Ventura Keys Settlement Looks Headed for Rejection : Negotiations: Officials say fewer than 75 of 300 residents have signed a proposed deal to reduce a tax to pay for dredging the area’s waterways.

The deadline for signing a proposed settlement in the years-old Ventura Keys litigation passed quietly Friday afternoon, with city negotiators planning on Tuesday to see how many homeowners agreed to the deal.

Ventura officials have kept the number of owners who have accepted the offer private, but said Friday that fewer than 75 of the area’s 300 or so property owners have signed the proposed settlement. Indications from Keys residents are that the offer will be soundly rejected.

“The last we heard, there’s only 27 people that signed that thing, so it looks like it’s deader than Clinton’s health care bill,” said Keys homeowner Robert Therrien.

Residents of the upscale neighborhood filed suit in 1991 after the Ventura City Council imposed annual assessments of nearly $2,000 to pay for dredging the waterways winding through the community.

Defendants in the case include the city, the Ventura Port District, Ventura County and the California Department of Transportation.

A committee called Save the Keys contends that silt clogging the back-yard canals comes primarily from the Arundell Barranca and city storm drains. Thus, the majority of Keys homeowners say, the city should pay for the dredging.

City negotiators last month offered up an inch-thick settlement that would have reduced the annual tax to $813 for property owners, although the assessment would rise by $64 each year.

The offer gave the homeowners 45 days to sign or reject the document, more than 100 pages that would have been attached to individual deeds. That deadline expired Friday.

“There’s no way these people are going to buy into this,” said Paul Masi, a retired union chief who lives on Surfrider Avenue. “The people that did sign it [mistakenly] thought the Save the Keys committee was endorsing it.”

An overwhelming number of Keys residents have refused to sign the settlement, in part because a hearing has been called for June 9 in Ventura County Superior Court.

Kern County Judge Sidney P. Chapin is presiding over the case because Ventura County jurists have disqualified themselves. Masi and other Keys residents said that if Chapin rules against them, they are prepared to appeal. They already have spent nearly $500,000 in legal fees.

“To [Chapin], the assessment is questionable--that’s why he’s giving each side 30 minutes to make their case,” Masi said Friday. “If he rules against us, we’ll start the appeal.

“People are not going to buy this kind of baloney,” he said.

The judge will probably take the matter under submission and issue a written ruling later in June. But either way, Mayor Tom Buford said, the city will stick to its guns.

“I guess we’ll open the package and see if we have enough people signed up to make it work,” Buford said of the settlement offer. “But we’ve had a lot of people telling us it’s not going to fly, so we’re not very optimistic.”

Another factor contributing to the offer’s apparent rejection is a proposal by former Keys resident Ray Ellison, who has put together a plan to purchase a dredge.

Ellison recommended that the city join the other defendants and buy a dredge for $800,000. That way, Ellison said, the canals could be dredged more regularly, instead of contracting the job out every seven years, as the Port District has planned.

But Richard Parsons, Port District general manager, said the Ellison proposal is not feasible. “It doesn’t solve all of our dredging needs,” he said. “So it wouldn’t be the most prudent investment.”

Nonetheless, Keys residents are banking that Ellison’s plan will become part of future negotiations.

“The plan from here on out is to try to exert pressure on the City Council and the city manager to take a serious look and consider the Ellison proposal,” Therrien said.

“It’s a solution that would benefit the homeowners, all the agencies involved and Ventura’s taxpayers.”