Leaders Push for Financial Support of 4-Year College : Education: Community officials discuss a half-cent sales tax and bond measure in the wake of the appointment of an acting president for the future Cal State campus.

Moving quickly to build momentum after the appointment of an acting president for the still-to-be-built Ventura County campus of Cal State University, community leaders have begun a push to rally financial support for the planned four-year college.

City and county officials said they would initiate resolutions supporting the statewide March bond measure that includes nearly $1 million for planning funds for the campus.

They also promised to discuss the possibility of a half-cent county sales tax that could be leveraged to sell bonds and speed up building a university on the 260 acres of lemon groves set aside for a new campus just west of Camarillo.

But they acknowledged that both might be tough sells in a community that has turned down the last four state education bond measures and also rejected a half-cent sales tax slated for public transportation funding in 1994.

Camarillo Mayor David M. Smith said he would work to initiate a survey to determine whether there is support in the county for such a tax to help build the new campus. He also planned to meet with Chancellor Barry Munitz and county administrators to see what the city can do to accelerate the process.

Ventura County Supervisor Maggie Kildee urged the county’s residents to form a single group to work to bring the university here. Factions that have worked to convert Camarillo State Hospital into the university should meld into the main group and set differences of opinion aside, she said.

“I have been distressed over the number of task forces formed over the years,” she said. “There is a tendency to be polarized about location or to become political about the Camarillo State Hospital. We have to begin talking all together.” Kildee also said residents must be willing to financially support the things they want in their county.

“The commitment to the university has to come from the top and the bottom,” she said. She said she was open to the sales tax idea, or “whatever it takes to get the university on the ground.”

But Jere Robings, president of the Ventura County Alliance of Taxpayers, a tax watchdog group, questioned whether a sales tax is an appropriate source of funds for building a university.

“Everybody goes to that well for their own projects,” Robings said. “I don’t see sales tax as a viable alternative for funding for university construction.”

Robings estimated that a half-cent sales tax would amount to about $100 per year per person in the county in increased taxes.

“That’s a significant dent for an individual,” he said.

The comments came the day after Cal State University system Chancellor Barry Munitz announced that he had appointed a top CSU administrator as acting president for the Ventura County campus.

J. Handel Evans, a system vice chancellor and former president of San Jose State, will assume the job immediately, moving into a new office at the Cal State Northridge satellite campus in Ventura County.

Munitz also announced that he had given Evans a budget of up to $300,000 and had earmarked nearly $1 million for Ventura County in the March bond measure.

Before the announcement Thursday, no funds had been set aside in the bond measure for Ventura County and it would have had to line up with all other requests for unspecified funds in the measure.

The combination of the appointment and the financial commitment created a kind of “electricity in the air” at the Cal State Northridge satellite campus in Ventura, said campus director Joyce M. Kennedy.

“The phones are ringing off the walls,” she said Friday, a day when the campus center is normally closed. “With the advisory board, the public at large, the students, the staff, there is the sense that finally Ventura County has come of age in terms of higher education. It’s a great euphoric feeling.”

But Cal State leaders stressed that Ventura County must support the university with its tax dollars to bring it to fruition.

The first major hurdle, they said, will be getting the bond measure passed statewide in March. But almost as important, Cal State leaders want to see the bond measure approved locally by Ventura County voters.

Among Evans’ main duties will be working with community leaders to win support for the measure.

“If the people of Ventura County want a university, they are going to have to help me get it,” Evans said. “This is one way they can demonstrate that they want to help.”

Evans said another task for him will be to build awareness in the community.

“The problem we have now is that we have a flat piece of land with trees on it, and some people just can’t imagine what could happen with that,” he said. “You have to build up the excitement.”

He said he would work closely with Kennedy to get to know the county’s leaders.

“I anticipate that we will form a team,” he said. “I have a key to the community through Joyce.”

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Even with the bond measure, which would provide $936,000 for planning for sewers, utilities and other infrastructure, securing funds to actually build the campus could take decades. Officials estimate that the campus will eventually cost $700 million to build. That money would have to come from future bond issues.

Munitz said a show of support from the community in terms of a reliable source of income, such as a half-cent sales tax, would speed up the timetable considerably.

“If I had a half-cent sales tax, then I would have a source of revenue that I can take to Wall Street and sell bonds on,” Munitz said in an interview. “All we need is some dedicated stable source of revenue . . . and we could start tomorrow.”

Carolyn Leavens, a member of the Cal State advisory board and a past president of the Ventura County Economic Development Assn., said the first priority should be winning passage of the bond measure.

After that, she said, they could tackle a campaign to pass a half-cent sales tax.

“It would be offset so quickly by the tremendous vitality and enhancement of the economic face of Ventura County, that it is a small price to pay,” Leavens said.

She praised Evans as the man who could be able to rally the community together.

“This is the catalyst we’ve needed,” she said. “People always go off in 900 different directions until there is a focus and leadership, and then they coalesce.”