Opponents of Tax-Sharing Plan Miss Petition Deadline : Ventura: Supporters of initiative to prohibit deal with mall developers have not turned in signatures needed to qualify measure for March ballot.

Supporters of an initiative to prohibit the city from sharing taxpayer dollars with developers have failed so far to gather the signatures needed to qualify the measure for the March, 1996, ballot, city officials said Monday.

Initiative supporters need to collect signatures from 15% of the city’s 69,844 registered voters, or 10,476, to qualify for the ballot. Supporters did not turn in any of their petitions by Monday.

Monday’s deadline was set to give City Clerk Barbara Kam adequate time to verify signatures, because the Ventura City Council must adopt a resolution requesting consolidation of the special election with the March election before Dec. 5.

Proponents of the measure against tax sharing can still turn in signatures, Kam said, but she may not be able to verify names in time. “It’s a physical process,” she said.

Ventura businessman Lary Reid, who is leading the initiative drive, said his group hopes to turn in more than 14,000 signatures, or 20% of the city’s voters, by the end of this week.

“We’re still collecting signatures as fast as we can,” Reid said. “We are pretty darn close.”

Reid is opposed to a tax-sharing plan being brokered by the city and developers of the Buenaventura Mall. He says he has founded a grass-roots group to fight the proposal--a fight city leaders are taking seriously.

At Monday’s City Council meeting, council members directed city staff to prepare a detailed report analyzing the initiative’s potential impact on plans to renovate the mall.

Mall owners plan to spend about $50 million to upgrade the 30-year-old shopping center by adding a second level of stores, a parking garage and two new anchor stores. Robinsons-May Co. and Sears have agreed to leave The Esplanade in Oxnard. They intend to join Broadway and J.C. Penney at the Buenaventura Mall.

The expansion requires the completion of 22 public projects, including major road improvements, which are expected to cost about $20 million.

Under a deal being negotiated, mall developers would pay for the needed transportation improvements and be reimbursed by the city’s share of increased sales tax revenues generated by the mall once the expansion is complete.

Council members and business leaders say the initiative has the potential to derail negotiations with the two new anchor stores and set back a tight timeline for the mall’s long-awaited expansion.

“The mall initiative comes at us out of the blue,” Assistant City Manager Steve Chase told the council Monday, explaining that the report will “a hard, serious look” at the measure.

Councilwoman Rosa Lee Measures said the report needs to include information about who is backing the initiative. Citing her own encounters with professional signature gatherers, Measures said the supporters of the measure were suspect--a statement echoed by John Walters, president-elect of the Ventura Chamber of Commerce, who is leading a citizens group that opposes the proposed initiative.

“We ask that you find out at once who are the secret backers of this initiative,” he said. City officials have questioned whether Reid’s group is being backed by competing mall owners. Reid has denied that contention.

The city’s report on the initiative will analyze its origins, potential financial impacts and its effect on Ventura’s long-term planning goals. It will be prepared by the city manager’s office. A preliminary report is scheduled to be returned to the council by Nov. 27.