five months later, 64.4% of the voters said yes to a $55-million bond election. In both cases, however, the measures failed because they did not get the requisite two-thirds majority required by law.