Council Balks at Changing Ventura Planning Guidelines

Uncertain that schools are actually facing a crowding problem, Ventura City Council members this week backed away from a plan that would allow them to deny building requests based on potential school impact.

The council Monday night considered a proposal aimed at changing the city’s planning guidelines to keep new housing developments from pushing schools beyond their enrollment capacity.

But some city leaders questioned whether the severity of classroom crowding warranted changing the city’s chief planning document.

And others shied away from the concept, saying such issues were the responsibility of the school board--not the City Council.

“I don’t want to go ahead with a task to amend our Comprehensive Plan without knowing if there is a problem,” Councilman Jim Friedman said. “It may be just a perceived problem.”

The council asked city staff to come back with a more detailed report, including enrollment statistics from Ventura Unified School District.

A few months ago, the district’s Board of Education decided to send nearly 200 students from east Ventura neighborhoods to cross-town Ventura High School to relieve crowding at Buena High School.

With construction of housing tracts in the eastern portion of the city generating scores of new students, Buena High, Balboa and Anacapa middle schools, and several elementary schools are now considered “clearly overcrowded,” according to a district enrollment report.

“All of sudden, boom, all of these things have been crunching on us,” school board Chairman Cliff Rodrigues said. “I think in the last year, the intensity of them has increased.”

The district is launching a long-range plan to address the crowding issue and to find a way to pay for a new high school.

City officials, meanwhile, came up with Monday’s proposal to create more leeway in the planning process. Developers would have to get a school-impact study from the district before a project could go before the City Council for a vote. If the study showed that the development would harm schools, the council could reject it.

But during the council discussion Monday, Councilman Ray Di Guilio questioned whether a City Council meeting was the appropriate place to talk about school capacity issues.

“I have a lot of problems acting as a quasi-school board,” he said.

Councilwoman Rosa Lee Measures also backed away from the plan, saying the council did not have enough information.

“What does overcrowding mean?” she asked.

The reluctance of some city leaders to embrace the proposal drew angry reactions from two councilmen, who sharply criticized their colleagues for shying away from an urgent subject affecting the community.

“That is exactly the attitude over the years that has gotten us into trouble,” Councilman Gary Tuttle said.

“Sometimes I feel like I am Alice in Wonderland up here,” Councilman Steve Bennett said. “I didn’t expect that the philosophical differences on this council would transcend this issue.

“This changing of plan simply gives the City Council the option to delay or deny based on schools,” said Bennett, who pleaded with his colleagues to make the change. “At least put it in our arsenal.”

Ventura’s school enrollment has grown by 6% over the past two years. About 600 more students entered area schools this year, swelling total enrollment to 15,551 students.

A report by the district’s enrollment growth committee in December concluded that “based on historical trends and the numbers we have in front of us, we have a big problem.”

Indeed, Ventura Unified was fined $281,000 for exceeding the state-mandated class size of 30 in its first- through third-grade classes in the 1994-95 school year.

School officials have said the sudden explosion in admissions was brought on to a large extent by new housing projects in east Ventura.

The city approved 460 new building permits in 1994, compared to just five in 1991.

“It really showed that we need to be, in the long term, aware of what is going on,” Rodrigues said. “We are both serving the same community.”