The Good Life Amid Growing Problems : FUTURE: Planners cite a widening gulf between the majority of residents who have found the good life here and the growing minority who have not.

By DARYL KELLEY

Oct. 15, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The trends are disturbingly clear.

Ventura County is becoming poorer and its children more violent. More mothers are teen-age and single. And more students speak a different language than their teachers.

There is less public money for basic children’s services--schools, parks, libraries and health care.

It is a list of ills recorded throughout Southern California, the problems varying mostly by degree. And Ventura County is not immune.

“I moved here 30 years ago to raise a family,” said Rep. Elton Gallegly, a former Simi Valley mayor. “But now my children all talk about, ‘Well, I want to move to Idaho or I may move to Utah.’ They’re concerned about the quality of life they’re going to be able to provide their children.”

Although a Times Poll found parents and children highly satisfied with their lives in Ventura County, it also revealed an undercurrent of concern over emerging problems and on what the future might hold.

And as academics, planners and politicians ponder the years ahead, they say that semirural Ventura County--successful for so long at avoiding urban ills--must face up to its growing problems, or eventually be crippled by them.

In studies prepared as road maps for the 21st Century, planners have highlighted the widening gulf between the majority of residents who have found the good life here and the growing minority who have not.

Those classifications often break along lines of race, ethnicity and educational attainment--a well-educated white majority and a less-skilled Latino minority. And geographically between the affluent east county and the poorer west.

Latinos, the county’s poorest racial or ethnic group, are also its fastest-growing. Latinos made up 35% of the county’s child population in 1990 and will comprise a majority of youngsters by 2010, state planners project. For all ages, Latinos were 26.5% of the population in 1990 and are expected to reach 37% over the next 15 years.

“The gap is really growing. And I predict a wider gap between racial and economic groups in the next 10 to 15 years,” said Jamshid Damooei, a Cal Lutheran University economist who collaborated in a 1994 study on local social trends.

“You will have divisions between the east county and west county and between the rich and poor parts of town,” he said. “These will bring the problems of the big city. . . . and a growing economic underclass.”

Like many others, Damooei and Gallegly consider the changes a call to arms, not a reason to flee. Gallegly would respond in part by denying public services to illegal immigrants, Damooei by making sure good basic services are available to all children.

“It’s still a good place to raise kids,” the congressman said. “And with proper leadership, we can maintain this county as a safe haven.”

Ventura County policy-makers, in fact, say because the county remains one of the state’s richest, it has time to respond effectively to growing poverty and shrunken government budgets.

During the 1980s, the county’s poverty rate actually dropped from 8% to 7.3% as the white-collar communities of the east grew at a rate nearly twice as fast as the blue-collar west county.

But since 1989, the number of people receiving welfare benefits here has about doubled to more than 81,000, or 11.3% of the population. Eight of every 10 welfare recipients live in the west county, nearly half in Oxnard.

Mark Schniepp, an economist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said while government budget cuts have sapped educational and social services for the poor, most Ventura County families will still enjoy a high quality of life well into the next century.

The county will look much the same in 2010 as it does today, he said. It will just have more of everything. The smaller east county will surge in influence as its growth rate continues to outpace the west and manages to lure about as many new jobs.

“It will continue to be a place conducive to families,” said Schniepp, head of the Economic Forecast Project at UC Santa Barbara. “We don’t see that changing, at least in the east county. It has very low crime and people living there are comfortable.”

But central to that forecast is the action of government to help poor children--often limited by their lack of English--gain better educations and jobs, he said. Nearly two-thirds of all children living in poverty in 1990 were Latino, though Latinos were only about one-third of all children.

Schools need an overhaul, Schniepp said. And government should respond with services for people increasingly packed into crowded housing, especially in the county’s poorest cities--Santa Paula, Oxnard and Fillmore, he said.

“There are some major problems that are not getting reconciled right now,” he said. “I don’t see any response from policy-makers. I don’t see anything being done.”

Ali Akbari, a Cal Lutheran professor and co-author of the trends study with Damooei, also focused on local leaders as a key to whether their communities are defined even more as islands of poverty and prosperity, separate and unequal.

“I’m quite optimistic,” Akbari said. “The comparative advantages that we have are powerful enough to cope with the problems. So Ventura County will be a better place to live if we are able to respond properly and in a timely fashion before these problems overwhelm us.”

Ventura County is lucky in many ways. As a whole, it is exceptionally safe, well-educated and financially secure.

But county officials say it is easy to identify shortcomings in human services, especially those for children. And they are concerned that the worst is yet to come.

* The county library system faces possible closure of seven of its 16 branches in March because of budget cuts of 41% over the past three years.

“The library is an equalizer for all of the residents of a community,” said Dixie D. Adeniran, head librarian. “And there is a canyon in this county between the rich and the poor that is growing wider all the time. If we don’t do better we will have failed our children and our future.”

* Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez bemoans the loss of reliable funding for parks and recreation in his city.

“Our children here come from poor folks,” he said. “And our ability to generate revenue decreases as our needs increase.”

* Sheriff Larry Carpenter, though buttressed with more funds through a law enforcement ballot initiative, says arrests of juveniles for violent crime more than doubled over the past decade. And he doesn’t like what he sees for 2010.

“I can tell you I’m concerned when I look that far ahead,” he said. “Every indicator is for an upsurge in violence and an upswing in youthful offenders. We’ve certainly got to give [teen-agers] options other than the local gang.”

* Ventura Unified School District Supt. Joseph Spirito says schools are failing to prepare students for the world of work and need to do a better job of providing vocational and computer training.

“Schools are our last bastions of antiquity,” he said. “When business discards a technology, we buy it. We’ve got to stop doing that.”

* Rio School District Supt. Yolanda Benitez is concerned that Ventura County has too few qualified instructors for the 22,500 students--18.6% of the total--who speak only limited English. Countywide, more Latino students drop out of school than take a full load of college preparatory classes.

“To be proper citizens, this is vital, because most of these youngsters are here to stay,” she said.

* County Public Health Director Dr. Gary Feldman is worried about the increase of teen-age pregnancies. Nearly 1,200 babies were born to local women under 20 in 1993, more than one of every 10 newborns.

“We’ve seen a shift to young teen-agers trying to raise their babies,” Feldman said. “It’s troubling because those are the parents at risk--[those] that tend to abuse children and are much more likely to end up single parents.”

* Joyce Kennedy, director of the Ventura satellite campus of Cal State Northridge, says the county’s lack of a public four-year university will continue to stifle the academic aspirations of local children. Fewer local high school graduates go to four-year colleges than the state average.

“That university would do more for students coming through than anything else,” she said. “If it isn’t built we’ll continue to be in the backwaters of public education, and, in an information-driven society, we simply can’t afford to let that happen.”

So how should Ventura County provide better libraries, recreation and schools for all its children?

Local officials offer a variety of answers: increased volunteerism, more corporate involvement, expanded efforts by groups such as the Boys & Girls clubs and a higher profile by the new Children and Family Commission of Ventura County.

That countywide panel was formed last year to identify unmet needs and to find state and federal grants to fill them.

But all such efforts very likely will leave large funding gaps for needed services, and many officials said communities should stand ready to spend more on their children.

Despite Ventura County voters’ traditional anti-tax stance, a variety of county leaders said voters will support new taxes once they are convinced their dollars will be spent where they want.

But persuading them will take some doing.

Since passage of tax-slashing Proposition 13 in 1978, the state Legislature has usurped local control over property taxes, severing the mental connection taxpayers once made between taxes and services.

“Now there’s been so many laws built on top of each other that it’s impossible for even people in government to give straight answers as to where the money comes from and where it’s going to go,” said Mike Saliba, executive director of the Ventura County Taxpayers Assn.

A state commission is studying proposals to better link specific taxes to individual services. Acknowledging the difficulty of achieving broad reform, however, local officials say a measure of accountability can be regained through ballot initiatives earmarking money for specific purposes.

“I personally would support a parcel tax [for library service],” said county Supervisor Judy Mikels, a former Simi Valley councilwoman. “I think you’ll find voter support . . . when they perceive control over the money and see a return on their dollars.”

Santa Paula’s 1994 library tax of $25 per parcel is an example of how voters will support a new levy, even by the two-thirds majority required by Proposition 13, City Administrator Arnold Dowdy said.

“The keys were that they not only knew where the money was going to go,” Dowdy said, “they knew it was desperately needed.”

Adeniran is backing a $35-per-parcel tax on the November ballot to keep open four libraries in the Ventura and Ojai areas. She said proposals also may be forthcoming for other communities in the sprawling county library system, which covers seven cities, nearly two-thirds of local residents.

“This money is going only for libraries,” she said. “It’s not money to be sucked out for general governmental functions.”

Yet tax increases, even for the best of causes, still boil the blood of taxpayers.

In Camarillo, where nearly all of the elementary district’s 14 schools are at least three decades old, officials in November are trying for a fourth time to gain a two-thirds majority so they can sell $55 million in bonds to build and refurbish schools.

Immediately before the recent four-year recession, however, school bonds were approved in Oxnard, Simi Valley, Fillmore and Santa Paula.

In fact, Santa Paula provides a study of how a small, poor community that still believes in itself can respond when it sees a clear need.

Not only did residents spend $5 million to modernize their stately old high school and approve the $358,000-a-year library tax, they raised $600,000 to bolster the struggling community hospital and $400,000 to maintain a new community center that would not have been built otherwise, Dowdy said.

The taxpayers’ message was different in Oxnard during two skirmishes in the 1980s over a city utility tax. The fights taught Mayor Lopez a lesson about his city’s voters, the majority who are white even though the city is mostly Latino.

“The voters don’t have the needs,” he said. “At some point, the people who have children will be voting.”

Lopez’s comments highlight a fact that analysts say makes it harder for any special tax to pass: As indicated by the success of Proposition 187 last year, many voters link increased demands for public services with illegal immigration.

Gallegly, for one, believes the county’s problems will abate if Congress passes stiff laws that keep illegal immigrants from receiving public assistance.

“The demand for public social services is much higher than it has ever been, which is draining other services we provide,” he said.

Others say leaders should focus on providing early health care, comprehensive education and sound job training for the county’s needy children.

“There is a window of opportunity to provide meaningful programs to help the children of the poorest groups,” said Damooei of Cal Lutheran. “The opportunity must be seized or we’ll end up dealing with outraged teen-agers.”

A key challenge in the years ahead will be how Ventura County copes with its increasing economic stratification and bridges the gaps in public services between affluent whites and poorer Latinos.

William Fulton, publisher of a statewide planning newsletter and a Ventura hillside resident since 1987, sees the problems from a personal perspective, not just a planner’s vantage point.

Fulton, his artist wife Vicki and kindergarten daughter Sara savor their small-town life--Saturday morning farmers’ market, strolls on the oceanfront Promenade, sport-a-thons at school.

Like many residents, the Fultons make enough money to immunize themselves from problems such as the lack of funds for local libraries or other community shortcomings.

“It’s still a perfect world for parents who can afford to make it perfect for their children,” Fulton said. “My daughter doesn’t know where the library is. She knows where Barnes & Noble is. We’ve privatized the library.”

In that sense, Fulton said, he needs to recognize that he becomes the problem if he gets too comfortable to worry about the troubles of the larger community.

The challenge to affluent Ventura County voters and the officials they elect in future years will be to recognize that all residents “are in the same boat together . . . and that they need to invest in the poor minority child,” Fulton said.

“I’m talking about myself,” he added. “I’m that typical white, affluent voter. We’re happy folks. It’s easy to slide into a kind of suburban complacency.”

The problem with such an attitude, Fulton said, is that poorer children get left behind as money and interest in public services decline.

“People think that they can simply withdraw,” he said. “You put a wall around your neighborhood and you protect yourself and you call that citizenship.

“The solution,” he concluded, “will be when the voters of this county look at the children of this county and essentially adopt them all. When they say, ‘These are our children. They represent the future of the county and we have to invest in them.’ ”

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VOICES: Will Ventura County become a better or worse place to live over the next 10 or 15 years?

“Quite honestly, I really don’t see the county changing that much as far as quality of life. It will remain rural to the extent it is now. We have greenbelt agreements in place, and there would be battles you wouldn’t believe if they try to change that. And I really don’t foresee the problems of gang and youth violence ever becoming what they are in L.A.”

Judy Mikels

--County supervisor from Simi Valley

“The only thing that will keep up the quality of our current educational system is to rethink it. The idea of 32 to 34 students in each class is just not viable as our kids become more needy. One solution would be to invest more. My dream is that will happen, but I don’t see any evidence that it will.”

Charles Weis

County superintendent of schools

“I think it will be better. People are stopping and talking about whether they want this county to be mainly commercial and just go pell-mell into growth, or do they want to maintain the beauty and quality of life. And I see communities looking toward youth programs: As part of their general plans, they’re considering young people as citizens and decision-makers for the future of this county.

Nina Shelley

Ojai councilwoman

“Definitely better. The county is laying a solid economic base. The population is becoming more diverse, and this brings a richness of culture. The increasing number of Latino immigrants means the county will have an incredible number of people who have a commitment to the work ethic and to education and who are determined that the next generation will accomplish more than this one.

Jorge Garcia

Cal State Northridge dean of humanities and Simi Valley resident

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BY THE NUMBERS

Statistics that reflect on the future of family life in Ventura County:

Projected Population Growth, 1990-2010, by Categories

- 29% Overall

- 11% Whites

- 89% Latinos

- 73% Senior Citizens

- 29% Children

Median Age by Race/Ethnicity

Projected for 2010

- 43, Whites

- 26, Latinos

Students Who Speak Limited English

- 9,522 In 1984

- 22,508 In 1994

Kid Who Can’t Afford a School Lunch

- 23.3%

Babies Whose Parents Can’t Afford Health Care

- 32% (Statewide: 40%)

Welfare Recipients

- Doubled from 1989 to 1995 to:

81,385

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The Future At a Glance

Ventura County’s rapid growth of the 1980s will slow through this decade and the next. The county will become more racially diverse. The east county’s influence will grow as its share of jobs, housing and population moves closer to that of the west.

POPULATION GROWTH

1990: 669,016

1995: 720,500

2000: 775,629

2010: 859,898

CHILDREN’S RACE/ETHNICITY

(see newspaper for chart)

JOBS GROWTH

*--*

East West Total 1990 95,128 194,058 289,186 2010 162,410 265,033 427,443 Increase 70.7% 36.6% 49.4%

*--*

CHANGE IN RACE/ETHNICITY