Political Season Measured in Tax, Recall Issues

As summer winds down, the world of Ventura County politics is just beginning to heat up.

Labor Day traditionally kicks off the fall election season, and although there are no hot state or national races to intrigue voters, city council campaigns and school bond measures from Thousand Oaks to Ventura are sure to pepper residents with political junk mail and propaganda for months to come.

The issues on the Nov. 4 ballot include:

* Will Thousand Oaks voters recall Councilwoman Elois Zeanah, the first city leader to face an ouster election in Thousand Oaks’ 33-year history? If they decide to recall her, they will choose on the same ballot from among three candidates for her position.

* Who will replace outgoing Ventura City Council members Steve Bennett, Gary Tuttle and Rosa Lee Measures? Regardless of whom voters select, there will be new blood on the council, and the race for four seats could alter the city’s direction.

* Will county voters continue to increase their taxes in the name of better schools by approving multimillion-dollar bond measures? School districts in the Conejo Valley, Oxnard Plain, Ojai and Moorpark believe the answer is yes, pointing to half a dozen other bond measures approved by county voters since November. Camarillo school officials also are hoping to catch the financing wave after failing to pass a school bond four times this decade.

* Will Moorpark residents vote to increase their taxes to maintain the city’s 13 parks? Supporters argue that Measure P is needed to pay for park upkeep, because a new state law prohibits the city’s existing system of assessing residents without a vote of the people. Opponents argue that money for parks should all come from the city’s budget.

Thousand Oaks Recall

In what has been one of the most divisive political campaigns in Thousand Oaks’ history, Zeanah faces ouster after Yes! Remove Elois Zeanah, a committee of city business leaders, spent more than $175,000 to gather signatures and place a recall measure on the ballot.

Most of that money--about $145,000--came from Jill Lederer of Moorpark, who owns a chain of Domino’s Pizza shops in the Conejo and San Fernando valleys.

Because Lederer is a friend and former campaign manager of Councilman Andy Fox, one of Zeanah’s most bitter political rivals, Zeanah and her supporters have repeatedly alleged that Fox is orchestrating the recall--an accusation that Fox and Lederer strongly deny.

“Councilman Andy Fox is behind this recall,” Zeanah states in her opposition argument for the ballot. “His out-of-town campaign manager Jill Lederer funded 93% of it.”

Lederer said she has bankrolled the recall because she and others believe Zeanah is unethical, full of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about the workings of City Hall and generally bad for Thousand Oaks businesses and residents. As a local entrepreneur, she has every right to do so, she said.

Zeanah contends she is being recalled because she is tough on development and critical of powerful city officials.

Voters will now decide whether to recall Zeanah, and if so, who should replace her from a field of three candidates--a surprisingly low number for a Thousand Oaks council seat.

If a majority of voters chooses to oust Zeanah, the candidate who receives the most votes will win her seat and finish her term, which ends next year.

The candidates for her seat are engineer David Seagal, homemaker Roni C. Fenzke and Cal Lutheran University administrator Dennis Gillette.

Yes! Remove Elois Zeanah has decided not to sponsor or endorse any candidates, though several of its members concede that they support Gillette, a 10-year member of the Conejo Recreation and Park District’s elected board.

Instead, the recall group plans to continue focusing on its mission of ousting Zeanah with a series of mailers or advertisements stating what it regards as the truth of Zeanah’s voting record and deeds in office.

“Our strategy is simply going to be one of education, of stating the facts,” Lederer said. “Elois Zeanah never seems to address the charges against her. All she does is blame developers.”

Led by Councilwoman Linda Parks, Zeanah’s supporters plan to fight back with a low-budget--but high-intensity--information campaign of their own.

Parks announced last week that she will manage a group called Committee Against the Recall of Elois Zeanah, or CARE, which will make up with warm bodies what it lacks in cold currency. The group plans to walk neighborhoods, work the phones and spread its message through similar old-fashioned means.

“It really seems to me that this recall is about money versus people,” Parks said. “We have a small army of people ready to do something, and we are going to get our word out amid the barrage of slander and lies that the other side is going to spend big money to spread in their hate campaign.”

Ventura City Council

The placards haven’t cropped up and the junk mail hasn’t begun to jam neighborhood mailboxes, but 10 candidates for Ventura City Council are already busy at work on their fall campaigns.

Of the four seats available for the seven-member council, only one is being targeted by an incumbent, five-term council veteran Jim Monahan. Council members Rosa Lee Measures, Gary Tuttle and Steve Bennett have all decided not to run again.

Vying to replace them are businessman Brian Brennan, attorney Donna De Paola, restaurateur Sandy E. Smith, Ventura County planner Carl Morehouse, researcher Brian Lee Rencher, California Highway Patrol Officer Paul Thompson, motorcycle magazine editor Mike Osborn, engineer Carroll Dean Williams and businessman Doug Halter.

The election will be the first under the city’s new campaign-contribution limit law, written by Bennett and passed by 81% of the voters in 1995.

Under the new ordinance, all candidates must now list the name and employment of every contributor that gives more than $25, a significantly stricter requirement than state elections law, which requires such disclosure for all contributions above $99.

“Every penny received, every dime spent has to be reported,” Deputy City Clerk Mabi Plisky said. “All at a lower level than before.”

The new law will affect fund-raising in other ways. Seven of the 10 candidates agreed to its voluntary contribution limit of $21,000, which will allow them to receive individual donations of up to $225.

Monahan, De Paola and Smith opted not to abide by the limit, meaning they can now amass as large a campaign fund as they wish but are prohibited from accepting any contributions above $125.

Monahan and Brennan have both said they will accept no cash contributions whatsoever from political action committees, or PACs.

In doing so they are responding to a request by the grass-roots Voters Coalition, a group led by Bennett, that all candidates voluntarily abide by the Campaign Finance Limit Law as originally approved by voters in 1995.

Bennett’s original ordinance prohibited candidates from accepting any money from PACs or organized groups, but the City Council voted in June to amend the voter-passed initiative after City Atty. Bob Boehm warned that banning organized groups from contributing might be considered unconstitutional.

Though the season is early, various candidates are looking to get a head start on their competitors in pounding the pavement for votes.

Monahan has already started knocking on doors in his neighborhood.

Brennan, the former head of the county chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, is vowing to walk a stretch of sand every Sunday from now until Nov. 4. He also plans to hold a bicycle ride on Nov. 1 from the east to west Ventura.

Smith pulled his 30-member committee together two months ago--and has already mapped out his precise precinct-walking strategy for every weekend from Sept. 6 until voters cast their ballots.

Thompson will count on the assistance of his three teenage daughters, who will take to the streets to spread his message.

Other candidates are gauging voter sentiment in other ways.

De Paola, who lost her bid for City Council two years ago by 425 votes, has conducted an informal telephone poll and will spend $10,000 on a campaign consultant. She said she hopes to raise as much as $30,000 this time, some of which will come from her pocketbook.

Halter, playing up his experience with computers and business, has set up a campaign web site so citizens can click onto the Internet and check out his issues.

Meanwhile, at least six candidates have already lined up campaign managers--a factor Mayor Jack Tingstrom says often divides the serious candidates from the rest of the pack. Beverly Benton, who ran winning campaigns for Rosa Lee Measures in 1993 and Jim Friedman in 1995, will head De Paola’s bid.

Bill Barbee, a founding member of the Midtown Community Council who ran Mayor Jack Tingstrom’s successful campaign in 1995, will guide Smith’s efforts.

Thompson has hired Ron De Blauw, who worked on his own Assembly election several years ago, as a consultant, and his wife will manage his campaign.

Brennan says he will make a statement by not using a campaign manager--but Councilman Bennett, the savvy environmentalist who spearheaded the passage of Ventura’s SOAR initiative in 1995, is working as a campaign advisor as one member of his six-person election committee. Bennett has said he may also work on county planner Carl Morehouse’s campaign.

As the city heads into the election season, the defining issues have not yet emerged. Voters will face none of the ballot initiatives this year that divided the city along slow-growth, pro-growth lines in the past.

In 1995, voters had to decide whether they wanted to pass a sweeping greenbelt preservation initiative, and in 1993 they had to cast their votes on whether the then water-deprived community should build a desalination plant, issues that divided the field of hopefuls.

Some people say the lack of a controversial issue for candidates to take sides on could make this a dull campaign season.

“This year there is not so much division,” said Ken Schmitz, who heads the Chamber of Commerce’s Political Action Committee. “There is a lack of a polarizing issue. We don’t have half the candidates going for one side, half going to the other. Without that, it tends to make the election quiet.”

The Chamber of Commerce expects to announce its endorsements by mid-September, Schmitz said. Eight of the 10 candidates it has endorsed in the past three elections have won.

Other groups, such as the city’s police and fire departments, the Service Employees International Union and the Voters Coalition, all plan to announce their candidate endorsements in late September or early October.

School Bonds

Buoyed by the recent success of local school bond measures, five Ventura County school districts will ask voters in November to help pay for new schools and shore up crumbling facilities decaying from years of neglect.

From a $97-million bond measure in the Conejo Valley to a $15-million issuance in Ojai, the cash-strapped districts are hoping that voters will be willing to tax themselves to solve problems created by aging schools, surging enrollment and a statewide push for smaller class sizes.

The other districts on the November ballot are Pleasant Valley Elementary in Camarillo with a $49-million bond proposal, Rio Elementary near Oxnard with a $20-million measure and Moorpark Unified, which is asking voters for $16 million.

Educators say they believe the political climate is right for the passage of such measures.

Since last November, half a dozen districts countywide have won multimillion-dollar school bond victories, and many will start spending the proceeds from bond sales this school year.

“There seems to be a better understanding statewide, and even nationally, as to the critical needs of schools in some areas,” said Howard Hamilton, associate superintendent with the Pleasant Valley district.

Four times since 1991, the Camarillo district has fallen just short of the two-thirds vote needed to pass a school bond measure. With another measure on the ballot in November, district officials say they are trying harder than ever to highlight the critical needs facing area schools.

“It’s pay me now or pay me later,” Hamilton said. “If you don’t take care of things upfront, it’s much more costly . . . to take care of them down the road.”

In the Conejo Valley Unified School District, leaders say they can justify spending $97 million on fixing schools.

The lion’s share will pay to install air conditioning and heating systems, repair 30-year-old restrooms and pave the way for Internet access and other technological advances in the district’s 26 schools.

Aspen Elementary School, for example, needs full renovation of its classrooms, including replacing 30-year-old faucets and sewer lines. And at Colina Middle School, there is a need for air conditioning, restroom upgrades and new rooms because of class-size reductions.

A survey ordered by San Francisco-based consulting firm Dale Scott and Co., indicated that 77.3% of Thousand Oaks residents would support the $97-million measure.

“The schools are badly in need of a lot of repairs,” said school board President Mildred Lynch of the measure, which would cost taxpayers $24 for every $100,000 of assessed property value. “The plumbing, roofs, paint, wiring, all of that. They’re not unsafe, but they get worse each year with neglect.”

The bond measure is not without opposition.

Thousand Oaks businesswoman Robin Westmiller has filed a rebuttal that will appear in voters’ election packets arguing that the district just finished paying off a $17-million bond and has not proven the need for $97 million more.

The district has “wish lists . . . [but] has no specific plans, just a desire to incur a huge debt, just in case the money is needed,” Westmiller wrote in her opposing argument.

Conejo Valley’s “Measure Q” is the only one to face an official rebuttal, elections officials said. But Conejo Valley Supt. Jerry Gross said the district would not be asking for money if improvements were not necessary.

“This community is committed to making sure its schools are on top,” he said. “The schools should fit in with the community. People call me and say, ‘You should fix that school up. This is atrocious.’ There is a sense of community pride. People want to make things look right.”

Up the road in Camarillo, school officials know how difficult it is to reach the crucial two-thirds vote needed to pass a bond measure. But they feel optimistic about their chances this year.

According to the results of a survey released last month, 77% of residents said they would vote in favor of the bond, which will be used to build two new schools and shore up existing facilities.

“We have schools where you turn on the coffeepot and it will blow the circuit breaker,” Hamilton said. “But it’s very difficult to pass these measures. We just have to do a better job getting the message out.”

The district is rapidly running out of space, Hamilton said. In a 1990 master plan, school officials predicted that the 7,100-student district would gain 2,800 students by the year 2007.

Dale Scott, the San Francisco-based financial consultant representing four of the five Ventura County districts seeking funds, said educators statewide have been left little choice but to appeal to voters for money.

“It’s never easy for a district to have to hit the two-thirds hurdle, regardless of the political climate or what neighboring districts have done,” Scott said. “But I think the needs of school districts statewide are so compelling that they just can’t avoid going to voters any longer. They just have no other choices; they have run out of options.”

In some cases, the deciding factor for school officials in choosing how much bond money to ask for comes down to what they believe voters would be willing to approve.

At Moorpark Unified and Rio Elementary, officials used community surveys to decide their bond amounts. Rio settled on $20 million and Moorpark chose $16 million, even though officials in both districts say they could use more.

“After $20 million, the voter indicators were not as positive,” said Rio Elementary Supt. Yolanda Benitez. “We didn’t want to take any chances.”

Moorpark Measure P

Moorpark voters will decide whether they want to maintain the city’s 13 parks by increasing their taxes.

The measure comes as a result of Prop. 218, the statewide tax-reform measure approved by voters last year. Because of Prop. 218, special assessments--including one that has been helping to pay for Moorpark’s parks--now require voter approval.

The issue has already proved divisive. Opponents argue that wiser budget spending would provide sufficient money to maintain the parks, while supporters say losing the park assessment and relying solely on city funds will rapidly drain budget money needed for vital services.

For the past eight years, residents have paid between $33.60 and $40.16 annually toward park maintenance as part of the old assessment. In addition, the city has spent between $150,000 and $200,000 a year in general fund money to tend Moorpark’s 105 acres of parkland.

Measure P would allow Moorpark to annually tax a single family residence up to $68.50 for the next 10 years to help with matters such as watering parks, hiring gardeners and maintaining park buildings. Mobile homes, condominiums, duplexes and apartment dwellers would be charged up to $51.38 annually.

The increase from the previous assessment to the one proposed with Measure P, city officials said, is intended to make up for the inflation over the next 10 years. It also includes money needed to maintain the Old Civic Center and the Senior Center, part of the park programs paid for by the city in the past.

Measure P committee head June Dubreuil argues that Moorpark lacks the sales-tax revenue to maintain the parks, and may end up having to shut down parks or park programs to make ends meet if Measure P is not approved.

“There is not enough general fund money to maintain the parks,” Dubreuil said. “The reality is that parks aren’t necessarily like police or fire. It’s something that is a quality-of-life issue.”

Not everyone agrees.

The Ventura County Taxpayers Alliance, as well as former Moorpark Councilwoman Eloise Brown, have come out against the measure, contending that the city should have enough to maintain the parks with its increasing revenues.

Already, the opposition is distributing fliers in grass-roots fashion, stating that Moorpark residents “should not be asked to pay more.”

“Some say, ‘You don’t think parks are important,’ Brown said. “I say, ‘On the contrary I agree and I think [money for such] important things should come from the general fund.’ ”

Correspondents Lisa Fernandez and Regina Hong contributed to this story.

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Elections at a Glance

Thousand Oaks recall

Voters must decide whether to recall Councilwoman Elois Zeanah, and if so, who should replace her from a field of three candidates. If a majority of voters chooses to oust Zeanah, the candidate who receives the most votes will win her council seat and finish her term, which ends next year.

The candidates are engineer David Seagal, homemaker Roni C. Fenzke and Cal Lutheran University administrator Dennis Gillette.

Ventura City Council

Ten candidates are vying for four seats on the seven-member Ventura City Council. Five-term incumbent Jim Monahan is seeking reelection, but council members Rosa Lee Measures, Gary Tuttle and Steve Bennett have all decided not to run again, leaving the race for three seats wide open.

Besides Monahan, the candidates are: businessman Brian Brennan, attorney Donna De Paola, restaurateur Sandy E. Smith, Ventura County planner Carl Morehouse, researcher Brian Lee Rencher, California Highway Patrol Officer Paul Thompson, motorcycle magazine editor Mike Osborn, engineer Carroll Dean Williams, businessman Doug Halter.

Ventura County school bonds

Five school districts are seeking voter approval for bond measures to generate money to build classrooms and renovate aging buildings. All such bond measures require two-thirds voter approval for passage. They are:

* Measure Q--Conejo Valley Unified School District

Voters are being asked to pass a $97-million measure to repair schools and provide additional classrooms for class-size reduction. Several of the district’s schools are in need of new wiring, plumbing, heating and air conditioning.

* Measure R--Rio School District

The district wants $20 million to upgrade classrooms for earthquake safety and provide students better access to computer technology.

* Measure S--Ojai Unified School District

A $15-million bond would pay to repair leaky roofs, replace wiring and plumbing, and renovate libraries.

* Measure T--Pleasant Valley School District

For the fifth time since 1991, the Camarillo district will go before voters to ask for money. The district is seeking $49 million to build new classrooms, spruce up libraries and renovate old facilities. In past years, the district has fallen just short of the two-thirds vote needed for passage.

* Measure U--Moorpark Unified School District

The district is pursuing a $16-million bond sale to build libraries, learning centers and science labs. The money also would provide new classrooms needed for class-size reduction, music programs and physical education.

Moorpark parks

* Measure P--Moorpark voters must decide whether they want to maintain the city’s 13 parks by increasing taxes. Measure P comes as a result of Proposition 218, the statewide tax-reform measure approved by voters last year. Because of Proposition 218, special assessments--including one that has been helping to pay for Moorpark’s parks--now require voter approval.