Move to Create Charter Status for Oxnard Stumbles

Efforts to give the city more control over its taxes, elections and laws screeched to a halt Wednesday after a special advisory committee spiked a plan to make Oxnard a charter city.

The 35-member Citizens Charter Advisory Committee failed to agree on the need for such a charter that would let the City Council adopt ordinances beyond what state codes allow.

“There were too many people with too many different opinions,” said committee member Shirley Bumpus, a 43-year-old maintenance company contract manager who supported the charter city concept. “I don’t think we would have ever come to an agreement.”

The members voted to recommend that the City Council disband the committee and drop plans for drafting the charter at this time. The decision surprised the consultant hired to help Oxnard residents develop their own charter.

“I have never had a city decline to maximize its home rule,” said Douglas Ayres, who has worked with 20 communities that became charter cities.

Charter city backers said the change would have enabled Oxnard to establish council districts, rather than electing its five members on a citywide basis. The city could also have increased the number of council members and gained the city more flexibility to raise certain taxes and altered other practices. Now organized as a general law city, Oxnard enjoys less “home rule” than would a charter city under the California Constitution.

Although the city could choose to draft a charter granting Oxnard more independence from state law in the future, the committee’s decision Wednesday means the proposal will not go before voters on the November ballot.

No big deal, said committee member Michael Plisky, a former Oxnard councilman who made the motion to table the proposal.

“There are really a few things that can be accomplished in a charter city that we can’t do in a general law city and most of them are bad,” Plisky said.

Plisky said he believes the city has enough council members and that Oxnard could still create council districts without a charter. Plisky, a tax preparer, said he disapproved of drafting a charter that would give the City Council the ability to raise certain taxes.

Charter cities are exempt from Proposition 62, which mandates a public vote whenever cities want to raise taxes on business licenses, hotel rooms, certain real estate transactions and other items.

Oxnard City Atty. Gary Gillig recommended hiring Ayres to work with the committee, which has spent more than two months weighing the pros and cons of a charter city. The city had spent only a fraction of the $60,000 set aside to pay the consultant, Gillig said.

Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez said he believes the committee’s decision Wednesday probably mirrors the attitude of city voters, dooming the charter city concept at least for now.

“If the committee really doesn’t feel it is a good idea, then it would probably not get passed by the voters,” Lopez said.

Many committee members blame the size of the group for its failure to hammer out a consensus on what a city charter should look like. An seven-member citizens’ committee in Port Hueneme is now considering drafting a charter and the process is moving along smoothly, Gillig said.

But Oxnard committee members said the biggest snag for them was the actual nature of the charter. Some favored a short and general document that gave city leaders greater latitude in government affairs, while others wanted a charter that spelled out what they can and cannot do.

“I trust our city councilmen to do the job they are supposed to be doing and it would be more efficient with the charter,” said Bumpus, who said she leaned toward a more open-ended document. “[The council members] want to keep their careers. I don’t feel they would make the wrong decisions.”

Others, such as Martin Jones, said they support the charter concept, but wanted more checks and balances in place.

“I don’t want a loose charter that doesn’t define the specific role of government and elected city officials,” said Jones, a 55-year-old retired real estate broker.

More than 80 California cities including Los Angeles and San Diego operate as charter cities, though Ventura is still the only one in Ventura County.

Herrera said despite Wednesday’s decision, the city’s and the committee’s efforts have not been in vain.

“I think we always aspire to the ideal of something,” Herrera said. “I think the concept is there. We just need to be able to regroup and try a different tack.”

Many committee members agreed, saying this was neither the right time nor the right panel to accomplish it.

“I came in wanting a charter, I still want a charter,” Bumpus said, “but it just cannot be done with this group.”