Council to Consider Study of Park Needs in East Ventura

Coaches say there often are no diamonds for the youngest softball players. Soccer organizers complain they have to schedule tournaments a year in advance to get a field. And a world-class swimmer says the lack of public pool space keeps Ventura behind the rest of Southern California in aquatic sports.

City officials, parents and coaches say scarce park space is a problem all over the city, but particularly in east Ventura. Today, the City Council will consider whether to hire a consultant to help determine community park needs in the six east-end communities of Thille, Montalvo, Serra, Juanamaria, Wells and Saticoy.

The agreement, if approved, would pay RJM Design Group Inc. $85,000 to conduct a community-based effort to look at the problem and come up with a plan. But it would stop short of tackling the most difficult question of all: where to put a large park.

“I plan to bring up siting,” Councilman Ray Di Guilio said Friday. “We are not going to spend $85,000 unless we have specifics. After 10 years or so, with parks on the books, there is a need to talk about specific siting.”

Di Guilio pointed out that there are only three or four sites in the east end that can even be considered for parks.

Instead of siting, the Mission Viejo-based consultant will have about three months to conduct its study on east-end park needs. The study would include looking at local demographic data, analyzing existing park facilities in the area and conducting a 10-minute telephone survey of about 300 households within the east-end service area.

Jim Walker, leisure services manager for the city, said some people might dispute that the city needs to spend so much to find out what officials already know, but argued that the money would be well spent because the city lacks up-to-date park data.

“The base of information the city has is over 10 years old,” Walker said. “Final decisions are better when you involve community input in the process. We want to get that input from the public, to have them tell us what their needs are, rather than assume we know.”

Community leaders say they need a park.

“We barely have enough fields right now to serve all the children that play,” said Kim Gibbons, a commissioner for Region 39 of the American Youth Soccer Organization, which serves Ventura. With a record-breaking 3,233 children enrolled, Region 39 is the third-largest in the nation. “We are fearful that this year we will simply not have enough spaces. We may have to turn kids away.”

Softball players share the same plight.

“We are at total capacity,” said Pat Kelly, former president of the Tri-Valley Girls Softball Assn., which is growing 10% annually. Tri-Valley currently has three diamonds for 550 to 600 girls. The youngest athletes play on grassy patches scattered throughout the city. “It’s completely filled. If you want to schedule a tournament at a city park, you have to schedule nine to 12 months in advance.”

And world-class swimmer Jim McConica, who swam the Catalina Channel twice, says the city desperately needs a pool on the east end.

“We have had no pools that have been totally public pools since the Ventura College pool was put in close to 25 years ago,” he said. “There is a tremendous need, and the east end is the preferred area. The bulk of the population is out there.”

Based on the city’s park acreage standards, outlined in its Comprehensive Plan for development, the city should provide three acres of service area parks--which serve five to six neighborhoods and usually are 30 to 60 acres--for each 1,000 people. Thille, Montalvo, Serra, Juanamaria, Wells and Saticoy fell about 100 acres short in 1987, the last time a study was carried out.

Between 1990 and 1996 the number of dwellings in that area increased by almost 10%, according to Mark Stephens, a city planner.

The east end now has five neighborhood parks, most consisting of about five acres, and one service area park--Fritz Huntsinger Youth Sports Complex.

The city purchased 87 acres of lemon groves on the east end in 1987 as a potential park site. City officials also considered swapping that land with a developer to obtain a more centrally located park site somewhere else on the east end.

It was debate over those aging groves that triggered the save-the-greenbelt movement in Ventura and led to passage of the Save Our Agricultural Resources Initiative in November 1995. SOAR has made it even harder to find space for a park.

“The only complication has been the SOAR activists,” Kelly said. “Now any farmer who wants to change his land into a park starts an uproar.”