City Negotiators Given OK to Discuss Ballpark Figure

With a nod of assent from a divided City Council, city negotiators are headed back to the bargaining table to iron out key details of a baseball stadium proposal, namely what the developer will offer as collateral for the deal and how to fashion a ballot measure.

The council voted 4 to 3 Monday night to move forward in negotiations with developer John Hofer over a $10.5-million ballpark and to put the project on a spring ballot.

Councilmen Gary Tuttle, Steve Bennett and Jim Monahan voted against the newest proposal because it did not include language that would make any public vote on the project binding.

Mayor Jack Tingstrom and council members Jim Friedman, Ray Di Guilio and Rosa Lee Measures voted in favor of moving ahead, saying the language could be changed later and city staff members need time and latitude to work out the details of the plan.

And with many bargaining points still unresolved, the deal could still be derailed.

“We still have a lot of negotiations to go,” said Economic Development Director David Kleitsch, who has attended the closed-door meetings between City Manager Donna Landeros and Hofer. “Whenever that is the case you always have the possibility that he [Hofer] could pull out.”

He added, however, that was unlikely.

In the latest round of negotiations, Hofer has scaled back the size and price of the Class A minor league stadium he proposes to erect on the celery fields south of the Ventura Freeway near Johnson Drive. It has shrunk from 5,000 seats to 4,500, and the price has dropped from $18.7 million to $10.5 million.

In response to a firestorm of public protest after the September proposal, Hofer has also agreed to foot the bill for a special election to put the ultimate proposal on the ballot. The public vote would be a first for the California League, and for the city of Ventura.

Still, Landeros informed the council Monday night that the issue of collateral--or what the developer would offer to ensure he wouldn’t walk away from the stadium--is as yet unresolved. In the ballpark proposal brought before the city in September, Hofer offered the 20 acres of land he was donating to the city as collateral. The current proposal left the issue vague.

“Land is unacceptable to the city,” Kleitsch said. “We are in discussions to find a more acceptable approach.”

Kleitsch said a letter of credit, other unencumbered land or a bond from Hofer would all be acceptable assurances.

Council members, too, voiced concerns.

“We are really looking for bullet-proof collateral,” Friedman said. “The two things that could not be collateral would be the stadium, or the land the stadium sits on.”

Tuttle, too, one of the council’s stadium skeptics, continues to worry about financial risk to the city.

“It was important to me throughout this whole process to make sure there was some airtight collateral,” Tuttle said. “We’ve yet to see what that is going to be. We keep hearing that it’s going to be there.”

Even discussion of a public ballot, considered noncontroversial since six of seven members have said they approve, turned divisive.

The council haggled over whether the public’s vote would be binding, or merely advisory--meaning council members could ignore it if they wished to.

Landeros urged members to leave her the latitude to define what kind of a ballot it would be during upcoming negotiations. She said, for example, the city might want to make a “no” vote binding, but a “yes” vote advisory. This would leave room for council discretion if the voters approved the stadium, but new information came to light suggesting it was a bad deal for the city.

“The staff is still bringing back the final wording,” said Tingstrom, who said he believed the vote should be advisory. “I do not know why this has to be set in concrete now.”

But council members who have argued most vehemently for public participation wanted a guarantee now that a “no” vote would kill the project once and for all.

“We’ve announced we want to have a public vote,” Bennett said. “If we make the decision to make that merely advisory we’ve made a big mistake.”

Amid accusations of political posturing, Bennett urged the city to push the ballot back until November 1997, to ensure high voter turnout.

“For me, the fundamental value is what is going to help us to get the best voter turnout,” Bennett said. “If you value citizen input, I think you have to go for November.” But pushing the date to November could kill Ventura’s chances for acquiring a team.

“Then baseball would not occur until 1999,” Friedman said. “The Cal League has been patient, the developer has been patient--but I don’t know how much longer they can hold out. If people are as passionate about this as they have been, there will be a high voter turnout. At the same time it will give baseball a fighting chance for the 1998 season.”

Kleitsch confirmed that time is of the essence.

“He [Hofer] wants to have a stadium by 1998,” Kleitsch said. “Really, he needs to finalize his own commitment to a team--he needs to buy a team so that it’s there at the start of the baseball season.”

City staff members expect to bring a final deal--with the specifics--back to the council in several weeks. No date has been set.