Moorpark CHiPs In : Highway Patrol Opens Office in East County With City’s Help

The California Highway Patrol’s first station in eastern Ventura County is easy to miss. Just a simple white sign with blue letters and a gold star faces the rumbling truck traffic on California 23 and marks the office’s location on the ground floor of a small, stucco building downtown.

But Moorpark city leaders and CHP officers are hoping the station will have a big effect on that truck traffic, which some see as one of the most persistent problems for both the city and the area.

The station, which opened Monday, sits just north of the intersection of Los Angeles Avenue and the highway, giving the Highway Patrol a perfect perch for monitoring traffic problems that until now have been a full 45-minute drive from the CHP’s only Ventura County station.

And with Moorpark residents complaining frequently about speeding truckers racing through town, officers say their new presence will help slow down the traffic.

“Just seeing us will improve their driving skills,” CHP Lt. Les Fritz said.

Highway Patrol officials had long recognized the need for some kind of office in fast-growing eastern Ventura County. Starting last year, the agency experimented with small satellite offices in Moorpark and Thousand Oaks that were open just one day a week. Area residents could use the offices to file accident reports or pick up job applications for the Highway Patrol.

But the satellite offices did not give officers what they needed--a base for covering the east county’s increasingly busy freeways.

Under the old system, officers assigned to the area’s roads faced the long commute to and from Ventura at the start and end of every shift. The commute ate into the amount of time officers could spend on their beat, Fritz said.

Worse, the commute created gaps during shift changes, periods when most officers would be on the road to or from Ventura, leaving few in the east county.

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“For us being in Ventura, during the shift changes we pretty much didn’t have people out here,” Fritz said. “You’d have a two-hour gap, which isn’t the best way to provide service.”

The new station will provide more consistent coverage and spare the officers based there, all of whom live in eastern Ventura County, a long ride home from Ventura at the end of the day. It will also let residents file new traffic accident reports, examine old ones and pay fines.

Supervisor Judy Mikels, whose office helped the Highway Patrol select an east county site, said she was pleased to see more government services finally becoming available in the area.

“It makes good sense,” she said. “When you look at the population we have in this end of the county, it does not make sense to have everybody driving to the Government Center in Ventura.”

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Moorpark lobbied hard to bring the new station to town, competing against neighboring Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks. The city even stepped in when the owner of the office building the Highway Patrol wanted balked at signing the complex lease agreements demanded by the state.

In the end, the city’s Redevelopment Agency leased the office space for about $1,500 per month and then subleased it to the Highway Patrol for the same amount, said Assistant City Manager Richard Hare. The city also spent $15,000 renovating the office’s interior.

For Moorpark, the station will not only help patrol truck traffic on the highways that run through town.

It will also bring to the city extra officers who, in emergencies, can back up the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department deputies who police Moorpark.

The city already spends about 60% of its $4-million annual budget on police service and has just three deputies patrolling the streets at any given time, although more can quickly be summoned from the sheriff’s station in Thousand Oaks.

“It adds a significant police presence to the city, which I think is very positive,” Mayor Paul Lawrason said. “It puts more black-and-whites on the streets.”