Drive to Build Area Cal State Campus Faces Uphill Road : Education: Money from a local sales tax, revenue bonds or business donations may be needed if a university is to open within a decade.

By KENNETH R. WEISS

Sept. 24, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The drive to build a California State University campus in Ventura County is threatened by competition around the state, and state officials believe it will require a burst of local financial aid if the campus is to open within the next decade.

Although Cal State planners have penciled in nearly $50 million to build the first phase over the next six years, it could easily take twice as long given the state’s cash crunch and competing needs of the 22 existing Cal State campuses.

For the Ventura County campus to get rolling, it may have to be kick-started with money from a local sales tax, local revenue bonds or business donations, state officials say.

Cal State Chancellor Barry Munitz assures that he and the Board of Trustees remain committed to launching a 23rd campus on a recently purchased lemon orchard west of Camarillo. The dollars and the timing, however, are less certain.

“Obviously,” Munitz said, “we are going to have to find creative ways to build the campus.”

It has been 32 years since the trustees first designated Ventura County as a site for a future university due to anticipated population growth. And now it’s the largest county in California without a public university.

Ventura County also has one-third fewer high school graduates who go on to four-year colleges than the state average--a startlingly poor reflection of such a wealthy county. Some studies attribute the drop-off to a lack of access to a public university.

All of this has fueled a growing consensus: Ventura County’s inability to open a public university has been one of the community’s greatest failures to provide for its youth and train its future work force.

“A lot of people are waking up to what it means to them,” said Carolyn Leavens, co-chairwoman of a task force to push the new campus. “I think you could call it enlightened self-interest.”

The kids of baby boomers will soon be ready for college, creating a much-anticipated bulge in admissions.

With soaring tuition and other costs, many will look to commuter campuses. And the long, congested drive across the San Fernando Valley to Cal State Northridge may seem like too much trouble.

Cal State Northridge’s satellite campus in Ventura has made tremendous strides in two decades. But it does not offer a full complement of courses. Nor does it have the stature or the draw of a full-fledged university.

“A lot of kids on the Oxnard Plain cannot go away to college and live in a nice little apartment that Mom and Dad sets up for them,” Leavens said. “We cannot slam the door on their opportunity. They are our future.”

Camarillo businessman Wally Boeck sees it in more stark terms. He links an under-educated population with gang shootings and other societal ills.

“If we cannot give everybody a chance to get educated and a chance to get a good job, we are going to have problems,” Boeck said. “No amount of gated communities is going to solve those problems.”

Four times since 1990, Cal State officials have sought money for new construction and renovations by getting a bond measure placed on the California ballot.

And four times, a bond measure has been rejected by voters in Ventura County--though on one of those occasions the measure passed statewide.

This year, the Legislature failed to put a $975-million bond measure on the March ballot that, if approved, could have supplied Cal State officials with the $2.7 million needed through 1997 to keep the Ventura campus on schedule for opening in the fall of 2000.

Although Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo) was a chief sponsor of the legislation, Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) had a mixed voting record on the bill, joining opponents to defeat it at one point this year. Both senators represent portions of Ventura County.

Cal State officials keep track of such matters, but no more than Ventura County campus boosters who earlier this year bombarded Wright with phone calls and letters urging her to turn her vote around.

The past decade has been tortuous for those activists seeking a local university. As the search for a site in Ventura County was slowed by reluctant sellers, lawsuits and slow-growth advocates, two other campuses skipped ahead and are now holding classes.

The northern San Diego County community of San Marcos began its campaign for a Cal State campus in 1985, the same year that Ventura County renewed its push for a university.

But the San Marcos campus opened in 1991, and so far has received about $74 million to buy land and construct buildings. A few weeks ago, California State University, Monterey Bay opened its gates, with $29 million from the Pentagon to help convert the closed Fort Ord Army base into a university.

After years of difficult negotiations, Cal State officials finally had a breakthrough in Ventura County this year, acquiring the last piece of the 260-acre lemon orchard for a campus in April.

But now that the Ventura County campus is ready to stand in line for cash from the state, the pool of bond money has gone dry.

“Sometimes I wonder if we are star-crossed,” said Joyce M. Kennedy, director of Cal State Northridge’s Ventura Campus and longtime champion of a full-fledged university. “Are we living under a malignant star?”

The California Postsecondary Education Commission recently concluded that state colleges and universities will need $600 million a year over the next decade to maintain and refurbish older campuses, said Bill Storey, the commission’s chief policy analyst.

“What does that mean for Ventura?” Storey asked. “Without other sources of funds--maybe they are corporate or private--there is not likely to be anything other than the Ventura satellite campus for quite a while.”

Cal State’s Board of Trustees recently decided that “growth” projects such as the Ventura County campus have a lower priority than seismic upgrades of aging campuses and an enormous backlog of other overdue renovations.

Given Ventura County’s poor timing, Chancellor Munitz has decided it is time to become creative. He views the Monterey Bay campus--which came with free land and federal dollars--as a model of how a new campus can create its own momentum. The package offered state officials something too good to pass up.

So Munitz dispatched one of his key lieutenants, David Leveille, to set up an outpost in the county in late summer to explore every possibility. Munitz likens Leveille to an advance scout.

“Part of David’s role is to talk to the Ventura County business community, the Board of Supervisors, the city councils and see if there is a possibility of local revenue bonds or other creative ways to get the fiscal side going.”

Working out of his Volvo station wagon like a traveling salesman, Leveille has spent the past few weeks dashing between meetings with educators and business and political leaders.

Leveille is stumping the county to sell a vision of a new high-tech university and stir up interest among those who can offer financial aid.

“From our standpoint, everything needs to be on the table for discussion--bonds, sales tax and other options,” Leveille said. “Nobody said it was going to be easy.”

Leveille is working closely with Wally Boeck to persuade high-tech firms that the university can fit into their business plans as Ventura County’s economy continues to shift away from its historic reliance on agriculture and oil.

University supporters constantly remind Leveille that he only has a limited time to ignite public enthusiasm for the university. The notion has languished for so many years that it feeds public cynicism that a Ventura County campus will not be built in this lifetime.

Former Ventura Mayor Richard Francis said he knows a Ventura County campus will not come about unless the public rallies behind it.

The challenge, he said, will be breaking a well-established cycle: “The public isn’t excited because there is nothing happening and there’s nothing happening because there’s no excitement.”

Some former supporters are less enthusiastic because of the new site, situated in the agricultural greenbelt between Camarillo, Oxnard and Ventura.

Like many others, Francis regrets that the university will not be perched on the Taylor Ranch, an undeveloped hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the Ventura Freeway just west of Ventura. Cal State officials backed off after being sued over environmental procedures and divided support from the Ventura City Council in 1990.

“If we hadn’t screwed up Taylor Ranch, we’d have a university now because the state wasn’t as broke then,” Francis said.

Others still pine for a campus on a site near Ventura Harbor, an even older proposal that was abandoned when well-to-do homeowners complained about extra traffic and noise.

Looking back, university supporters acknowledge that they let the critics dominate the debate and define the issues during the bruising battles to select a site.

“We’ve had the problem that all of the political leaders said, ‘This is great,’ but nobody stepped up to the plate to make it happen,” said Bill Fulton, a Ventura-based planning expert.

Daniel Wakelee, assistant director of the Ventura satellite campus of Cal State Northridge, just completed a doctoral dissertation on three Cal State projects that started at the same time: the Ventura County campus, San Marcos campus and the $25-million center for California State University, Hayward’s Contra Costa campus.

“In San Marcos, you had strong leadership at all levels, from the Legislature to county government to the corporate community and the city,” Wakelee said. The same existed in Contra Costa County.

“In Ventura, it was spottier,” he said.

To be sure, he said, the Ventura County campus has had strong advocates such as former Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara), who is most often associated with leading the charge.

“But a lot of people took for granted that it was going to happen,” Wakelee said. “They said they would have been advocates, but for one reason or another, they didn’t get involved.”

Hart painfully remembers the destructive infighting over Taylor Ranch and other battles that stalled progress over the campus. He also vividly recalls touring the San Marcos campus with Sen. William Craven (R-San Marcos).

“It was easy to be a cheerleader in San Diego County, where there was no dissension,” Hart said. He said he considered entering the battle over Taylor Ranch, but then thought a local land-use dispute should be left to local officials.

“I think for any senior legislator to crack heads would have been seen as heavy-handed,” he said.

Meanwhile, divisions from earlier battles still linger.

Some slow-growth activists fear that the campus cannot be contained to its 260 acres within the greenbelt. They believe it will trigger more growth that will gobble up the remaining buffer of farmland between Camarillo, Oxnard and Ventura.

Cynthia Leake, a Camarillo resident and vice president of the Environmental Coalition of Ventura County, said she personally opposes a university being build on the site. “I prefer agricultural land be saved for agriculture,” she said.

The Environmental Coalition, she said, has not formed an official position on building a campus on the site. But she is certain the group would want to review any environmental impact report associated with campus construction, if it comes to that. “I was hoping that they wouldn’t have the money and we wouldn’t have to worry about it,” she said.

Some county residents are even spoiling for a fight over the name of the campus. Some want it called Cal State Ventura, others want Camarillo or Oxnard in the name to reflect their cities. A few are pushing California State University, Channel Islands as a neutral term.

Chancellor Munitz said he has not witnessed any divisiveness and is hopeful the community will rally behind the effort.

“If there are tensions or mixed messages, it will slow the process down,” Munitz said. “If an interwoven support holds together, there will be a campus there, sooner rather than later.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Finding a Home

For 21 years, Ventura County has nurtured a satellite campus in rented offices with dreams of building a full-fledged, independent university. While the planned California State University Campus in Ventura has languished, other campuses have obtained millions of dollars to build permanent facilities.

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The Ventura County campus is dwarfed in funding by two of the most recent additions to the CSU system...

Ventura

Students: 1500*

Acreage: 260

Buildings: 0

Land, and planning costs to date: $9 million

...And the support for satellite campuses of existing Cal State schools may even surpass funding earmarked for the Ventura County campus.

*These students attend the Cal State Northridge Ventura Campus. They would transfer to Ventura County’s independent campus when it opens.

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San Marcos

Students: 3,683