Ojai Council OKs Plan to Seek $1.6 Million to Improve Sarzotti Park

The completion of a comprehensive plan to guide improvements at the city’s busiest park has revealed a desperate need for more recreation facilities throughout the Ojai Valley.

The City Council on Tuesday approved a plan that calls for finding $1.6 million over the next decade for amenities--ranging from a new gymnastics center to a renovated toddler playground--at the 9.7-acre Sarzotti Park. The council also vowed to seek more support from Ventura County government for new parks in the region.

The vote culminated 16 months of community workshops and planning efforts intended to guide development of the park’s heavily used and rapidly deteriorating facilities.

A proposal to build a skateboard facility at Sarzotti in 1994 provided the initial impetus for the park plan, as well as for an aborted ballot measure attempting to force the city to spend more money on recreation.

However, a 14,000-square-foot skateboard park at the site was rejected last year after neighbors protested. Recreation officials are considering other locations.

Sarzotti is the only park in the Ojai Valley that hosts year-round, supervised recreational programs and boasts a gym as well as lighted soccer and softball fields. Scheduling conflicts are common, maintenance cannot keep pace with recreation demands and new activities are difficult to accommodate, the plan states.

The problem is that the centrally located park serves not only Ojai’s 8,000 residents but also a large number of the estimated 9,000 people who live in the nearby unincorporated communities of Mira Monte and Meiners Oaks. Public parks are nonexistent in the two communities.

When the combined population of the city and the two communities is taken into account, Ojai has 1.5 acres of parkland for every 1,000 people, well below minimum state standards of two acres per thousand.

“The plan really identified that the Mira Monte and Meiners Oaks communities use the recreational facilities in Ojai and that Mira Monte and Meiners Oaks need another nine acres to reach the state guidelines,” Councilwoman Ellen Hall said. “I hope we can get the county to chip in and support recreation in the valley.”

With municipal taxpayers essentially subsidizing the recreation needs of noncity residents, the council decided Tuesday to lobby county Supervisor Susan Lacey to support more parkland.

The county has no plans for a new park in the area, although planning documents call for the county to consider a special parks tax in the region.

The county also has the opportunity this spring to allocate some grant money for parks in the Ojai Valley, City Manager Andy Belknap said.

In addition, some local residents have expressed interest in acquiring a 2.79-acre site in Meiners Oaks for a bicycle track and skateboard park. The county intends to sell the surplus property, once used for a county public works maintenance facility, at auction with the minimum bid set at $180,000.

The plan adopted Tuesday includes a new $700,000 gymnastics facility, $75,000 worth of new picnic areas, $230,000 worth of improvements to rotting ball field bleachers, $275,000 for a revamped irrigation system and $45,000 for updating a playground for toddlers.

No money is immediately available for such work. But the planning document is intended to provide a “road map” to guide improvements and a basis for raising the necessary cash via grants and donations, Belknap said.