City Charter Effort Faces Crucial Vote

A movement to give Oxnard more control over its taxes, elections and laws may be officially pronounced dead tonight if the City Council votes to disband a special committee it created to study the charter city concept.

Disbanding the Citizens Charter Advisory Committee would most likely mean city leaders are prepared to abandon--at least for now--plans for setting up a charter that would let the City Council adopt ordinances beyond what state codes allow.

The advisory committee nixed the plan last month after its 35 members failed to agree on the need for a charter.

“I think that, for now, it is kaput,” said Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez. “I don’t think that it means that two years from now, four years from now, that it won’t be a viable concept.”

Some members of the council-appointed committee had clashed over what form a charter should take. Some had wanted to give city government more leeway in how it does business, while others had wanted more rigid guidelines for politicians in place.

Others still had criticized the large size of the committee, arguing that it would have never reached a consensus.

Lopez said the City Council could still decide to put a charter city proposal on the ballot without the blessing of the committee that was set up to gauge community support for the plan.

“But I think that would be useless and probably not succeed,” Lopez said.