Keys Residents Are Ignoring Dredging Pact

With fewer than two weeks left to decide whether to accept a proposal that would end a years-long legal battle over canal dredging fees, only a small fraction of Ventura Keys residents have signed the agreement.

If the offer is ultimately rejected by even one of the 100 or so plaintiffs, residents and government officials would be forced to forge ahead with litigation that already has sucked up nearly $2 million in attorney fees.

Or each side could return to the bargaining table.

Meanwhile, homeowners would continue being taxed almost $2,000 a year to clean out the canals behind their homes--instead of the $813 annual fee called for in the offer, which rises $64 a year.

“It was a long shot thinking we’d ever get an agreement that everyone would sign off on,” said Richard Parsons, general manager of the Ventura Port District, which was sued along with the city, Ventura County and the California Department of Transportation.

“It looks like it’s not going to come to fruition,” he said.

At issue is who will pay for dredging the waterways that wind through the back yards of the upscale homes. The canals must be dredged every seven years.

City officials contend that the homeowners are responsible for the majority of the dredging costs, which topped $2 million when the area was last dredged three years ago.

But residents filed suit after the City Council formed a special assessment district. They argue that the silt clogging the waterways comes from the nearby Arundell Barranca and storm drains that dump most of Ventura’s runoff into their back-yard canals.

Last month, negotiators for the four government agencies and nearly 100 members of a residents’ group called Save The Keys offered up a compromise to close the costly series of lawsuits.

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The deal is based on a framework hashed out two years ago by a majority of Keys property owners and lawyers for each government agency.

But more than 90% of Keys homeowners have so far refused to sign the settlement, which was presented April 12. Even the Keys committee voted to oppose the settlement, despite participating in the negotiations.

Residents have until May 26 to decide, but many say they won’t sign, banking instead on a case that will be heard by a visiting judge in Ventura County Superior Court early next month.

Others support a new proposal by a former Keys homeowner that calls for the government to purchase a dredge instead of contracting out for the service every seven years.

Late last week, Parsons said that only about two dozen residents had signed the agreement, which if approved would be attached to the deeds of the property owners.

“I don’t have much hope that continued litigation will solve anything except cost everyone a lot more money,” Parsons said.

Judging from the number of residents who attended an organizational meeting last week, most homeowners would rather reject the offer and take their chances in court.

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A show of hands at the meeting indicated that more than 100 Keys residents planned to oppose the settlement offer.

“For us to think signing the agreement will get us anything is silly,” said Diane Heirschberg, an attorney who lives in the exclusive Keys neighborhood.

“They can develop as much as they want and dump as much silt as they want, then your (seven-year) dredging is out the window,” she told a packed house at the Marina Harbortown Resort last week.

Nick Starr, a Ventura Port District commissioner who has lived in the Keys since 1972, said most silt clogging the Keys canals comes from outside the neighborhood. The only benefit of the assessment district “is to the rest of the city,” he said.

But Dale McCoig, a retired construction company executive, has given up the fight. He already signed the deal, saying he would rather pay the $813 than fight the $2,000 annual assessment.

“Even though I don’t think it’s equitable, I think it’s pragmatic,” McCoig said.

While negotiations for the settlement progressed over the past two years, lawsuits filed as early as 1991 have slowly wound their way through Ventura County Superior Court.

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On June 9, visiting Judge Sidney P. Chapin will hear final arguments in one of the earliest cases on which scores of residents are counting to win a reprieve from the yearly assessments. Each side will get 30 minutes to present oral arguments in the case, which has boiled down to whether the city was within its rights to impose the assessment on Keys homeowners despite their overwhelming disapproval.

City officials are confident the assessments will stand when Chapin issues his ruling.

“I think we’re on pretty firm legal ground,” City Atty. Peter D. Bulens said. “We have had no (early) legal decisions from any court that have said otherwise.”

If the city prevails, Bulens said, most of the other suits challenging the assessments would be crippled.

Also, the city attorney said, more than 100 separate damage suits filed by Keys homeowners would be weakened. They allege the assessments caused property-value losses of nearly $40 million.

“Things would continue the way they are, and the assessments would continue to be assessed,” Bulens said.

One resident willing to take his chances in court is Paul Masi, a retired union leader who has lived on Surfrider Avenue for nine years. He said that if the residents lose after June 9, he would organize an appeal.

“I’d rather go on paying the $2,000 than settle for what they have in that document,” Masi said of the settlement offer. “It takes all of our rights away.”

For example, he said, the document calls for property owners to pay for maintaining the rocky slopes leading down to the canals.

“If I assume the financial responsibility for that, then I should own it,” Masi said. “We’d be leaving ourselves wide open for them to force whatever repairs they want and then charge us for it.”

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Another factor in the equation is a proposal by Ray Ellison, a former Keys resident who has pitched a plan he thinks would work for all sides.

Ellison recommends that the port district buy a dredge for about $800,000 to avoid contracting out for the job every seven years. That would allow for extra dredging after heavy storms, he told the Harbortown audience last week.

“When you look at all the numbers, we can dredge for about $2 a (cubic) yard,” Ellison said. “We paid $5 a yard for the last dredging.”

But port District Manager Parsons said the dredge Ellison proposes is too small to clear the outer Ventura Harbor area.

“If we were to buy a dredge, we would want one that would work in the ocean environment and not just the harbor,” Parsons said. “But a dredge that’s large enough for the ocean is going to be too big to get through the narrow channels in the Keys.”

For Councilman Gregory L. Carson, who has worked at negotiating a settlement with the Keys homeowners for more than two years, the idea of buying a dredge has some merit.

“It’s a great opportunity for the study group to look at,” Carson said. “But we need to have the settlement in place so that the Ellison proposal opportunity will be potentially viable.”

In the meantime, Carson said, nothing will be accomplished while the threat of litigation hangs over the city and the homeowners. He recommends that landowners sign the deal they agreed to in concept two years ago.

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“Over 80% of the people supported taking the framework and making it into a legal document,” Carson said.

“The only changes between the framework and the legal document were made by the Keys residents,” he said. “They have no reason to be angry. They should be signing a very fair agreement which they had input in all along.”

But Robert Therrien, a Save The Keys committee member who opposes the settlement offer, said the deal does not cut to the root of the issue.

“There’s no incentive for the authorities to move the barranca, which is the cause of the problem,” said Therrien, an air-freight broker.

What’s more, the June court hearing and Ellison’s proposal are two new factors that committee members were not aware of when they were negotiating, he said.

“The committee’s job was always just to present the proposal,” Therrien said. “It was never to endorse or oppose it. We just wanted to see the final product.”

NEXT STEP

The Ventura City Council will consider enacting the dredging assessments for the next year after a public hearing May 22. The following Friday is the deadline for Ventura Keys homeowners to sign or reject a settlement proposed by city, county and state officials.

* On June 9, a visiting judge will hear oral arguments in a case brought in 1991 by Keys residents.