3 Candidates Back Housing Near Campus

The three City Council candidates in June’s special election say they favor the development of a retirement community near the proposed Cal State Channel Islands campus, but want to ensure the city has a hand in determining how the land around the campus will be used.

More than 35 people turned out for a forum Thursday night, many with questions for candidates Ned Chatfield, Mike Morgan and Chris Valenzano concerning what would happen to the land that now makes up the Camarillo State Hospital complex.

Cal State officials last month unveiled an ambitious plan they say would make the conversion of the hospital grounds into a university campus more economically feasible. The plan includes a senior housing development about half the size of Camarillo’s Leisure Village, single-family homes, a magnet school and leases to various high-tech firms and other businesses.

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“Senior housing at Camarillo State Hospital sounds like a good idea--you wouldn’t get many riots at a senior retirement center,” said Chatfield, 78, a member of Camarillo’s first City Council in 1964. He served until 1974.

“We need to be concerned with the land around the campus and the road to and from the campus,” Chatfield said, adding that professional planners, the City Council and the county Board of Supervisors need to work in unison to plan the development.

Morgan, 49, who served on the City Council 16 1/2 years before his unsuccessful bid for county supervisor in November, said he also favors a senior complex.

“Leisure Village has been an asset to our community, and having a senior complex is a unique and interesting idea,” Morgan told the audience at the Democratic Club forum.

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He noted the campus lies outside the city, but within Camarillo’s sphere of influence.

“We have to be involved and use our planning staff to coach the county because the county is not in the planning and building business,” he said.

Valenzano, an 18-year-old Camarillo High School senior in his first bid for elective office, said he was unaware of the senior housing plan, but had no problems with it.

“We should take an active role in the development of the land,” Valenzano said, adding that the university will provide jobs and a place for students to attend school that’s close to home.

Several residents also asked the candidates what they thought about retaining a small portion of the hospital grounds for patients. For months, mental health advocates have been trying to keep 23 secluded acres of the sprawling 700-acre campus as a treatment center for 40 to 60 patients. Last week advocates for the institution filed a lawsuit to attempt to block its shutdown and prevent the hospital’s nearly 700 patients from being funneled to other facilities.

“The hospital needs to convince the university system that a portion of it should be used for that purpose,” Chatfield said.

All three candidates agreed a treatment center would allow psychology students to gain hands-on experience in a laboratory setting.

Morgan said UCLA and Cal State Long Beach are involved in similar endeavors, and Valenzano said it is a university’s responsibility to provide such hands-on educational opportunities.

The candidates also seemed to agree on most of the other issues that surfaced, including preserving the agricultural greenbelt, forming a joint operating agreement between the cities and the county library agency, and stopping any commercial flights from coming to the Point Mugu Navy base.

Chatfield, Valenzano and Morgan will vie in the June 3 election to fill the seat left vacant by former Councilman Ken Gose’s death. The winner will serve the remaining 17 months of Gose’s four-year term.

Another candidates’ forum has been scheduled for 7:30 p.m. May 22 in Leisure Village.