Board OKs 4th Attempt at Passing Bond Issue : Schools: Pleasant Valley district agrees to place $55-million measure before voters in the fall. Latest bid lost by less than 1% of the vote in June.

Saying they will issue an even stronger appeal to areas of the city that supported them, Pleasant Valley school board members voted Wednesday to launch a fourth attempt at passing a multimillion-dollar school bond measure.

The five-person board unanimously agreed to again place a $55-million bond measure before voters in the Nov. 7 general election. The decision came just 15 days after the district’s third attempt at a bond, Measure G, lost by less than 1% of the vote in the June 6 election.

“From my standpoint, I don’t see any other way to get the money,” Trustee Tim Donahue said. “I think we’re stuck. This is our only option.”

Board members reached a decision after about an hour of discussing strategies to reach voters. One method they agreed upon was to stage a town hall forum to better explain the needs of the district’s schools.

“We think the way to approach this is to not try to change the minds of those people opposed to a bond,” school board member Jan McDonald said before the meeting. “Rather, I think we should concentrate our resources on those voters who indicated their support but for one reason or another didn’t get to the polls.”

Howard Hamilton, the district’s associate superintendent, said that with the board’s vote, the 6,900-student elementary school district secured a place for the measure on the November ballot.

The Camarillo district was facing a July 7 Ventura County superintendent of schools deadline to approve the measure for the ballot.

“We were so very close,” Hamilton said. “I believe that we will win this time if we go out again.”

If approved, the bond measure would provide money for the renovation of the district’s 13 aging schools. It also would fund construction of three new schools to accommodate an estimated 900 students expected to enroll in the district in coming years.

In the June 6 election, the bond measure failed despite getting 65.8% of the vote. State law requires that school bond measures receive 66.6% of the vote to pass.

Although a majority of voters supported the measure, officials believe it was defeated in part because only 58.6% of absentee voters supported the initiative.

Board members said that instead of targeting voters who opposed the measure, they most likely will appeal even more to supporters of the initiative.

“I believe that we need to examine the absentee voting trend and push even harder to get out the vote,” school board President Dolores (Val) Rains said.

Rains believes the attempt earlier this month to pass the bond measure narrowly failed in part because of voter concern over both the potential closure of the Point Mugu Naval Air Weapons Station and an unsettled economy.

She said those factors should not affect the initiative’s chances of success in November. A federal commission is expected to consider the fate of the naval station at a meeting today in Washington.

“With all of that in our back yard we still were able to nearly win,” Rains said. “We won’t have those distractions in November.”

Under terms of the new bond, homeowners in the district would be charged $2 a month per $100,000 of assessed property value over the next 30 years. That means the owner of a home worth $200,000 would pay about $48 a year.