Taxpayer Group, Supervisors Back Bond Measure

Breaking sharply from its usual opposition to public debt, the Ventura County Taxpayers Assn. on Tuesday urged local citizens to support next month’s $3-billion statewide bond measure for schools and universities.

The County Board of Supervisors also formally endorsed Proposition 203 after an impassioned plea from the acting president of Ventura County’s yet-to-be built Cal State campus.

“Without it we cannot begin,” said J. Handel Evans, who recently took over the effort to build a four-year campus on a lemon orchard near Camarillo. “If we don’t get this money, it will not stop the university. But it will delay it.”

The taxpayers association took its unusual stance because “it’s time to put money back into our higher education,” said Michael L. Saliba, executive director of the group. The proposition would help refurbish public schools in need of earthquake upgrades and other repairs, and provide $936,000 to help plan the Cal State campus in Ventura County.

Saliba said it is quite rare for the 42-year-old taxpayer organization to support a bond measure. The last time, he said, was when voters faced a $1-billion transportation bond measure on the June 1990, ballot.

“We study these things very carefully and basically support very few of them,” Saliba said. “We are very conservative about spending the taxpayers’ money.”

The group’s board of directors voted to support the current ballot measure, saying a statewide bond measure was preferable to local bond measures to raise money for construction.

With the state’s economy turning around and interest rates low, Saliba added, “this is a good time to get into the bond market.”

The double endorsement delighted university officials who have had little success in persuading Ventura County voters to support statewide bond measures to renovate and expand college campuses.

“This is terrific; this is the support that we need in Ventura County,” said Colleen Bentley-Adler, a spokeswoman for the Cal State University system.

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, the proposed bond measures have been rejected by voters in Ventura County--although on one of those occasions the measures passed statewide.

For the March 26 election, the Legislature decided to lump all education requests into one massive $3-billion bond measure. If approved by a majority vote, the Public Education Facilities Bond Act of 1996 would cover the immediate construction and renovation needs of public schools, kindergarten through high school, community colleges, the Cal State University system and University of California.

The idea was that a proposition might draw wider support from voters, who have rejected less expensive bond measures in the past that have only focused on the needs of public universities.

Two-thirds of the $3 billion in bonds will go toward K-12 schools and $975 million to universities. Of that amount to higher education, about $300 million will go toward the backlog of projects on Cal State’s 22 campuses.

Only about $60 million is for new construction on Cal State campuses, Evans told county supervisors Tuesday.

“There is no question that we will get a university,” said Evans, who helped turn a shuttered Army base at Fort Ord into Cal State Monterey Bay last year. “The question is when.”

County supervisors said they were relieved to hear Evans’ assurances about a Ventura County campus. And the Board of Supervisors was eager to lend its support.

“The board must take the leadership on this issue, taking a stand that this bond measure be passed,” said Supervisor Maggie Kildee.

The vote was unanimous.

Another county taxpayer group, the Ventura County Alliance of Taxpayers, has yet to meet and go over the state ballot measures, said its president, H. Jere Robings.

“On a personal basis, it would be hard to imagine that we would not support it, given the need for a university in Ventura County,” Robings said.

Robings founded the taxpayers alliance three years ago after being dismissed from the taxpayers association.