Camarillo Hopes to Build on ’95 Momentum

City officials are feeling pretty good about Camarillo these days.

So optimistic, in fact, that for the first time in 13 years the City Council has canceled its annual goal-setting meeting, a retreat usually held in late January or early February.

With a number of 1995 goals already met or being pursued, council members figure they have enough to tackle during the upcoming year without adopting more ambitious plans.

“This was started when I was mayor back in 1983,” Councilman Mike Morgan said of the annual Saturday retreats. “We need a break. We have enough projects on our plate.”

The 1995 goal-setting session produced 15 objectives, many of which have been reached. But the city still faces a wide assortment of issues.

Tops on the priority list a year ago was the establishment of a youth commission.

After months of planning, council members and staff will interview final applicants in January, and the commission’s first meeting is scheduled for February. The panel will make recommendations about youth activities to the City Council.

Safeguarding the Camarillo Library from further budget cuts was second on the 1995 list of city goals. The council addressed that by placing a measure on the March 1996 ballot, asking whether property owners should each pay a total of $125 over five years to support their local library.

But Camarillo-area voters have rejected special taxes for local schools four times in the last three years, and similar library measures failed last month in Ventura and Ojai.

Nonetheless, council members say they are pleased with the progress they made in 1995.

“We all had a commitment to achieve the goals that we set,” Councilwoman Charlotte Craven said. “We worked on them and staff realized our dedication to those items, so we have accomplished something on almost all of them.”

Plenty of objectives remain for City Council members to tackle over the next 12 months.

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In January, they will be asked to decide whether to form a redevelopment agency that would generate millions of dollars to benefit Ventura Boulevard business owners, many of whom complain that the city has let the area deteriorate.

They also want to continue efforts to build a public university on 260 acres just outside town that were recently purchased by the California State University system.

Trouble is, university officials have no money to build the campus, and prospects for voter approval of a bond are questionable.

“I would like to see the college get online,” Councilman Stanley J. Daily said. “That’s a must for Ventura County, not just Camarillo. It’s something an educated county should have.”

But in a private memo to council members earlier this month, City Manager Bill Little was not upbeat about a university groundbreaking any time soon.

“It appears to me that unless we can get the attention of the CSU leadership, this project may well go on the back burner and drag along for years,” wrote Little, who called on council members to meet with university brass to lobby for money to build the campus.

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The good news is that sales taxes in Camarillo continue to rise, with a 24.8% increase between June 1994 and June 1995.

With both the third phase of the Camarillo Factory Stores and the huge Camarillo Town Center set to open in 1996, merchants and city officials are eyeing even larger gains.

“We’re doing better than we’ve ever done as far as sales taxes go,” Craven said. “The types of business we’re attracting and the type of industry we’re attracting are high quality. They fit into our community well.”

Camarillo Chamber of Commerce members are looking for funding for a project that could make it easier to open small businesses. Called a business incubator, it would establish individual offices in an industrial site at the Camarillo Airport.

Chamber executives already have been promised 10,000 square feet of office space at the airport, but they have not yet received any state or federal grant money to open the facility.

“Instead of having to go out and find your own office space, there would be cubicle space and access to all the types of mechanical equipment they would need,” said Carol Nordahl, the chamber’s executive director.

“There would be legal expertise, accounting services and financial help all under one roof,” she said.

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Despite the dependence on voters to save the library and the delay in revitalizing the Ventura Boulevard corridor, Camarillo council members are counting on the momentum of 1995’s accomplishments to carry them well into the new year.

“We have achieved quite a bit of success,” Craven said. “I’m really surprised at how many of them are no longer things that we’re going to have to work on.”